PositiveAir MailBlack Spartacus is the story of Toussaint Louverture and the Haitian Revolution, and a meditation on how the struggle against white supremacy and racism is one of the oldest of the human race. Slavery has ended, and empires are no more, but racism still endures. And so reading about
Louverture is edifying—because when slavery was nally abolished, it was
done out of political necessity, not on principle ... Louverture emerges as the only principled hero of the Haitian Revolution of 1791 to 1804; the republicans, monarchists, mixed-race allies, and even Black allies of the revolution pale in comparison to Louverture’s natural
intelligence and capable war strategy ... Hazareesingh reclaims Louverture from the French for
Blacks and for people of color. In doing so he presents to us a portrait of an original revolutionary whose self-worth and philosophy were formed by his African ancestry—his Creole and Christian values—and who fought in the name of his philosophy and his vision of an equal Saint-Domingue, where every race lived in freedom.
