TOUSSAINT LOUVERTURE: THE STORY OF THE ONLY SUCCESSFUL SLAVE REVOLT IN HISTORY

History Paperback – Illustrated, 10 Oct. 2023

by C.L.R. James (Author), Nic Watts (Illustrator), Sakina Karimjee (Illustrator)

PAPERBACK £12.89

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In 1934, the Trinidadian Cyril Lionel Robert James wrote a three-act play about the Haitian revolutionary Toussaint Louverture (entitled Toussaint Louverture: The Story of the Only Successful Slave Revolt in History), which was staged in London’s West End in 1936 and starred Paul Robeson.

The play had been presumed lost until the rediscovery of a draft copy in 2005, the play has now gone on to be adapted into a graphic novel by Nic Watts and Sakina Karimjee.

C. L. R. JAMES 1938

This book reproduces the stirring script James wrote, and which united James for at least one night with his friend Paul Robeson on the London stage, when the playwright was forced to stand in for an absent actor.

Robeson’s performance in Toussaint Louverture was the first time in British history that a black professional actor had starred in a play by a black playwright. It was ultimately performed only twice, however, because it was a private production by the Stage Society — the only way such a revolutionary play could get put on given the draconian censorship of the British stage at the time.

Robeson stole the show, giving his all in his chance to play Louverture at long last. As James, interviewed in November 1983, recalled, “The moment he came onto the stage, the whole damn thing changed. It’s not a question of acting . . . the physique and the voice, the spirit behind him — you could see it when he was on stage.”

C. L. R. James the Playwright

That Robeson agreed to star in Toussaint Louverture stands as a testament to James’s impressive understanding of the Haitian Revolution, based on archival research in Paris. It was also a testament to Robeson’s respect for James as a political activist; James was chair of the newly formed International African Friends of Abyssinia, which was rallying solidarity with the people of Ethiopia in the face of Mussolini’s empire-building. Lastly, it was the quality of James’s playscript itself that attracted Robeson to the role. James’s Toussaint Louverture was an outstanding anti-imperialist play, written in large part to inform a British audience about how colonial slavery was abolished, and the central role the enslaved themselves played in their emancipation.