Book Review: The Black Jacobins by C.L.R. James

The Black Jacobins:

Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution

by C.L.R. James

      Haiti has always been a troubled place. But like all troubled places, it has had a few bright spots too. One of those was the Haitian Revolution led by Toussaint L’Ouverture. The Trinidadian Marxist historian C.L.R. James gives a thorough account of this man and his political movement in The Black Jacobins, considered by many to be the authoritative history on this subject.

Back in the 18^th century, the Caribbean island of Hispaniola was known as Santo Domingo, most of which was a Spanish possession during the colonial era. The small section of the island west of the Dajabon River, at the time, was a possession France and known as Sainte Domingue or San Domingo as it is called in this book. This colony had very little in the way of government or military. It had a class of rich colonial overlords, a larger middle class of free whites and Mulattoes, and a lower class of free Creole Africans, mostly ex-slaves who had bought their freedom. San Domingo was the jewel in the French crown being the wealthiest and most productive of all their Caribbean territories.

Like the other Caribbean colonies, plantation owners in San Domingo used slave labor to farm sugarcane, tobacco, and coffee. In the middle of the century, according to James, a voudouist houngan named Boukman led the first major slave rebellion in the territory. Although quickly put down, it sparked a series of smaller rebellions that eventually culminated in the later Wars of Independence.

When the French Revolution happened at the end of the 18^th century, word of Europe’s most vital and modernizing political upheavals spread to the colonies and inspired rebellions against the wealthy colonial overlords. Haiti had the most to lose from the point of view of the French monarchy, but nothing could be done to stop the unleashed tide of anger once it began to spread.

Out of the rebellions, which were scattered and uncoordinated, mostly located in the south and west of San Domingo, an illiterate ex-slave emerged as a revolutionary military leader. He was Toussaint L’Ouverture and despite being uneducated, he had a natural gift for military strategy and political organization. Eventually he united all the anti-slavery troops under one banner, established a government with him at the head, and set out to declare national independence.

Lines of demarcation were not so clear though. Most Mulattoes and some free Blacks supported the white colonial authorities because they were concerned about preserving their privilege and status. Allegiances were fluid though and could change quickly depending on circumstances. But once L’Ouverture got Black military leaders like Dessalines and Petion on his side, along with the northern Mulatto leader Christophe, the waves of revolutionary violence became unstoppable.

Back in France, an anarchist faction of the Jacobins formed called Friends of the Negroes; their ambition was to make all races equal in the eyes of the law without exception. In the French National Assembly, they introduced a bill to end slavery in France and all the colonies. It passed easily with almost no opposition and widespread support from both the left and right wings of the newly established parliament.

Toussaint L’Ouverture rose to become head of the San Domingo colony and he laid the groundwork for making Haiti a sovereign nation. Napoleon Bonaparte, however, had L’Ouverture seized, brought to France, and imprisoned. Napoleon then reinstated slavery in San Domingo and all other French territories. But the backlash was severe and Dessalines led a new revolutionary War of Independence, one on which the French colonialists didn’t stand a chance. Dessalines declared himself the King of Haiti, the first sovereign state to be founded by ex-slaves in the history of the world. Dessalines did not last long as monarch though since Jacques Petion had him assassinated, making himself the first president of Haiti, a newly formed republic.

Large portions of this book are accounts of battles. For readers interested in military history, there is plenty to appreciate here. Another large portion of the book is about politics themselves. The chapters on the French Revolution and the National Assembly in France get a little murky at times. As I like to say, it is about obscure men having obscure debates about obscure ideas. Keeping track of who is allied with who as alliances constantly shift is a little frustrating too. The chapters about politics in Haiti are easier to follow and overall are more relevant. A few sections are made up of word for word letters that L’Ouverture dictated, later to be sent on to friends. There are also some letters and diary entries from his enemies. Mostly all the writing is straightforward and descriptive enough to leave little room for interpretation. More controvertially, the author is a Marxist-Leninist and on occasion he applies this theory to his version of events. But mostly these passages are few and far between and don’t contribute much to an understanding of either Marxism or the Haitian Revolution. If the Marxist bias bothers you, don’t worry since it doesn’t interfere with his telling of the history.

The Black Jacobins is as good a place as any to start learning about Haiti, the West Indies, or colonialism in that region. It is clearly written and straight to the point. The biggest criticism is that it doesn’t say enough about the life of Toussaint L’Ouverture’s life before he became a revolutionary leader, but that probably isn’t the author’s fault because there isn’t much information in the historical record about his formative years to begin with.

 

Book Review & Analysis The Shadow World by Andrew Feinstein

The Shadow World:

Inside the Global Arms Trade

by Andrew Feinstein

Just after World War II, big business, the military, and the trans-Atlantc governments began working together to rebuild their militaries. It became obvious that the industrial production of war materiel is profitable and more profits results in more power. Within a decade, America had entered the Korean War and, soon after that, the war in Vietnam. In the latter of those two invasions, the public became aware of the relation between capitalism and military conquest and the term Military Industrial Complex emerged into common usage. After all, businesses manufacture arms with the intention of selling them for profit, but the arms have no inherent value unless they get used and so they either get rolled over to another buyer or used on the battlefield. Some weapons also fall into the hands of grey or black marketeer brokers or dealers, finding their way into the Third World and put used to commit all manner of atrocities and human rights violations. The end of the Cold War and the fall of the Soviet Union also put a lot of guns into circulation worldwide since organized crime gangs with easy access to unguarded military bases, mostly in Ukraine and other former Soviet republics in Central Asia, grew rich by selling guns on the black market. All of this is documented in The Shadow World by the South African, former ANC parliamentarian and human rights advocate Andrew Feinstein.

The whole story in this book really starts after World War II when an ex-Nazi military officer used his contacts with the network of war criminals in South Africa to form the Merex corporation. Merex emerged from the dust of the great war as a semi-legal company that grew in stature due to their willingness to ship arms to militaries in troubled regions of the world. By the 1990s, they were doing business with dictators in Africa and all sides of the Yugoslavian civil war out of an office in Virginia. With help and protection from Western governments, they brokered and sold weaponry in deals involving intelligence agencies, terrorist groups, organized crime gangs, logging companies, and legitimate businesses. Sometimes American manufactured arms ended up in the hands of enemy nations in places like Iran and Afghanistan.

Then on the more legally sanctioned side, Feinstein explores the Al Yamamah arms deal made between BAE Systems of the U.K. and Saudi Arabia in which state of the art air force defense systems were sold to the latter nation at cut rate prices. BAE initially scoffed at the transaction but after copious kickbacks were paid and the Saudis agreed to dramatically lower the price of crude oil, the deal went through. BAE and other weapons manufacturing companies saw the potential for reaping massive profits by budgeting bribery into their expense accounts and Al Yamamah became a template for maximizing business deals in the nations of the Global South.

The importance of Al Yamamah becomes easier to understand as Feinstein explains how American weapon dealers pressured South Africa and Tanzania into purchasing anti-missile defense systems that they ultimately had no use for. This was done by funneling money into the bank accounts of corrupt politicians, all done through slush funds, overcharges, and hidden charges in legitimate banking transactions. Then sometimes it was simply a matter of handing over a suitcase full of money to the right person. The author shows how damaging this kind of corruption can be to a developing nation since in the case of Tanzania, the government cut money out of their budgets for education, infrastructure development, and job creation programs in order to purchase military technology they couldn’t even use. You also have to wonder what effect this corruption can have on a population of people who are trying to build their nation and uplift themselves out of poverty. It either sends the message that corruption is the way to get things done or else you might as well give up trying in life since if you have no access to influential people or lack any kind of service you can offer in exchange for large sums of money, you are hopelessly doomed to poverty. When people feel like they’ve got nothing to lose, it shouldn’t surprise you if they turn to crime, terrorism, or religious extremism in order to get by.

The middle passages of this book are dull. The author goes into extensive detail about the economics and legality of international arms dealing. Everything written here is relevant and important to his case, not to mention well-supported with extensive citations, but it is the kind of dry writing that slows the whole book down.

It picks up again when Feinstein gets into the role of the U.S.A. in the arns trade be it legal, illegal, or some combination of the two. One major topic covered is the Reagan era involvement in the Iran – Iraq War. Even though America was supporting Saddam Hussein at that time, they were also profiting from the war by selling arms illegally to Iran in what became known as the Iran – Contra Scandal. To add an even sleazier layer onto the story, the arms America sold to Iran were Soviet manufactured weapons purchased from Poland, considered and enemy Eastern Bloc nation at the time, in order to fund a fascist dictatorship in Nicaragua that overthrew a democratically elected government. So America bought arms from communists, sold them to an Islamic fundamentalist enemy state in order to pay for a Latin American dictatorship in order to stop communism. Brilliant.

But the dealings of the George W. Bush administration make Ronald Reagan’s senile international buggery look moral in comparison. Long before the election in 2000 and the September 11 terrorist attacks, Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld were drawing up plans for the invasion of Iraq. All three men had deep ties to the oil and arms industry, being former board members and executives of companies like Haliburton and Lockheed Martin, and they filled the Bush cabinet almost entirely with executives from the arms industry. Feinstein points out how the Bush – Cheney team were little more than war profiteers whose personal fortunes increased from millions to billions during the Iraq War against former U.S. ally Saddam Hussein. American soldiers got killed, maimed, and psychologically scarred for that. And the fact that, aside from war profiteers, there were no winners in the Iraq War, only losers.

Along with that, the author explains the menage-a-tois between the arms industry, congress, and the American military. Congressional spending on war materiel is grossly exaggerated beyond any practical needs and members of all three institutions pass through the revolving doors between them as many corporate executives become lobbyists, politicians, or military bureaucrats. Massive amounts of money pass through hands in the form of earmarking and pork barrel spending, two terms that serve as euphemisms for legalized bribery. There are a massive number of pigs feeding off the arms industry trough and most, but not all of them, have deep ties in the Republican party. Those are the same Republicans who make millions by doing nothing more than licking the grease off their own palms while whining about the loafers on welfare who get nothing but crumbs from public assistance. Is this the projection of a guilty conscience? A mean-spirited mockery of the American lower classes? A cynical ploy to polarize American society by humiliating and scapegoating America’s most downtrodden citizens? A professional psychologist could answer that question providing they aren’t being given the squeeze by some conservative funding organization.

So how can a book like this be evaluated? It can’t really be approached from a literary perspective since that isn’t its purpose though it can be said that, despite a couple parts that drag, most of it is engaging and well-written. It is hard to evaluate the content as well unless you have the means to fact check this dense mass of information, all of which is extensively documented with legitimate citations. For the most part, it all sounds plausible as hell even though most of the information is far beyond our abilities to verify. It can be a frustrating read too because most of us don’t have the ability to do anything about the issues raised in this study.

The Shadow World is an outstanding work of quality muckraking. It hits hard and clearly presents a dilemma that needs to be addressed. We live in a world of complex societies that interact in complex ways. Militaries are necessary as are the war materiel they need to function. But like anything else, the military can be misused and abused, sometimes resulting in unnecessary wars, genocides, mass murder, and terrorist attacks. On top of all this, there are corporate profiteers who value bloated profit margins over quality of life like an aristocratic class of psychopaths. All the while, their greed is satisfied under the guise of providing a legitimate and necessary service. As a reader you may not be able to don anything to fix this absurd situation that is utterly devoid of heroes, but this book does feel as though it contains important information and gives you a chance to evaluate your moral stance in relation to politics, economics, corruption, and violence. Maybe that is all a narrative like this can do until the human race finds a saner way to live.