Liberty, Equality, Fraternity for Haiti
A review of the new Toussaint Louverture biography, “Black Spartacus” by Sudhir Hazareesingh
Toussaint Louverture, emancipator and liberator of Saint Domingue, the modern-day island nation of Haiti, is the subject of a new biography by Sudhir Hazareesingh titled Black Spartacus: The Epic Life of Toussaint Louverture. And may I say that the subtitle says it all. If anyone lived an epic life, it is this man, and Hazareesingh captures it perfectly in his new book.
Revolutions and slave revolts have a significant place in the AP World History curriculum and especially in my classroom, so this biography is especially significant to me. Eric Beckman has done great work in centering the Haitian Revolution in the story of the “Age of Revolutions”, and a teacher wanting to do that would do well to supplement Eric’s terrific resources with excerpts from this book.
But this book is for absolutely anyone that loves history. Hazareesingh lays out from the beginning what makes Louverture an important subject and how he has been portrayed in previous biographies, providing an overview of how this new biography paints a unique portrait of the revolutionary. I had not read a book featuring Louverture or the Haitian Revolution before (although The Black Count is wonderful and…
