Toussaint Louverture: A Biography [Hardcover]

Madison Smartt Bell (Author)

Book Description

Release date: January 16, 2007

In 1791, Saint Domingue was both the richest and cruelest colony in the Western Hemisphere; more than a third of African slaves died within a few years of their arrival there. Thirteen years later, Haitian rebels declared independence from France after the first--and only--successful slave revolution in history. Much of the success of this uprising can be credited to one man, Toussaint Louverture--a figure about whom surprisingly little is known.

In this fascinating biography, the first about Toussaint to appear in English in more than fifty years, Madison Smartt Bell combines a novelist's passion for his subject with a deep knowledge of the historical milieu that produced the man. Toussaint has been known either as a martyr of the revolution or as the instigator of one of history’s most savagely violent events. Bell shatters this binary perception, producing a clear-eyed picture of a complicated figure.

Toussaint, born a slave, became a slaveholder himself, with associates among the white planter class. Bell demonstrates how his privileged position served as both an asset and a liability, enabling him to gain the love of blacks and mulattoes as "Papa Toussaint" but also sowing mistrust in their minds.

Another of Bell's brilliant achievements is demonstrating how Toussaint’s often surprising actions, such as his support for the king of France even as the French Revolution promised an end to slavery and his betrayal of a planned slave revolt in Jamaica, can be explained by his desire to achieve liberation for the blacks of Saint Domingue.

This masterly biography is a revelation of one of the most fascinating and important figures in New World history.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Author of an acclaimed trilogy of novels charting the Haitian revolution of 1791–1803 (All Soul's Rising, Master of the Crossroads and The Stone That the Builder Refused), Bell is eminently qualified to write a biography of that struggle's central figure, Toussaint-Louverture. Beginning with a pithy overview of 18th-century colonial Haiti, taking in its harsh Spanish- and French-controlled slave plantations and its complex systems of race and class, Bell trawls documentary sources to trace Toussaint's stealthy emergence as a revolutionary leader. The author emphasizes Toussaint's unusual status as a free black man of property who commanded trust and authority among both blacks and whites. Sifting hard evidence out of the heaps of conjecture that surround his subject, Bell examines Toussaint's royal African origins, questions of his literacy, and the relationship between his outward Catholicism and the Vodou beliefs in which he was immersed. With scholarly conscientiousness, Bell examines differing historical accounts of Toussaint's military and diplomatic campaigns, comparing Toussaint's "meteoric trajectory" to that of Napoleon Bonaparte before describing Toussaint's demise in a Napoleonic prison. Since then, Bell comments, writers and politicians "have constructed whatever Toussaint Louverture they require"—usually, he adds, a vicious one. Bell's own contribution avoids mythology without detracting from the achievements of Toussaint-Louverture's dramatic career. (Jan. 16)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Bookmarks Magazine

Madison Smartt Bell's extensive work on Haitian history makes him the right man to tackle Louverture, an elusive but significant figure. Critics felt, however, that since so little is known about him prior to age 50 (something even Bell himself concedes), Bell might have better served his subject with historical fiction. Instead, he devotes much of the book to dry, academic information instead of dramatic storytelling. Bell's forthright presentation of Louverture's multifaceted personality and contradictions, however, intrigued critics the most. While reviewers debated the quality of previous biographies, all felt the necessity for something new on Louverture, especially considering his legacy in Haitian and African American cultures and his effect on Napoleonic expansion.
Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Pantheon (January 16, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375423370
• ISBN-13: 978-0375423376
• Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 1.1 x 9.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,035,525 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 21 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Welcome Biography by Outstanding Novelist of Haiti February 25, 2007

By Bert Korn

Format:Hardcover

Bell brings a writer's touch and deep empathy to the life of this towering but long-neglected 18th-Century black revolutionary. The biography is straight-foward, detailed, judicious and as well-researched as could be, considering the paucity of available primary sources on its subject's life. Particularly helpful are the careful placement of the Haitian revolution against the background of the French revolution, without loss of focus on the strategic brilliance (and weaknesses) of the book's central character.

Bell's is a much-needed corrective to the standard but outdated treatment of Toussaint L'Overture by the Caribbean Marxist writer C.L.R. James, whose work on L'Overture in now more than 60 years old. Bell treats the island's complicated race relations and the interaction of the Roman Catholic and Voudo religions with a remarkable depth and sensitivity, which he had already demonstrated in much greater depth in his acclaimed trilogy of novels on the Haitian revolution. He has done us a favor by taking up the biographer's pen, in place of the novelist's.

The book would have benefitted from a list of characters and a few better maps. And one aches to have more on the effect of the Haitian revolt on the early American republic, diplomacy, slave relations, abolitionism, the Louisiana Purchase, subsequent Haitian history, and so on, those these have been treated at least to some extent in other English-language sources.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars The Master of the Crossroads November 19, 2007

By Caesar M. Warrington VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

Well known for his trilogy of historical novels chronicling Haiti's struggle for independence from France (ALL SOUL'S RISING, MASTER Of The CROSSROADS, and THE STONE THAT The BUILDER REFUSED), author Madison Smartt Bell is familiar with the primary and academic sources on the people and events that led that country through its chaotic and bloody triumph to becoming the first black state in the Western Hemisphere. Of those men, the most important of all was Toussaint Louverture.

Madison Smartt Bell's TOUSSAINT LOUVERTURE: A BIOGRAPHY is a necessary addition to a subject only few have dared to take on. As a biography it provides a sober and ubiased account of the former slave and self-taught veterinarian who, at age 50, would also prove himself a brilliant leader and military genius.

Unlike most others who've written about the man, Bell provides much detail on Louverture's early life and ambitions. He presents a Louverture who was shrewd (the man ably manipulated the interests of both the British and the Spaniards) and level-headed, but who was also just and often disgusted by the bloody excesses of the slaves' rebellion.

What makes this such an excellent work is in the way Madison Smartt Bell fleshes out Louverture's world with an indepth look into the various social classes and ethnic groups of Saint Domingue, the role religion and spiritualism played in the daily lives of the slaves and the strong influence of Voudoun on the rebellion--something that, depending on the situation, Louverture would either persecute or encourage.... By highlighting the social and ethnic groupings of upper-class white landowners ("grand blancs"), lower-class white laborers and merchants ("petit blancs"), those of mixed race ("gens de coleur"), freed blacks, and the slaves, Bell shows how each one was antogonistic towards all the others and makes a strong point of presenting Haiti's war of independence as something much more complex than a slave uprising.

Highly recommended. Read more ›

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars An important and interesting read March 24, 2008

By Seth J. Frantzman HALL OF FAME

Format:Hardcover

Toussaint Louverture who lived from roughly 1744 to 1803 was the preeminent leader of Haitian independence, a model of a rebel, and a paradox of a person. He was a self educated slave who was freed shortly before his uprising in 1791. In 1793 he allied himself with the Spanish against the French but later changed sides and fought alongside revolutionary France, whose Jacobins had freed the slaves in 1793, to help expel the English who Toussaint noted had not freed the slaves of their colonies. By 1799 he was master of the island and was forced to put down a rebellion by mixed-blood freedmen (known variously as `mullatto' or `coloured'). By 1801 he was in charge of the whole island but the next year Napoleon sent an army to wrest it back to France. Toussaint was kidnapped and whisked away to die in France while his former slaves fought on and eventually gained independence in 1804, only the second independent country in the New World and one of only a few independent black countries in the world.

This book is a very readable masterpiece of writing drawing mostly on secondary sources to flesh out the fascinating life of the former slave and rebel leader. The story pays close attention to the class and ethnic destinctions on the island, showing the great degree of animosity between the French, the creoles, the free Gens De Colouer (coloreds) and runaway slaves. This is a fascinating portrait of the New World, the Carribean, a French colony and slave life and rebellion. Toussaint was an ardent Catholic and persecuted Voodou. The last chapter is a lively discussion of the problems Haiti has faced since the time of Toussaint, a story that can also be found in `Why the Cocks fight'.

A riveting and important book.

Seth J. Frantzman

6 of 8 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars TOUSSAINT-BLACK LIBERATION FIGHTER June 19, 2007

By Alfred Johnson

Format:Hardcover

The French Revolution, as all great revolutions, had effects on world politics and the struggle of other peoples whom awoken to political life in the afterglow of that event. The fight for freedom in French Santo Domingo (now Haiti, the name that I will use to avoid confusion hereafter) led by Toussaint to a point just short of independence is a prime example of that effect. Without the revolution in the metropolis it is very unlikely that at that time the struggle in Haiti could have been successful. The history of the times was replete with unsuccessful slave rebellions. Why it was successful in Haiti and how that success was accomplished, mainly under the leadership of Toussaint in its decisive phases, is the subject of Mr. Bell's book. Mr. Bell's scholarship and necessary updating of Toussaint's story compares very favorably with that of the eccentric Marxist, later Pan-Africanist, historian C.L.R. James.

The freedom struggle in Haiti, a tropical island well suited to intensive agricultural development for the new international market in those goods necessary for the embryonic industrial system, was above all the struggle for the abolition of slavery. The fight against that servile condition that even many revolutionaries, white and black, and former revolutionaries of the time broke their teeth on. Today that freedom struggle, successful in its way in the Haiti of the early 19th century, remains a shining example of the only really successful fight against slavery by the slaves. So it pays to pay particular attention to the fight.

The forces which pushed the French Revolution forward in the metropolis had their its own set of priorities, among them the fight to move the population from a condition of subjugation to a monarch to citizens of a democracy.... I have noted elsewhere how important that changed social status was to the historical and psychological development of modern humankind. Nevertheless that same psychology applies to the struggle in Haiti although even more so under conditions of chattel slavery. Thus, the events in French had their reflection in the colonies particularly in Haiti. One can observe in France the changes in attitude and policy from the early revolutionary days when all classes were good fellows and true through the rise of the leftist Robespierre regime based on the plebian masses, its eventually overthrow and establishment of the Directory and then the various manifestations of the regimes of Napoleon. That regime and its treacherous colonial policy attempting was a very far drop down hill from the early heady days when even moderate revolutionaries were in both places prepared to go quite far to eliminate slavery in Haiti.

There is something of a truism in the statement that great revolutions throw up personalities fit for the times. Certainly revolutions shake up the traditional order of things and let some who might have stayed dormant rise to the occasion. That is the case with Toussaint. For most of his life he was a middle level functionary on his master's estate respected by not slated for greatness. Early on, as the struggle against slavery heated up among the black slaves he exhibited the military, social, political diplomatic and other skills that would eventual thrust him into the leadership of the liberation struggle, This is really saying something special about the man because in the context of that Haitian revolution with the initial disputes between British Spanish and French interests and then the conflicting interests on the island itself between white, black and mulatto would have driven a lesser man around the bend. That it did not do so and that in his errors that which at times were grievous, especially around his seemingly obsessive commitment to maintain the French connection, does not take away from the grandeur of the experience. A cursory look at the latter developments on the island and the seemingly never ending series of tin pot despots who in their turn devastated the island only brings out Toussaint's fascinating role, warts and all, in the earlier liberation struggle in broader relief. Read more ›