Vintage, 2004, 743p, including i p Contents, ii p Map of Saint Domingue, x p Glossary, xx p Chronology of Historical Events, xviii p Original Letters and Documents, iv p Classification of Races in Colonial Saint Domingue and i p Note on Creole Orthography.

This is a sequel to All Souls’ Rising – which I read long before I started blogging – and is the second in the author’s Haiti trilogy which has as its setting the history of the slave revolt in what was then the French colony of Saint Domingue. The only successful slave revolt in history. For my review of CLR James’s history of the revolt see here.

Like the first in the sequence, Master of the Crossroads shows us scenes from the point of view of Toussaint Louverture, the most successful of the native generals, at the time of his later incarceration by the French, here in Fort de Jeux, on the French mainland, where he is endeavouring to persuade the First Consul, Napoleon, through letters and answers to interrogation, to believe his loyalty has always been to the French state as embodied in the ideals of the Revolution. When charged by his interrogator with having hidden fifteen million francs and shot the Negroes* who buried it for him Toussaint replies, “You blancs always believe there is a gold mine hidden from you somewhere.” The circumstances which led to his captivity were not covered in All Souls’ Rising: neither are they here.

While events in the wider context are illustrated or described, the main narrative features on the affairs of a few characters, mostly from Habitation Thibodet, next door to plantation Ennery and near Louverture’s original home. Some first person chapters are related from the point of view of Riau, a former slave born in Guinée (for most of the characters French would have been their first language but we also have dialogue in Haitian Creole.) Riau had formed an attachment to a woman called Merbillay but in his absence on military duty she took up with Guiaou and has a child by him. After a contretemps of sorts the three come to an unconventional arrangement. The titular owners of the Habitation (if any such right existed in the state of flux of the times) are Xavier and Elise Tocquet. Elise’s brother, Doctor Antoine Hébert, has a more or less acknowledged relationship with the former slave girl Nanon – so acknowledged she sits at table with them all. He is also Louverture’s doctor and accompanies him on various campaigns and expeditions though the country. Other notable characters are Isabelle Cigny and a mulatto man going by the name Choufleur (son of le Sieur Maltrot, who gave him that nickname due to his freckled appearance) and whose younger infatuation with Nanon leads to a fateful situation.

The scenario allows Bell to explore the complicated history of the Haiti revolution – tangled as it became in the French Revolutionary wars with the activities of Great Britain seeking to destabilise any French territory and the internecine manœuvrings of its various principal participants – and the effects of slavery both on slavers and on slaves plus that of the French Revolution on French personnel and colonists and those born in Haiti.

The book is not for the squeamish – times of revolt are usually bloody and Bell does not shy from describing atrocities and we witness Choufleur’s mother tell Hébert, “Cruelty is the first quality of any and all blancs. Cruelty and greed, no matter how you may hide it.” In the same speech she enlarges on her theme by mentioning the fact that on Haiti though you could find “their tools and relics everywhere” there were now no Indians where once there had been half a million. Moreover, she tells him the high incidence of lockjaw in new born slave children (an incidence much reduced since the revolt) was in fact due to midwives making sure – in a horrific way – that the child would not live to face the torments of slavery.

An indication perhaps of Bell’s nationality comes when French Civil Commissioner Léger-Félicité Sonthonax supplies rifles to that part of the colonial army made up of freed slaves, and says to them, “Whoever takes this weapon from you would take away your freedom,” but I suppose in those times and in that place the possession of a gun was some sort of guarantee. Bell also has a sympathetic eye for the customs of Vodou (voodoo,) seen as an expression of the desire of slaves to return to Africa – by whatever means.

Louverture is portrayed as having almost a second sight in the matter of ambushes, twice leaping from a travelling coach which is attacked a short way down the road. His stature at the time is exemplified by being dubbed the Black Spartacus by General Laveaux,

*This is the word which would have been used at that time.

Pedant’s corner:- sprung (sprang,) ablebodied (two words? able bodied,) “rolled to a crescendo” (rolled to a climax,) “slit it open with thumbnail” (with a thumbnail,) bandanna (bandana,) “less people” (fewer people,) “really wanted know” (wanted to know,) “only when spoken too” (spoken to,) “the the table” (no need for the extra ‘the’,) Breda (elsewhere always Bréda,) complection (complexion,) “bowing away from here” (from her,) Elsie (elsewhere always Elise,) “of the those” (no ‘the’ required,) mulattos (usually here the plural is written mulattoes,) “the trade agreement …. had apparently been broken” (been brokered,) “a peak in the zig-zag trial” (trail,) “at a time when no could gainsay her” (when no-one could,) “those of his father’s” (the ‘of’ made it possessive already; no need for the ’s,) “while the doctor embrace Vincent” (embraced,) “from Limbé de Dondon” (from Limbé to Dondon,) “with a citrus sent” (scent,) “‘put on this clothes at once’” (these clothes.)

Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution

Allison & Busby, 1984, 426 p including 11 p Bibliography and 28 p Appendix plus i p Map of San Domingo, i p Contents, iii p Foreword and iii p Preface to the First Edition. First published in 1938.

C L R James was a Trinidadian historian and journalist whose book on cricket has been described by none other than John Arlott as the finest book written on the game. He was also a Marxist which if you didn’t already know could be divined here from the frequent use of the word bourgeoisie and many mentions of class. Note also, “The rich are only defeated when running for their lives.”

The San Domingo Revolution was the only successful slave revolt in history. It eventually led to the establishment of the state of Haiti. Toussaint L’Ouverture, who changed his name from Toussaint Bréda when he joined the revolt, was its undoubted hero. James says however that “Toussaint did not make the revolution. It was the revolution that made Toussaint.”

San Domingo was a prodigious source of wealth for its white sugar planters and the merchants back in France who traded its product; wealth built on the backs of the slave workers imported from Africa, a slave trade which James says had turned Central Africa from peace and happy civilisation to violence and ferocity, the product of an intolerable pressure on the African peoples. Of those who dispute that statement we have, “Men will say (and accept) anything in order to foster national pride or soothe a troubled conscience.”

Before the revolt San Domingo was riven by differences; between the planters and the bureacracy, big whites, small whites, Mulattoes, blacks. (For some reason I couldn’t fathom James always capitalises the word Mulattoes.) For the small white with not much in the way of property, “race prejudice was more important than even the possession of slaves. The distinction between a white man and a man of colour was for them fundamental.” An illustration of the central importance of colour to San Domingan life was that, “They divided the offspring of white and black and intermediate shades into 128 divisions. The true Mulatto was the child of pure white and pure black, a quarteron was the child of a Mulatto woman and a white man. This went all the way down to the sang-mêlé of 127 parts white and one part black but who was still a person of colour. These distinctions exemplify “the justification of plunder by any obvious differentiation to those holding power.” I note here that James describes pure blacks as negroes. I suppose the usage was common in the 1930s when he was writing but it strikes an odd note now.

Free Mulattoes were able to save, to own property and eventually to lend money. Their threat was such that, “white San Domingo passed a series of laws which for maniacal savagery are unique in the modern world.” But the Mulattoes were too numerous and the colonists had to be satisfied with humiliations such as restrictions on dress, meetings, travel, and so on. Black slaves and Mulattoes hated each other, and those who were more white despised people with blacker ancestry. This internalisation of racial prejudice was still prevalent in the Jamaica of James’s present.

In 1789 San Domingo accounted for 11 of the 17 million pounds of France’s export trade. The beginning of British efforts to abolish slavery was an attempt to undermine this economic powerhouse. “The slave trade and slavery were the economic basis of the French Revolution.” The fortunes made, “gave to the bourgeoisie that pride which needed liberty and contributed to emancipation.” But then came the French Revolution and the ideals of liberté, egalité and fraternité, which took root in the fertile ground of the plantations.

When the uprising finally came James says that the slaves in their vengefulness were surprisingly moderate, far more humane than their masters had been, not maintaining it for long – unlike the systematic and enduring abuse the slaves had suffered. Toussaint himself established early a “great reputation for humanity, a very singular thing in the San Domingo of those days.” The crucial event for the sustenance of the revolt was the abolition of slavery by the Constituent Assembly in Paris, a reason for the slaves to cleave to revolutionary ideals thereafter.

Britain then promptly rowed back on the abolition of slavery and attempted to take over San Domingo. Under Toussaint the former slaves inflicted on Britain “the severest defeat that has befallen a British expeditionary force between the days of Elizabeth and the Great War.” The British lost more men in actual deaths than Wellington did to all causes in the entire Peninsular War, “‘her arm for six fateful years fettered and paralysed.'” Held by Toussaint and his raw levies Britain could not attack the revolution in France.

James has an undiluted admiration for Toussaint (along with Nelson and Napoleon one of the three outstanding personalities of the times) though admits his one fatal flaw. His allegiance to the French Revolution made him what he was; but in the end this ruined him. “His desire to avoid destruction was the very thing that caused it. It is the recurring error of moderates when face to face with a revolutionary struggle.”

The rise of Napoleon is seen by James as the bourgeoisie reasserting itself. Under Bonaparte it was the French intention to restore slavery on the island and their actually doing so in Guadeloupe that led to Haiti’s final independence. Toussaint’s blind spot had seen him acquiesce to the new French Governor, eventual imprisonment, transportation to, and eventual death in, France. It was Toussaint’s more ruthless deputy Dessalines who came to see independence was the revolt’s only hope.

James keeps describing the slaves and their culture as primitive (as he also characterises those of Africa.) Is this as a result of his Marxist view of history and its laws? He notes that slaves brought from Africa were compelled to master European languages, “highly complex products of centuries of civilisation.” There was therefore “a gap between the rudimentary conditions of the life of the slave and the language he used.” (Note also that inclusive – exclusive? – “he”.) It seems to me these sentiments are profoundly condescending – to African and slave alike.

Everything in the book is seen through the prism of Marxism, an approach which seems almost quaint these days as does James’s conclusion that salvation for the West Indies lies in Africa.

Aside:- For a fictional treatment of the slave revolution I would recommend the excellent All Souls’ Rising by Madison Smartt Bell. Having looked that up I discover Bell has published two subsequent books on the subject.

Pedant’s corner:- “All the slaves, however, did not undergo this régime.” (Not all the slaves underwent this régime,) “All of them did not submit to it.” (Not all of them submitted to it,) illtreatment (more usually it’s ill-treatment,) knit (knitted,) “adventurers seeking adventure,” (well, yes,) “72 million pounds’ weight of raw sugar and 51 million pounds of white,” (either use the apostrophe or not, don’t mix them,) the the, “both Hyacinth and another men” (man,) Francois’ (Francois’s,) Laveaux’ (Laveaux’s,) understod (understood,) acutal (actual,) Dessalines’ (Dessalines’s.) “It is a typical example of the cloud of lies which obscure the true history” (the cloud of lies which obscures,) “to neglect the race factor as merely incidental as an error only less grave than to make it fundamental” (as merely incidental is an error,) Maurepas’ (Maurepas’s,) Capois’ (Capois’s,) strewed (strewn,) Clairveaux’ (Clairveaux’s,) wirter (writer,) indpendent (independent,) a missing parenthetical end-comma, tonelle (tonnelle?)