The Black Jacobins

C.L.R. James' The Black Jacobins is a classic for a reason. What we have is a fascinating narrative of how the Haitian Revolution stemmed from and paralleled the French, as well as how the slave result took the ideals of the French Revolution to their logical end.

James builds a clear narrative that is usually easy to follow, pointing out and correcting errors and misconceptions that other historians have had or perpetuated.

One of the issues with James is that he'll introduce a figure in passing, then repeatedly refer to him later. I'm not sure his index is always good at picking up the first reference to some of the more obscure figures, either.

Probably the biggest criticism I have of this work is that James is occasionally oblique -- he doesn't elaborate well on why the conflict between L'Ouverture and Rigaud was inevitable or necessary. And will occasionally refer to something he'd elaborated on previously as only the "[date] incident", which necessitates flipping back and forth.

An interesting part of the work is how obviously written from a socialist perspective it is, as James interprets events leading up to, and of both revolutions through the (as yet unwritten) lens of Marx. Some of these interpretations are insightful, but other times James ascribes feelings to the people (typically the French peasants) that they may not necessarily have held.

Another interesting part of the work is how James casts the anti-slavery efforts of the British as not motivated solely by altruism and a belief in justice/equality/etc, but in that Haiti required much more slave labor than any British possession, and the colony would have been economically crippled without it. Thus, British anti-slavery sentiment was propped up by a desire to harm France's interests.

I don't know if this is the definitive work on the Haitian Revolution (initially published in 1938, and James annotates his references in the second edition, that this was written during European domination of Africa, and prior to the Second World War), but it's well worth the read.