The definitive modern biography of the great slave leader military genius and revolutionary
hero Toussaint Louverture The Haitian Revolution began in the French Caribbean colony of
Saint-Domingue with a slave revolt in August 1791 and culminated a dozen years later in the
proclamation of the world's first independent black state. After the abolition of slavery in
1793 Toussaint Louverture himself a former slave became the leader of the colony's black
population the commander of its republican army and eventually its governor. During the course
of his extraordinary life he confronted some of the dominant forces of his age - slavery
settler colonialism imperialism and racial hierarchy. Treacherously seized by Napoleon's
invading army in 1802 this charismatic figure ended his days in Wordsworth's phrase 'the
most unhappy man of men' imprisoned in a fortress in France. Black Spartacus draws on a wealth
of archival material much of it overlooked by previous biographers to follow every step of
Louverture's singular journey from his triumphs against French Spanish and British troops to
his skilful regional diplomacy his Machiavellian dealings with successive French colonial
administrators and his bold promulgation of an autonomous Constitution. Sudhir Hazareesingh
shows that Louverture developed his unique vision and leadership not solely in response to
imported Enlightenment ideals and revolutionary events in Europe and the Americas but through
a hybrid heritage of fraternal slave organisations Caribbean mysticism and African political
traditions. Above all Hazareesingh retrieves Louverture's rousing voice and force of
personality making this the most engaging as well as the most complete biography to date.
After his death in the French fortress Louverture became a figure of legend a beacon for
slaves across the Atlantic and for generations of European republicans and progressive figures
in the Americas. He inspired the anti-slavery campaigner Frederick Douglass the most eminent
nineteenth-century African-American his emancipatory struggle was hailed by those who defied
imperial and colonial rule well into the twentieth. In the modern era his life informed the
French poet Aimé Césaire's seminal idea of négritude and has been celebrated in a remarkable
range of plays songs novels and statues. Here in all its drama is the epic story of the
world's first black superhero.
