In Our Time - The Haitian Revolution

Discussion of the Haitian Revolution on BBC Radio 4

The Greatest Movie Never Made?

Though it was sadly not mentioned in a recent book, The fifty greatest movies you will never see, one film project that has a very good claim to be included in that category was the planned project to make a film about the Haitian Revolution starring Paul Robeson by the great Soviet film director Sergei Eisenstein during the interwar period (another would be Eisenstein's plans to make a film of Marx's Capital).  The latest issue of History Workshop Journal has an interesting article entitled Sergei Eisenstein and the Haitian Revolution about this thwarted project, which might be of interest to readers of Histomat...

New Book: C.L.R. James in Imperial Britain

Out now as part of the C.L.R. James Archives series with Duke University Press:

C.L.R. James in Imperial Britain by Christian Høgsbjerg

C. L. R. James in Imperial Britain chronicles the life and work of the Trinidadian intellectual and writer C. L. R. James during his first extended stay in Britain, from 1932 to 1938. It reveals the radicalizing effect of this critical period on James's intellectual and political trajectory. During this time, James turned from liberal humanism to revolutionary socialism. Rejecting the "imperial Britishness" he had absorbed growing up in a crown colony in the British West Indies, he became a leading anticolonial activist and Pan-Africanist thinker. Christian Høgsbjerg reconstructs the circumstances and milieus in which James wrote works including his magisterial study The Black Jacobins. First published in 1938, James's examination of the dynamics of anticolonial revolution in Haiti continues to influence scholarship on Atlantic slavery and abolition. Høgsbjerg contends that during the Depression C. L. R. James advanced public understanding of the African diaspora and emerged as one of the most significant and creative revolutionary Marxists in Britain.

Read the introduction here

Endorsements

"Christian Høgsbjerg's book is going to make a very significant impact on the community of C. L. R. James scholars and beyond. Høgsbjerg has thoroughly combed the key archival sources to generate a comprehensive, lively, and insightful portrait of James's intellectual and political life during his first sojourn in Britain. In doing so, he has filled in many key details and fleshed out many important events in James's life in Britain."
—Paget Henry, co-editor of C. L. R. James's Caribbean and editor of the C.L.R. James Journal

"When C. L. R. James left Trinidad for England in 1932, it was a kind of homecoming: A connoisseur of cricket, immersed in the works of Shakespeare and Thackeray almost from birth, James was the consummate Afro-Saxon intellectual long before setting foot in London. In C. L. R. James in Imperial Britain, Christian Høgsbjerg follows him into the meeting halls and radical bookstores, the cricket grounds and bohemian haunts, where this displaced 'Victorian with the rebel seed' emerged as a leading figure in the Trotskyist and Pan-Africanist movements. The fusion of insight with command of factual detail sets the new standard by which serious work on C. L. R. James must be judged."
—Scott McLemee, editor of C. L. R. James on the "Negro Question" and the forthcoming The Dialectics of State Capitalism: Writings on Marxist Theory by C.L.R. James

Reviews

''C.L.R. James in Imperial Britain opens up the issue of the Third World struggle in an elegant and memorable way''
'C.L.R. James: Back in Style, Black in Style' by Paul Buhle, authorised biographer of C.L.R. James, author of C.L.R. James: The Artist as Revolutionary

"The excellence of this book by Christian Høgsbjerg on CLR James's first sojourn in Britain between 1932 and 1938 is signalled by the drama of its cover photograph.  Wearing a very English raincoat, the Trinidadian writer and militant is pictured addressing a mid-1930s meeting in Trafalgar Square.
    By 1938 Special Branch had judged James to be a fluent speaker, very well versed in the doctrines of Karl Marx and other revolutionary writers.
    Shortly after arriving in England he moved in with his old friend and compatriot, the cricketer Learie Constantine, and was a powerful advocate of West Indian self-government.  But his elite colonial schooling at Trinidad's Queen's Royal College and a literary apprenticeship in Port of Spain had certainly not made him a Marxist.
    Steeped in English literature - he told me in a 1982 interview that he had read Thackeray's Vanity Fair ten times before he was nine years old -  Høgsbjerg explains that in his early Trinidad days James had been a devotee of English Victorian cultural prophets like Matthew Arnold, with all his sweetness and light.
   Yet within a few months of staying with Constantine in the insurgent Lancashire cotton-weaving town of Nelson, where his host was a Lancashire League professional cricketer, he had become so involved in and influenced by the struggles of the "Red Nelson" working class - which he allied with black struggles all over the imperialist world - that, as he declared, "literature was vanishing from my consciousness and politics was substituting itself."   Høgsbjerg tells of this process of transformation with a compelling narrative vibrancy.
  In subsequent chapters he tells the story of James's involvement both in the apparently contradictory worlds - yet not so if you were James - of cricket reporting for the Manchester Guardian and Glasgow Herald and active solidarity with world anti-imperialist and Pan-Africanist processes.
   This was provoked by a reunion with his old Trinidadian school friend George Padmore who had written the pathfinding Life and Struggles of the Negro Toilers in 1931.  In 1937, as part of his solidarity work for the Ethiopian people after Mussolini's fascist invasion, he helped set up the African Bureau for the Defence of African and People of African Descent in London.
     Another engrossing chapter is that which tells of James's Paris-based research for, and the writing of The Black Jacobins, his history of the Haitian Revolution of 1791.  Its forerunner, the play about its leader Toussaint l'Ouverture with Paul Robeson as the protagonist, was performed in London's West End in 1936.
     Høgsbjerg has produced an invaluable addition to both British and Caribbean labour scholarship and has written it in such an accessible way that its stirring and provocative narrative ought to inspire thought and action.''
Chris Searle, 'A scion of black consciousness', Morning Star, 26 May 2014.

"Høgsbjerg discusses [James's] publications in various ways but it is the intellectual and social movement context the author brings to these works, which continue to animate critical minds today, that makes the reader pause and delight''
Matthew Quest, Insurgent Notes

''This impressively researched, well-written and accessible book demonstrates that James's time in Britain was a period of fertile intellectual growth for this inspirational writer and activist''
Brian Richardson, Socialist Review, June 2014.

''Just out from Duke University Press's C.L.R. JAMES ARCHIVES series is this important new book from Christian Hogsbjerg. Christian's first volume in this series was an edition of the original script of James's play Toussaint Louverture: The Story of the Only Successful Slave Revolt in History. This new book is the first to offer a full examination of James's years in England following his departure from Trinidad in 1932. In the few short years between his arrival in England and his departure for the United States, James published Minty Alley, The Case for West Indian Self-Government, World Revolution, A History of Negro Revolt and  Black Jacobins, all while keeping up work as a cricket writer and participating in the work of the African Service Bureau, International Friends of Abyssinia, and others. These years are vital for understanding James's evolution as a thinker and revolutionary, indispensable for understanding the work that he would do in the United States.''
Aldon Lynn Nielsen, author of C.L.R. James: A Critical Introduction

''One of the most impressively researched biographies of a prominent radical to appear in recent memory ... Anyone with an interest in black protest, literary London, and/or left politics in the 1930s will enjoy this smart, factually grounded yet thematically rich biographical study''.
Kent Worcester, 'Renegades and Castaways', New Politics (Summer 2014)

''Høgsbjerg has made a major contribution through his reconstruction of James’s life and times in imperial Britain. Recovering James’s ventures into radical bookshops such as Lahr’s, his time spent in Nelson and Bloomsbury, his touring Britain as a cricket reporter, and much more, Høgsbjerg does a supreme job of reconstructing the historical geography of a distinct, and distinctly radical, life. In this sense, his book is an example to geographers, historians or other radical intellectuals pursuing the study of previously neglected biographies.''
Daniel Whittall, Antipode (August 2014)

"One of the book’s greatest assets is the way it manages a remarkable density of information. Refusing to succumb to the temptation of showing a single, linear narrative of James, Høgsbjerg uses the most diverse sources to illuminate the man’s different facets. His James is a witty thinker, spectacular orator, gifted organizer, cricket lover, and a politics addict. Indeed, these different traits exist side by side, develop over time, and contribute to shaping James’s trajectory....  He illuminates James as an actor who participated in and influenced contemporaneous debates about how Marxism and Trotskyism could provide answers to fighting colonial rule and the rise of Fascism.... CLR James in Imperial Britain is a valuable contribution to the field of James studies. It illuminates the early phases of Afro-Caribbean anticolonial activism in Britain and the development of anticolonial Marxism. Simultaneously, it tells the story of a remarkable beginning and shaping of much of C.L.R. James’s thought".
Itay Lotem, Twentieth Century British History (November 2014). 


Book Launches
Thursday 27 March, 7.30pm, Nelson Library, Lancashire.
Supported by North East Lancs TUC and Preston Black History Group.

Friday 11 July at Marxism 2014, central London 

Edited to add: Check out this film about CLR James's life in 1930s Britain

Some Summer Reading for Revolutionaries

Though there are important looming strikes ahead, as well as protests such as that at Tory Party conference in Manchester on Sunday 29 September, and other events such as the Unite the Resistance conference in October on the horizon, August is a good time to catch up on some reading, and though I am aware that many revolutionaries are busy reading Lenin just now - including One Step Forward, Two Steps Back, I thought I would highlight a few other books that might be of interest to readers of Histomat.

First up, some black history (on which subject see this blog post for other suggestions on 'radical black reading')*. In the superb Quentin Tarantino film Django Unchained, Christoph Waltz's character - a German dentist turned bounty hunter called Dr. King Schultz challenges the Leonardo DiCaprio's slaveowner character Calvin Candie about the fate of one of his slaves, D'Artagnan while in Candie's private study: 

Candie: Are you brooding 'bout me getting the best of ya, huh?
Schultz: Actually, I was thinking of that poor devil you fed to the dogs today, D'Artagnan. And I was wondering what Dumas would make of all this.
Candie: Come again?
Schultz: Alexandre Dumas. He wrote The Three Musketeers. I figured you must be an admirer. You named your slave after his novel's lead character. If Alexandre Dumas had been there today, I wonder what he would have made of it?
Candie: You doubt he'd approve?
Schultz: Yes. His approval would be a dubious proposition at best.
Candie: Soft hearted Frenchy?
Schultz: Alexandre Dumas is black.

While it is always good to read the great Dumas himself, the author Tom Reiss has recently published a Putlizer prize winning book - The Black Count: Napoleon's Rival and the real Count of Monte Christo about General Alexandre Dumas, father of the famous novelist - and a heroic black general who was born in what became Haiti and rose to command revolutionary armies during the French Revolution and who inspired many of the stories of daring-do in Dumas's novels. The work has been widely reviewed - including here and here, but in short you will be hard put to find a more gripping page-turner of a biography relating to race and revolution this year. I really cannot recommend this book enough. 
 

On the subject of racism, I have already mentioned Brian Richardson's excellent edited collection Say it Loud! Marxism and the Fight Against Racism on my blog (it is also reviewed here), but another edited volume from Bookmarks also deserves attention, Capitalism and Sport: Politics, Protest, People and Play edited by Michael Lavalette.  Full of wide-ranging essays on all manner of sports, there really will be something for everyone here and the book is packed full of eye-opening facts from history that will come as a surprise to all but the most well-read socialist sports fan.


 I have been meaning to mention another edited volume Marxism and Social Movements, co-edited by Colin Barker, Laurence Cox, John Krinsky and Alf Gunvald Nilsen, which is at the moment a very expensive hardback with Brill only but next year will be appearing in a more affordable paperback with Haymarket.  Nonetheless, some of the contents of the collection are available online on one of the editors blogs here - worth checking out.  On the subject of Marxism and social movements, the meetings from Marxism 2013 are now online to either listen to  here while some are available to watch here.

Finally, I have just finally got around to reading The Great Gatsby which I thoroughly enjoyed (but have still to see the new film).  As F. Scott Fitzgerald  once commented to his daughter in a letter only days before his death in December 1940: “Sometime when you feel very brave and defiant and haven’t been invited to one particular college function, read the terrible chapter in [Marx’s] Das Kapital on ‘The Working Day,’ and see if you are ever quite the same.”  At a time of Tory austerity, where zero hour contracts afflict the lives of hundreds of thousands of workers, suggesting people read (or re-read) Marx himself seems as good a way as any to end this post. 

 
 * Edited to add: I forgot to mention Footprints, a collection of poems by the black Barbadian Communist Peter Blackman (1909-93), and edited by Chris Searle - whose introduction to the volume has been reprinted in the latest issue of Race and Class.  This is a very nice little collection by a forgotten activist - who clearly deserves to be remembered as a significant Caribbean poet.

David Cameron - Tory slave driver

Mr Cameron, too, is revealed to have slave owners in his family background on his father's side. The compensation records show that General Sir James Duff, an army officer and MP for Banffshire in Scotland during the late 1700s, was Mr Cameron's first cousin six times removed. Sir James, who was the son of one of Mr Cameron's great-grand-uncle's, the second Earl of Fife, was awarded £4,101, equal to more than £3m today, to compensate him for the 202 slaves he forfeited on the Grange Sugar Estate in Jamaica. 

 Another illustrious political family that it appears still carries the name of a major slave owner is the Hogg dynasty, which includes the former cabinet minister Douglas Hogg. They are the descendants of Charles McGarel, a merchant who made a fortune from slave ownership. Between 1835 and 1837 he received £129,464, about £101m in today's terms, for the 2,489 slaves he owned. McGarel later went on to bring his younger brother-in-law Quintin Hogg into his hugely successful sugar firm, which still used indentured labour on plantations in British Guyana established under slavery. And it was Quintin's descendants that continued to keep the family name in the limelight, with both his son, Douglas McGarel Hogg, and his grandson, Quintin McGarel Hogg, becoming Lord Chancellor. 

Dr Draper said: "Seeing the names of the slave-owners repeated in 20th‑century family naming practices is a very stark reminder about where those families saw their origins being from. In this case I'm thinking about the Hogg family. To have two Lord Chancellors in Britain in the 20th century bearing the name of a slave-owner from British Guiana, who went penniless to British Guyana, came back a very wealthy man and contributed to the formation of this political dynasty, which incorporated his name into their children in recognition – it seems to me to be an illuminating story and a potent example." 

Mr Hogg refused to comment, saying he "didn't know anything about it". Mr Cameron declined to comment after a request was made to the No 10 press office.
Britain's colonial shame - see also this piece by historian Catherine Hall.

 Another reason then to detest Cameron - and a good time then for those fighting back against the Tories - whose workfare programme amounts to forced 'slave labour' for the poor - to remember figures from history such as Toussaint Louverture, leader of 'the only successful slave revolt in history'...

 

Edited to add: William Dalrymple on Cameron and the Amritsar massacre

Maya Deren - The Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti

If you have an hour free and are interested in Haitian history and culture, this film is well worth a watch.  

Rediscovered play by C.L.R. James published

  

With black history on the British school curriculum now under threat from the Tories as never before, the appearance of a critical edition of the great Trinidadian writer and historian C. L. R. James’s play about the Haitian Revolution Toussaint Louverture: The story of the only successful slave revolt in history (out now with Duke University Press) is most timely. The remarkable play, written by James in 1934, was performed at London’s Westminster Theatre in 1936 with Paul Robeson in the title role - and stands as not only possibly the finest anti-imperialist play to make it onto the British stage in the inter-war period but the first time black professional actors starred on the British stage in a play by a black playwright. Toussaint Louverture represents a piece of revolutionary literature in its own right, indeed it is the lost literary companion volume to The Black Jacobins, James's classic 1938 history of the Haitian Revolution. The original playscript has never before been published, as it was widely presumed lost, and and so this is the last major piece of James's writing never before published. This special edition includes the programme, photographs, and reviews from the 1936 production, a contextual introduction and editorial notes on the play, and selected essays and letters by James and others, and launches the new C.L.R. James Archives series with Duke University Press.

Endorsements / Reviews

 "The text of this nearly forgotten drama, succinctly introduced to today's readers with a valuable set of accompanying essays, is an invaluable contribution to Pan-African studies and our understanding of 'the Black Plato' as a remarkably talented playwright. C. L. R. James readers, and not only those of The Black Jacobins, will rejoice."
—Paul Buhle, authorized biographer, author of C. L. R. James: The Artist as Revolutionary

"Long legendary throughout the diaspora, the first version of C. L. R. James's play about Toussaint Louverture finally emerges from the archives. This play is the production that united James with his friend Paul Robeson on the London stage. It was an extraordinary event at the time—witness the contemporary reviews added to this publication—and it is no less extraordinary today. In addition to reviews, this edition also reprints valuable early statements from James and Robeson. It is a singular, one might even say Olympian, volume with much to teach us all."

—Aldon Lynn Nielsen, author of C. L. R. James: A Critical Introduction and Integral Music: Languages of African American Innovation

"The most famous account of the Haitian Revolution is, of course, CLR James’s 1938 history The Black Jacobins. But before he composed his dramatic history of revolution, James rendered the revolution as historical drama. His play was written in 1934, staged in 1936 at London’s Westminister Theatre – with Paul Robeson starring – and lost until a draft was rediscovered in 2005..."
 The Public Archive,'Radical Black Reading / Reading Haiti 2012'

''[T]horoughly researched and intelligently prepared....Toussaint Louverture is easily one of the two or three most important publications of C.L.R. James’s work in decades... now that the playscript is in print, it seems time for someone to rise to the challenge of putting it on the boards, or on the screen"
Scott McLemee, 'Revolution on Stage', Inside Higher Ed

''One need only read the table of contents to see that you have much more than a play here. It includes reviews and other critical information that deepens your appreciation of the play. This is an example how a chance discovery of a lost manuscript can be turned into something that opens the door to a relevant world. This play is a must-read for anyone who has read and loved The Black Jacobins as you can see much of the lyricism of that great work prefigured in its lines ... As long as the world wilts with oppression, is awash with crisis, and punctuated by resistance this play, its subject matter, and now this book, will have to be read, watched and pondered on over and over again.''
Gaverne Bennett, London Socialist Historians Group Newsletter

"James manages to tell the whole story of the struggle in all its twists and turns as Louverture steps his way through all the imperial trip wires until the fatal error where he trusts too much in French civilisation.  It focuses on dialogue between a small number of people on stage. As a play, the offstage revolutionary upheaval has to be described, not witnessed. Reading the script, the possibility of it being the bedrock of a screen adaptation is enticing.  Louverture’s story on the big screen, showing the heroism of the Haitian masses, would be a brilliant corrective to the Barack Obama-driven, post-racism narrative."

The play was only performed on a handful of occasions, but met with critical applause. James manages to tell the whole story of the struggle in all its twists and turns as Louverture steps his way through all the imperial trip wires until the fatal error where he trusts too much in French civilisation.
It focuses on dialogue between a small number of people on stage. As a play, the offstage revolutionary upheaval has to be described, not witnessed. Reading the script, the possibility of it being the bedrock of a screen adaptation is enticing.
Louverture’s story on the big screen, showing the heroism of the Haitian masses, would be a brilliant corrective to the Barack Obama-driven, post-racism narrative.
- See more at: http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/54593#sthash.Zck4Dh7r.3qo9rfix.dpuf

The play was only performed on a handful of occasions, but met with critical applause. James manages to tell the whole story of the struggle in all its twists and turns as Louverture steps his way through all the imperial trip wires until the fatal error where he trusts too much in French civilisation.
It focuses on dialogue between a small number of people on stage. As a play, the offstage revolutionary upheaval has to be described, not witnessed. Reading the script, the possibility of it being the bedrock of a screen adaptation is enticing.
Louverture’s story on the big screen, showing the heroism of the Haitian masses, would be a brilliant corrective to the Barack Obama-driven, post-racism narrative.
- See more at: http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/54593#sthash.Zck4Dh7r.3qo9rfix.dpuf

Barry Miles, 'Toussaint Louverture brought to life in play, book', Green Left Weekly

''The many people interested in James, and the many admirers in particular of his The Black Jacobins, will welcome this first publication of his 1934 play''
Rickey Singh, 'C.L.R. James and Toussaint', Trinidad Express, 30 July 2014.

Edited to add: See this discussion of the play in sx salon 16 (May 2014)

Toussaint Louverture brought to life in play

Peter Hallward on Haiti: A Year On

“I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that much of the population has been repeatedly traumatised. It’s hard to imagine how people can still manage to endure it...

The UN continues to play the same role it has played for the last six years, which is keeping a lid on social discontent by military-style policing...It has invested virtually all its money—more than $600 million a year—in an extremely well-armed, expensive occupation force. One report last spring showed that the UN didn’t pull anyone out of the rubble in the first three days of the earthquake. It’s incredible. They had 8,000 young, well-trained men, and couldn’t rescue a single person.

It is beyond shocking that this foreign occupation is being presented as a positive ‘peace-keeping’ mission. Its only function has been to impose an unpopular coup on a very resentful population and to prevent them from taking significant political steps to counter or reverse it.”
Full interview online here

Selma James on the Black Jacobins

It took an earthquake whose destructive power was enhanced by dire poverty to rekindle interest in Haiti. Many who want to know who Haitians are seem to have turned to CLR James’ classic text, The Black Jacobins, a history of the revolution the slaves made.

Seizing on the revolution in France, they took their freedom and got revolutionary Paris to ratify it. But as the revolution’s power in France waned, to prevent slavery’s return they had to defeat the armies of Spain and Britain as well as France’s Napoleon and, amazingly, they did. In 1804 the independent republic of Haiti was born.

Black Jacobins was published in 1938 as a contribution to the movement for colonial emancipation — for Africa first of all, when few considered this possible. By 1963 it had been out of print for years but the exploding anti-imperialist and anti-racist movements had created a new market for it. Later books updating information on Haiti’s revolution have not challenged its classic status. It’s worth asking why.

First, James takes sides uncompromisingly with the slaves. While he has all the time in the world for anti-racist whites who loved Toussaint and the revolution, his point of reference is the struggle of those who were wresting themselves back from being the possession of others. The book recounts their courage, imagination and determination. But James doesn’t glamorise: ‘The slaves destroyed tirelessly. . . . And if they destroyed much it was because they had suffered much. They knew that as long as these plantations stood their lot would be to labour on them until they dropped. The only thing was to destroy them.’

Nor does he shield us from the terrorism and sadism of the masters. But the catalogue of tortures does more than torture the reader; it deepens our appreciation of the former slaves’ power to endure and overcome. Despite death and destruction, the slaves are never helpless victims. This may explain why strugglers from the Caribbean and even South Africa told the author that at low points in their movements Black Jacobins had helped sustain them. This quality is what makes the book thrilling and inspiring — we are learning from the Haitians’ determination to be free what being human is about.

Second, Toussaint L’Ouverture possessed all the skills of leadership that the revolution needed. An uneducated, middle-aged West Indian when it began, he was soon able to handle sophisticated European diplomats and politicians who foolishly thought they could manipulate him because he was black and had been a slave.

James liked to say that while the official claim is that Lincoln freed the slaves, it was in fact the slaves who had freed Lincoln — from his limitations and the conservative restraints of office. Here James says that ‘. . . Toussaint did not make the revolution. It was the revolution that made Toussaint.’ Then he adds: ‘And even that is not the whole truth.’

In other words, while the movement chooses, creates and develops its leadership, historians are unlikely to pin that process down, whatever they surmise from events. What we can be sure of, however, is that the great leader is never a ‘self-made man,’ but a product of his individual talents and skills (and weaknesses) shaped by the movement he leads in the course of great upheavals. The Haitian Jacobins created Toussaint and he led them to where they had the will and determination to go.

This is still groundbreaking today, considering that there are parties and organisations, large and small, which claim that their leadership is crucial for a revolution’s success. There are also those who believe leadership is unnecessary and it would hold the movement back. In Haiti the slaves made the revolution, and Toussaint, one of them, played a vital role in their winning.

Third, James tells us who many of these revolutionary slaves were. They were not proletarians,

‘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 the time, and the rising was, therefore, a thoroughly prepared and organised mass movement.’

This is relevant to the problem of development which the book poses: what are non-industrial people to do after the revolution? The movement has struggled with this question for generations. Toussaint relied on the plantation system of the former masters who claimed to personify ‘civilisation’ and ‘culture’; they ultimately captured and killed him. The ex-slaves would not have it. They wanted their own plots of land, and the end of the plantation – an early form of forced collectivisation.

Lenin finally (1923) proposed that the State encourage co-operatives which, independent of the party, would dominate the economy. Gandhi insisted that Indians must hold on to the cotton industry and its village way of life against all odds. Nyerere proposed ujamaa or African socialism for Tanzanians, and with the momentum of the independence movement, people made extraordinary strides (an untold story). China has more to tell us; and some Indigenous Latin Americans are gaining the power to say what they propose.

We know that Haiti went further than the movements elsewhere: it was decades before others abolished slavery. Haiti, so far ahead, was vulnerable to the imperial powers which it had infuriated by its revolutionary impertinence.

Now, despite often racist reporting of events there, we are learning how the present Black Jacobins have been organising and how their struggle has continued. President Aristide, whom they elected by 92% of the vote, was twice taken from them by an alliance of the US and the local elite. They demand his return. The least we can do is support that demand.

Selma James, Black Jacobins past and present - for more on CLR James's majestic work see here.

The Public Archive

I have been sent the link to a new website, The Public Archive

'We are hoping that for now, the Public Archive will serve as a resource for Haiti's history; in the future, it will serve as a similar resource for other countries mis-, under-, or poorly-represented within the mainstream media. The Public Archive compiles historical essays, archival material, and well-informed journalism from across the web, mainly from freely available, if not always easily accessible, open-source journals, digital repositories,and online newspapers and periodicals. We hope it can serve as a teaching resource, and we ask you to encourage students and student organizations to link to it via their social networking utilities. (Our own Facebook page is at:http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=343535867070 and we twitter attwitter.com/public_archive)
Finally, the Public Archive is (and will always be) a work in progress. We'd appreciate feedback and comments and please send us links to potential sources'

John Pilger on the kidnapping of Haiti

A very American coup indeed. See also another piece by Peter Hallward in this weeks New Statesman. On Haiti, see also the photos from Jess Hurd in this weeks Socialist Worker (which leads with a brilliantly hard-hitting front page which doesn't er, 'beat around the Bush', ' Blair is guilty of mass murder'), while the articles by Charlie Kimber and Mark L Thomas are also essential reading...

Edited to add: Philosophy Football's 'Aidez Haiti' T-shirt will help raise much needed funds via the TUC Aid Earthquake Appeal. All profits from the Aidez Haiti shirt will go to the Trades Union Congress TUC aid appeal for emergency relief and long-term rehabilitation of the victims of the Haiti earthquake.

Meanwhile back in US Occupied Haiti

[From The Life and Struggles of Negro Toilers (1931) by George Padmore]

For over 15 years [since 1915] Haiti has been under the political domination of the United States, which maintains a military dictatorship over the island. During these years several revolts against American imperialism have broken out among the Haitian workers and peasants, but these have all been ruthlessly suppressed. It has been estimated that over 3,000 Haitians have been murdered by the United States’ marines during their occupation of the country.

Because of the position of Haiti proper, which overlooks the Panama Canal and the proposed canal through Nicaragua, the island is considered the most valuable strategic base for the United States navy in the Caribbean, as well as a fertile field for the investment of finance-capital in the development of tropical products, such as coffee, cotton, tobacco, cocoa, sugar, etc., etc. These are the principal factors which dictated the military annexation of the island in 1915.

On the occasion when the first batch of American marines landed their leader, Admiral Caperton, was instructed by the United States State Department to impose a treaty with the following conditions upon the Haitians:

1. That the mining, commercial and agricultural resources of the country be developed exclusively by American financial interests.

2. That the United States was to provide a general receiver and financial adviser to the Government and thereby assume complete control over revenue.

3. That Haiti would not float any new loans or change her tariff unless first approved by the United States.

4. That Haiti would neither lease nor cede territory to any foreign power.

5. That the United States should supply officers for the Haitian gendarmerie (police force).

Since the American occupation the conditions of the 2,500,000 Haitians, especially the workers and peasants, have become terrible.

Land Robbery

Nearly all the fertile lands held by the peasants since the establishment of the republic in 1804 have been appropriated by the imperialists and turned into large plantations controlled by foreign corporations. As a result of this policy most of the Haitians are now a landless proletariat and are compelled to become wage-earners on the plantations and in the factories of foreign corporations.

So intense has been the policy of exploitation and its effects upon the living standards of the toiling masses, that spontaneous revolts have broken out throughout the island from time to time. All these manifestations of the workers for liberation have been ruthlessly stamped out. The marines have spread a network of terrorism throughout the country. They have muzzled the press, abolished freedom of speech and assembly, and either exiled or thrown into prison all who dared to champion the cause of national independence.

In order effectively to carry out this programme of subjugation the United States State Department maintains naval rule under the direct supervision of a High Commissioner, General John H. Russell. This marine officer is the real dictator of Haiti. He operates through a puppet president, Louis Bruneo, and a Council of State. This council is a small committee or cabinet selected by the “president” from among his henchmen, who in turn select the “president.” Both the council and the “presidents” must be approved of by the High Commission, who in turn is responsible to the United States Government in Washington. Thus the Haitians have absolutely no voice in the Government.

All of the large plantations, railroads, street railways, electric and gas companies in Haiti are owned by American bankers. Thousands of natives are employed as unskilled labourers in these concerns. The average wage of a Haitian worker is between 20 and 30 cents a day. Wherever they are employed, whether on the plantations or in the factories, they are forced to work long hours, and are most brutally treated by the American superintendents and managers, who are some of the most cruel slave-drivers to be found in the colonies.

The Tipinor and the Reginier-Pinerd Companies, which own some of the largest coffee plantations in the island, have the reputation of being the most brutal exploiters. They employ over 10,000 Negroes, who are supposed to get one dollar a day; but out of this a tax of 75 cents is collected and turned over to the Government, in order to meet its interest on foreign loans. The balance goes to the workers, who are expected to provide themselves with food, clothing and shelter during the period of their contract.

Exclusive of the agricultural and transport workers, there are about 5,000 stevedores employed by European and American steamship companies at Port-au-Prince, the national capital. The rate of wage is between 40 and 50 cents for loading and unloading ships. These workers are unorganised, and as a result their labour-power is being exploited to the maximum. The stevedores, together with the railroad and factory workers in the sugar refineries, form the bulk of the industrial proletariat of Haiti.

Thousands of women and children are also employed as agricultural labourers on the coffee and tobacco plantations. These workers are even more viciously exploited than the men. The average wage for women is 15 cents per day and children 10 cents. Like the men, women and children work from 10 to 15 hours under the most awful conditions, especially during the rainy season of the year, when malaria is very prevalent. The low standard of living among the Haitian toilers due to small wages and the rationalisation of the American capitalists contribute to the high mortality. The majority of Haitian agricultural workers suffer from hookworm and other tropical diseases...

These high-handed methods of imperialist exploitation, perpetrated against the Haitians, especially the peasantry, were the underlying factors which led to the revolt in November, 1928, which was drowned in blood by the machine guns of the United States marines.

The Revolt

The underlying factors of the 1929 Haitian revolt against American imperialism, like the uprising in Nigeria, were (I) the worsening of the conditions of the peasantry, due to the world crisis which has caused a falling of the prices of agricultural products, especially coffee; (2) the expropriation of lands for the development of industrialised agriculture by American capitalists, and (3) the attempts on the part of the imperialists to force the natives to contribute labour for road building without pay.

As soon as the uprising occurred, martial law was proclaimed by Colonel Richards Coots, the American officer commanding marines in Port-au-Prince. The troops were immediately got in readiness, and bloody attacks were made against all those who participated in the uprising.

The first stage was a strike among the students of the National University. They held parades through the principal streets of Port-au-Prince, protesting against the educational bureaucracy saddled upon them by President Borneo and his American educational advisors. In order to cut down national expenses, the Government recently made a sweeping reduction in the education budget. So incensed are all sections of the population against the present fascist dictatorship that no sooner had the students walked out of their classes than the native staff in the Customs Department joined in the strike. The clerks attacked the American officials with ink bottles, parts of typewriters and other office accessories, chasing them out of the building. The dock workers also declared a general strike, and within a few hours the entire business life of the city of Port-au-Prince was at a standstill.

Thousands of Haitian workers gathered before the Government administration building and the President’s palace, shouting “DOWN WITH BORNEO!” “DOWN WITH AMERICAN IMPERIALISM!”

The most serious manifestations, however, took place in the country districts. Because of their impoverished condition the peasants showed the most militancy. Immediately after learning what had taken place in the city they organised their forces and began a march on the capital.

Thousands of them gathered at a place called Aux Cayes, an important agricultural settlement. An advance guard of about 150 men and women armed with machetes (long knives used for cutting sugar canes) and sticks, marched ahead of the demonstrators. They were bent upon driving the American officials and their puppet, Borneo, out of Port-au-Prince.

As the column advanced on the capital, shouting “DOWN WITH BORNEO!” “DOWN WITH FREEMAN!” (who is the most vicious agent of American imperialism on the island, enjoying a salary of $10,000), they were met by a regiment of marines armed with every device of modern warfare.

The soldiers demanded that the peasants halt and return to their villages, which they refused to do. The marines then opened fire, killing five and wounding twenty. Despite the overwhelming superiority in numbers and equipment of the American forces, the natives fought heroically, making successful counter-attacks upon the military outposts at Chatel and Torbecks. By bringing up their reinforcements the peasants were able to break into the national guard-house at St. Michael, where they inflicted a severe assault on Lieutenant George Bertein, a Haitian petty-bourgeois renegade in the service of the American imperialists.

As the struggle increased more marines as well as American business men, who volunteered their services as a special fascist corps, were hurried off in armoured cars to various sections of the island to suppress the insurrection which was spreading from village to village.

While all this was taking place in the outskirts of the city, General Russell, the then High Commissioner, telegraphed to President Hoover informing him of the uprising. The American “dictator,” who is fast adopting to himself the mantle of Mussolini, ordered the cruiser Galveston, then at its naval base in Cuba, to proceed to Haiti. The bombing plane, Wright, with 500 more marines, was also dispatched on its mission of “peace and goodwill.”

With this formidable array the revolt was crushed with the same ruthlessness which characterised the marine campaigns in Nicaragua.

The reaction that has followed has created an atmosphere of widespread terrorism. Workers are afraid to express opposition sentiments for fear of being thrown into jail or murdered by the soldiers.

These outrages have aroused such world-wide protests among the working class and toiling masses of the colonies, especially in Latin-America, where Yankee imperialism rules supreme, that the Wall Street controlled Government in Washington was forced to dispatch a commission to “investigate” conditions. The Commissioners will merely carry out in the commission the instructions of their masters and whitewash the marine murderers of their bloody crimes, as has been done in the past.

The Haitian toilers know this only too well, and on the occasion of the arrival of the Commission at Port-au-Prince organised boycott demonstrations, demanding the immediate withdrawal of the marines and the abolition of the present dictatorship. The masses are still in a fighting mood. This was demonstrated when 5,000 workers and peasants shouting “LONG LIVE LIBERTY!” held a protest meeting before the Government buildings.

Since this incident a number of minor skirmishes have occurred between the toilers and the police in different parts of the island. The Haitian toiling masses will carry on the struggle until their country is freed from marine rule and foreign domination.

Selma James on Haiti

From The Guardian yesterday - for more on Haiti see here:

It took a catastrophe to put Haiti back on the political map. Yet its contribution to world civilisation is considerable. Having extended the 1789 French revolution to Haiti, Black Jacobins ended slavery, leading the way for abolition in the Americas. Western governments never forgave this impertinence, imposing crippling debt, occupations and dictatorships.

But Haitians never lost awareness that they could overcome and, if necessary, overthrow. In 1986, a mass movement kicked out the murderous Duvaliers whom the west had backed for decades, and in 1990 elected Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a liberation theologist determined to move the population "from destitution to poverty with dignity". He prioritised food security, health and education, encouraged agricultural co-operatives, and raised the minimum wage. Within months a US-backed coup overthrew him. Elected again in 2000 with over 90% of the vote, he was again removed in 2004, not by "a bloody rebellion" (Haiti's exiled former president vows to return, 15 January) but by bloody US marines. Haitians continue to call for Aristide's return. Will the only person with a mandate to govern be kept from leading their recovery and reconstruction?

Solidarity with the Haitian People

As the outstanding recent novelist of the Haitian Revolution, Madison Smartt Bell noted of the devastating earthquake in Haiti earlier this week, 'A disaster on this scale is opportunity for opportunism as well as an opportunity to do some real good; Haiti will undoubtedly get its share of both.'

Richard Seymour has superbly described some of the dangers associated with Western 'humanitarian intervention' that lie ahead (see also here, while Scott McLemee reminds people if they have not already done so to read CLR James's The Black Jacobins for an understanding of why racists like Pat Robertson still harbour so much hate for the people of Haiti and why Haiti finds itself in the materially if not culturally impoverished state it currently does.

This statement by Socialist Worker, 'A Very Unnatural Disaster', notes that 'Imperialist intervention and capitalism lie behind Haiti's nightmare' and after reminding people of the history of the island - on which also see here, puts forward the following demands:

We say:
-Rush food, shelter and other aid to Haiti now
-No to the use of aid as a political weapon to impose the US’s will
-End the neoliberal policies that squeeze Haiti’s poor
-End the occupation of Haiti by foreign forces

Others might add other demands such as allowing the return of former President Aristide to Haiti and the cancellation of Haiti's debt. I have also been informed of an emergency vigil in London, the details of which I will post below.

HAITI EARTHQUAKE – EMERGENCY VIGIL
In support of the people of Haiti
Wednesday 20 January 5-7pm
St Martin in the Fields Church steps
Trafalgar Sq, London WC2N
Survivors are increasingly desperate, and angry that despite promises the aid is not getting to them.

Edited to add: Despite the slow speed with which aid is arriving, Christopher Hitchens still predictably cheers the presence of US imperial power once more on Haitian soil ('the biggest [humanitarian] work of all will be performed by carrier groups and airborne brigades of the United States, the taxpayer-financed forces of a secular republic'), though Greg Palast rightly remains one angry and appropriately sceptical man:

Send in the Marines. That's America's response. That's what we're good at. The aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson finally showed up after three days. With what? It was dramatically deployed — without any emergency relief supplies. It has sidewinder missiles and 19 helicopters. But don't worry, the International Search and Rescue Team, fully equipped and self-sufficient for up to seven days in the field, deployed immediately with ten metric tons of tools and equipment, three tons of water, tents, advanced communication equipment and water purifying capability. They're from Iceland.

Zizek on Haiti

'This is why Hallward's outstanding book is not just about Haiti, but about what it means to be a "leftist" today: ask a leftist how he stands towards Aristide, and it will be immediately clear if he is a partisan of radical emancipation or merely a humanitarian liberal who wants "globalisation with a human face".'

Slavoj Zizek reviews Damming the Flood: Haiti, Aristide and the Politics of Containment by Peter Hallward ( Verso, 480pp, £16.99) I am warming more and more to Zizek. This is from a recent interview:

Aside from a property, what's the most expensive thing you've bought?
The new German edition of the collected works of Hegel.

What is your most treasured possession?
See the previous answer.

What do you consider your greatest achievement?
The chapters where I develop what I think is a good interpretation of Hegel.

Tell us a secret.
Communism will win.