History of Pan-African Revolt (The Charles H. Kerr Library) - Softcover

James, C.L.R.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1604860952 ISBN 13: 9781604860955

Verlag: PM Press, 2012

Inhaltsangabe

Originally published in England in 1938 (the same year as his magnum opus The Black Jacobins) and expanded in 1969, this work remains the classic account of global black resistance. Robin D.G. Kelley’s substantial introduction contextualizes the work in the history and ferment of the times, and explores its ongoing relevance today.

“A History of Pan-African Revolt is one of those rare books that continues to strike a chord of urgency, even half a century after it was first published. Time and time again, its lessons have proven to be valuable and relevant for understanding liberation movements in Africa and the diaspora. Each generation who has had the opportunity to read this small book finds new insights, new lessons, new visions for their own age…. No piece of literature can substitute for a crystal ball, and only religious fundamentalists believe that a book can provide comprehensive answers to all questions. But if nothing else, A History of Pan-African Revolt leaves us with two incontrovertible facts. First, as long as black people are denied freedom, humanity and a decent standard of living, they will continue to revolt. Second, unless these revolts involve the ordinary masses and take place on their own terms, they have no hope of succeeding.” —Robin D.G. Kelley, from the Introduction

“I wish my readers to understand the history of Pan-African Revolt. They fought, they suffered—they are still fighting. Once we understand that, we can tackle our problems with the necessary mental equilibrium.” —C.L.R. James

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Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

In the West Indies, C.L.R. James is honored as one of the fathers of independence. In Britain he is feted as a historic pioneer of the black movement. He is generally regarded as one of the major figures in Pan-Africanism, and a leader in developing a current within Marxism that was democratic, revolutionary, and internationalist. His long life and impressive career played out in Trinidad, England, and America. For the last years of his life, he lived in south London and lectured widely on politics, Shakespeare, and other topics. He died there in 1989.

Robin D.G. Kelley is a professor of History and American Studies & Ethnicity at the University of Southern California. His most recent book, Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original (Free Press), received several honors, including Best Book on Jazz from the Jazz Journalists Association and the Ambassador Award for Book of Special Distinction from the English Speaking Union. It was a finalist for PEN USA Literary Award. He’s the author of half a dozen other books, including Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination (Beacon Press), and (co-edited with Franklin Rosemont), Surrealism—Black, Brown and Beige: Writings and Images from Africa and the African Diaspora (University of Texas Press).

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A History of Pan-African Revolt

By C.L.R. James

PM Press

Copyright © 2012 PM Press
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-60486-095-5

Contents

Publisher's Foreword, 
Introduction, 
A History of Pan-African Revolt, 
San Domingo, 
The Old United States, 
The Civil War, 
Revolts in Africa, 
Marcus Garvey, 
Negro Movements in Recent Years, 
Epilogue, 
I. Africa, 
II. South Africa, 
III. The United States, 
IV. The Caribbean, 
V. "Always Out of Africa", 

CHAPTER 1

San Domingo

The history of the Negro in his relation to European civilization falls into two divisions, the Negro in Africa and the Negro in America and the West Indies. Up to the 'eighties of the last century, only one-tenth of Africa was in the hands of Europeans. Until that time, therefore, it is the attempt of the Negro in the Western World to free himself from his burdens which has political significance in Western history. In the last quarter of the nineteenth century European civilization turned again to Africa, this time not for slaves to work the plantations of America but for actual control of territory and population. Today (1938) the position of Africans in Africa is one of the major problems of contemporary politics. An attempt is made here to give some account and analysis of Negro revolts through the centuries; in the days of slavery; in Africa during the last halfcentury; and in America and the West Indies today.

It is impossible in this space to deal with the slave-trade and slavery; the same consideration has made it necessary to omit accounts of the early revolts in the West Indies and the incessant guerrilla warfare carried on in all the islands by the maroons (or runaway slaves) against their former masters. Negroes have continually revolted and once in Dutch Guiana the revolting slaves held almost the entire colony for months. But in the eighteenth century the greatest colony in the West Indies was French San Domingo (now Haiti) and there took place the most famous of all Negro revolts. It forms a useful starting point.

1789 is a landmark in the history of Negro revolt in the West Indies. The only successful Negro revolt, the only successful slave revolt in history, had its roots in the French Revolution, and without the French Revolution its success would have been impossible.

During the eighteenth century French San Domingo developed a fabulous prosperity and by 1789 was taking 40,000 slaves a year. In 1789 the total foreign trade of Britain was twenty-seven million pounds, of which the colonial trade accounted for only five million pounds. The total foreign trade of France was seventeen million pounds, of which San Domingo alone was responsible for eleven millions. "Sad irony of human history," comments Jaures, "the fortunes created at Bordeaux, at Nantes, by the slave-trade gave to the bourgeoisie that pride which needed liberty and contributed to human emancipation." But the colonial system of the eighteenth century ordained that whatever manufactured goods the colonists needed could be bought only in France. They could sell their produce only to France. The goods were to be transported only in French ships. Colonial planters and the Home Government were thus in bitter and constant conflict, the very conflict which had resulted in the American War of Independence. The American colonists gained their freedom in 1783, and in less than five years the British attitude to the slave-trade changed.

Previous to 1783 they had been the most successful practitioners of the slave-trade in the world. But now not only was America gone, but it was British ships which were supplying a large proportion of the 40,000 slaves a year which were the basis of San Domingo's prosperity. The trade of San Domingo almost doubled between 1783 and 1789. The British West Indian colonies were in comparison poor, and with the loss of America, were of diminishing importance. The monopoly of the West Indian sugar planters galled the rising industrial bourgeoisie, potential free-traders. Adam Smith and Arthur Young, economists of the coming industrial age, condemned the expensiveness of slave labor. India offered the example of a country where the laborer cost only a penny a day, did not have to be bought, and did not brand his master as a slave-owner. In 1787 the Abolitionist Society was formed and the British Government, which only a few years before had threatened to sack a Governor of Jamaica if he tampered with the slave-trade in any shape or form, now changed its mind. If the slave-trade was brought to a sudden close, San Domingo would be ruined. The British islands would lose nothing, for they had as many slaves as they seemed likely to need. The abolitionists it is true worked very hard, and Clarkson, for instance, was a very honest and sincere man. Many people were moved by their propaganda. But that a considerable and influential section of British men of business thought that the slave-trade was not only a blot on the national name but a growing hole in the national pocket, was the point that mattered. The evidence for this is given in detail in the writer's Black Jacobins published in 1938 with a revised edition in 1963.

The Abolition Society was formed in 1787. France at that time was stirring with the revolution, and the French humanitarians formed a parallel society, "The Friends of the Negro." They preached the abolition not only of the slave-trade but of slavery as well, and Brissot, Mirabeau, Condorcet, Robespierre, many of the great names of the revolution, were among the members. They ignored or minimized the fact that, unlike Britain, two-thirds of France's overseas trade was bound up with the traffic. Wilberforce and Clarkson encouraged them, gave the society money, and did active propaganda in France. This was the position in Europe when the French Revolution began.

San Domingo possessed at that time 500,000 slaves, and only 30,000 Mulattoes and about the same number of whites. But the slave-owners of San Domingo at once embraced the revolution, and as each section interpreted liberty, equality and fraternity to suit itself, civil war was soon raging between them. Some of the rich whites, especially those who owed debts to French merchants, wanted to follow the example of America and virtually rule themselves. The Mulattoes wanted to be rid of their disabilities, the poor whites wanted to become masters and officials like the rich whites. These classes fought fiercely with one another. The white colonists lynched and murdered Mulattoes for daring to claim equality. But the whites themselves were divided into royalists and revolutionaries. The French revolutionary legislatures first of all evaded the question of Mulatto rights, then gave some of the Mulattoes rights, then took the rights away again. Mulattoes and whites fought, and under the stress of necessity began to arm their slaves. The news from France, the slogans of liberty, equality and fraternity, the political excitement in San Domingo, the civil war between rich whites, poor whites and Mulattoes, it was these things which after two years awoke the sleeping slaves to revolution. By July, 1791, in the thickly populated North they were planning a rising.

The slaves worked on the land, and, like revolutionary peasants everywhere, they aimed at the extermination of their masters. But, working and living together in gangs of hundreds on the huge sugar-factories which covered the North Plain, they were closer to a modern proletariat than any group of workers in existence at that time, and the rising was, therefore, a...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: PM Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2012
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1604860952
• ISBN 13: 9781604860955
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 160
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
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