Black Spartacus: The Epic Life of Toussaint Louverture

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Link, Tom (1991). Universal City-North Hollywood: A Centennial Portrait. Chatsworth, CA: Windsor Publications. p.87. ISBN 0-89781-393-6. It was also shortlisted for the Elizabeth Longford Prize for Historical Biography; the Slightly Foxed Best First Biography Prize, 2020, the Prix Château de Versailles du Livre d'Histoire, 2021; and was a finalist for the Pen/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography, 2020 That is not the intention, although that was certainly the response of many white people, and notably so as atrocity stories of killing, rape, mutilation and devastation were spread across the white societies of the Caribbean and then kept alive as a warning and as a product of the white diaspora from Saint-Domingue that followed the rebellion. Nic Fields (2009). Spartacus and the Slave War 73–71 BC: A Gladiator Rebels Against Rome. Osprey Publishing. p.28. ISBN 978-1-84603-353-7. Scott, John L. (October 20, 1960). " 'Spartacus' Imposing Cinema Spectacle." Los Angeles Times. Part III, p. 11 – via Newspapers.com.

In a careful study of a representative hamlet, Môle Saint-Nicolas, Hazareesingh speaks repeatedly of Toussaint’s “success” in shaping a new sort of political community. And he quotes a report to France’s ruling Directory: “The commander-in-chief has the confidence, respect, and love of nine-tenths of the population.” Hazareesingh also makes clear that Toussaint possessed extraordinary personal qualities, including exemplary personal courage (he was wounded in battle some 17 times), strategic brilliance, powerful eloquence and an almost superhuman stamina and work ethic. Meanwhile, after finding Varinia and Spartacus's newborn son, Crassus takes them prisoner. He is disturbed by the idea that Spartacus can command more love and loyalty than he can, and hopes to compensate by making Varinia as devoted to him as she was to her former husband. When she rejects him, he furiously seeks out Spartacus (whom he recognizes from having watched him at Batiatus' school) and forces him to fight Antoninus to the death. The survivor is to be crucified, along with all the other slaves. Spartacus kills Antoninus to spare him this terrible fate. The incident leaves Crassus worried about Spartacus's potential to live in legend as a martyr. In other matters, he is also worried about Caesar, who he senses will someday eclipse him. engaging ... a vivid portrait of a complex, captivating and sometimes contradictory leader. Carrie Gibson, Prospect Fast's novel was adapted as a 2004 miniseries by the USA Network, with Goran Višnjić in the main role. Annuaire de l'Université de Sofia, Faculté d'histoire, Volume 77, Issue 2, 1985, p. 122. 1985 . Retrieved 24 February 2013.

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The story is astonishing – but also astonishingly difficult to write about. Sources for Toussaint’s life before the rebellion are scant and scattered. Historians only discovered in the 1970s that he had gained his freedom in the 1770s and had himself briefly owned at least one slave. Much more documentary information about him survives, but it is dispersed among dozens of archives in several countries. Haitian historians have never had the resources to compile, let alone edit and publish it in the way that American historians have done for their “founding fathers”. Only in the past quarter-century, thanks to the academy’s turns towards “global” and “subaltern” histories, has the Haitian revolution attracted sustained scholarly attention in North America and Europe. If British abolitionists were sympathetic to L'Ouverture, others described him in racist terms. In 1807, three years after L'Ouverture's death, the German writer Heinrich von Kleist was imprisoned as a Prussian spy in the same mountain dungeon. His short story, "Betrothal in Saint Domingue" (1811), betrays an almost visceral loathing of Haiti's revolted slaves. "No acts of tyranny perpetrated by the whites," proclaims a French aristocrat who has lost his wife to the guillotine, "could ever justify the depths of treachery and degradation of those Negroes."

I was enthralled by the idea of learning more about Toussaint but I knew from the beginning that this biography would not be entirely objective. The title itself betrays a certain bias by depicting Toussaint's life as being epic. While certainly not a false adjective, it still reveals a certain bias in favour of the man. I remember a book written in the 1930s by a French historian about the Crusades. The title was: The Epic History of the Crusades and the book gave an overly positive vision of the Crusades in favour of the Crusaders. Since then, I am always wary of any book whose title includes hyperbolic terms such as epic. Shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize | Finalist for the PEN / Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography Sudhir Hazareesingh's engrossing new life is the story of an island as well as a man ... Hazareesingh brings to the task a voracious appetite for original sources and a discerning ear for those that have the ring of truth. He also has a gift for tracing those threads that reveal a previously unrecognised pattern in the fabric of a life. Nathan Perl-Rosenthal, Wall Street JournalToussaint’s legacy is in the fact that the French were able to reimpose slavery in Guadeloupe and Martinique, but when they tried it in Saint Domingue, there was a repeat of the levee en masse of 1791, and the French armies were defeated by generals who had gained their military experience under Toussaint Louverture. L'Ouverture was not to be fooled. He set fire to coastal towns and awaited the invaders in the interior. When the French landed they assumed the entire island was ablaze. Lady Nugent, the American wife of Jamaica's British governor, watched aghast as the conflagration raged. "It seems that Toussaint's plan is to distress the French as much as possible," she wrote in her journal, adding: "It makes me shudder to think of the horrible bloodshed and misery that must take place before anything can be settled in that wretched island." Trow, M.J. Spartacus: The Myth and the Man. Stroud, United Kingdom: Sutton Publishing, 2006 (hardcover, ISBN 0-7509-3907-9). Spartacus appears in the season 6 premiere of DC's Legends of Tomorrow, portrayed by Shawn Roberts. [62] He is abducted and eaten by an alien.

Toussaint had much in common with his nemesis, Napoleon. Both were men of blood, although Napoleon was more egregious in overthrowing the largely stable Directory government in 1799. Neither man founded a stable system, but Toussaint’s fate made the limitations of his achievement less apparent.an outstanding biography that breaks fresh ground and scrapes the crust of folklore, and cliché, from the Toussaint story ... scrupulous and absorbing ... After the summer of 2020, there could hardly be a more urgent and valuable book. Boyd Tonkin, Arts Desk