Black Spartacus: The Epic Life of Toussaint Louverture
Channel: British Library
Date: 2020-12-03

The Haitian Revolution began in the French Caribbean colony of Saint-Domingue with a slave revolt in August 1791, and culminated a dozen years later in the proclamation of the world's first independent black state. After the abolition of slavery in 1793, Toussaint Louverture, himself a former slave, became the leader of the colony's black population, the commander of its republican army and eventually its governor. During the course of his extraordinary life he confronted some of the dominant forces of his age – slavery, settler colonialism, imperialism and racial hierarchy.

Join Dr Sudhir Hazareesingh in conversation with Dr Rahul Rao for a fascinating insight into the story of this remarkable slavery rebellion leader, military genius and revolutionary hero. Based on his latest book, Black Spartacus: The Epic Life of Toussaint Louverture, Dr Hazareesingh, draws on a wealth of archival material, much of it overlooked by previous biographers, to follow every step of Louverture's singular journey.

Dr Sudhir Hazareesingh was born in Mauritius. He is a Fellow of the British Academy and has been a Fellow and Tutor in Politics at Balliol College, Oxford, since 1990. He has written extensively about French intellectual and cultural history; among his books are The Legend of Napoleon, In the Shadow of the General and How the French Think. 
Dr Rahul Rao is the author of Out of Time: The Queer Politics of Postcoloniality (2020) and Third World Protest: Between Home and the World (2010), both published by Oxford University Press. He is currently writing a book on the politics of controversial statues. He is a member of the Radical Philosophy collective and blogs occasionally at The Disorder of Things. He has research interests in international relations, postcolonial and queer theory, gender and sexuality, and South Asia.