Rewriting the Haitian Revolution: C.L.R. James's The Black Jacobins in Context

Interest in Haiti generated by recent devastating events there comes in the context of wider debates both in academic and public spheres over the last few years about connections between Haiti's past and present, particularly the relevance of its Revolution and culture. One of the most important means of understanding the Revolution and its continued importance today is C.L.R. James's classic The Black Jacobins. Despite this work's continuing high profile among histories of the Haitian Revolution for both academic and non-specialist readers, not enough is known about the history of the work itself, nor its constant evolutions, impacts and afterlives in both play- and history-form. Uncovering James's crucial updating and re-presentation of the story of the Haitian Revolution at key points, three of the outputs related to this project---(i) book (entitled: Rewriting the Haitian Revolution: C.L.R. James's 'The Black Jacobins' in Context), (ii) contributions to a sound archive (radio broadcast and CD) on the history of the work, and (iii) programme notes for the new 2011 Liverpool production of The Black Jacobins play---chart the trajectory of The Black Jacobins over a period of almost sixty years, from the early 1930s right up until James's death in 1989. Two further outputs---an international conference and edited volume on 'The Haitian Revolution Now', and a series workshops for local schools based on The Black Jacobins and legacies of slavery today---will address the work's contemporary significance.

In terms of rethinking and updating The Black Jacobins, crucial changes which completely reorient both the history and the play will be revealed. These include the influence of new 'history from below' historiography; shifts from African- to West Indian-centred visions of the future; and James's marked political evolution since 1938. These changes will be read for the first time in the light of James's own comments in correspondence, lectures and annotations in newly-discovered manuscript and typescript versions of both his plays based on the Haitian Revolution, outlining the actual processes of rewriting, and important fundamental changes to Marxist language and terminology will be examined.

Particular emphasis will be given to the myriad metamorphoses of James's second play The Black Jacobins (1967), which reworks his earlier 1936 Toussaint Louverture play, and also both versions of the history The Black Jacobins: Toussaint Louverture and the San Domingo Revolution (1938 and 1963). Major changes to characterisation will be explored, focusing on the foregrounding of alternative popular leaders and the progressive writing-out of Toussaint Louverture. Turning the past back into drama, it will be argued, enables James to imagine the Haitian Revolution 'from below' as he puts words in the mouths of new protagonists of whom there is little archival trace. Shifting the focus to the never published or performed epilogue, the outputs will show that James updates and repositions the work's present- and future-oriented dimensions.

Finally, the impact, afterlives and centrality of The Black Jacobins to subsequent historiographical and literary accounts of the Haitian Revolution will be explored. To what extent, the research asks, did the work become, as James himself claimed, a 'Haitian bible', provoking political reverberations in a wide range of political situations? Key issues of translating, selling and packaging the work for readers in different countries will be outlined, focusing on the hostile critical reception received by Pierre Naville's 1949 French version and the ultimately abandoned projects of a Cuban translation in 1960, and a trip to Haiti in the late 1950s to promote the work. Engaging with a range of different audiences, all parts of the project will bear witness to the continuing impact, relevance, adaptability,and afterlives of The Black Jacobins.

My research aimed at producing a definitive study of the history of the The Black Jacobins provides an ideal opportunity for wider engagement with this text on its seventy-fifth anniversary. A key research objective is to trace the work's afterlives, and a good way to do this is through outreach activities which bring The Black Jacobins to a new generation in a city with historic connections to the Caribbean and slavery. Public and educational events, as well as outputs, directly linked to this research will have an impact on the local Liverpool Caribbean community, members of the general public with an interest in James, the Liverpool International Slavery Museum, national and local media, and Liverpool schoolchildren. The project will provide a major public event in Liverpool during Black History Month (October 2011). The staging of The Black Jacobins play will encourage the local community to reconsider: Liverpool's past as Britain's principal slaving port; the impact and long-term legacies of the Transatlantic slave trade; and Caribbean and African migration to Liverpool. This will be only the third time one of James's plays based on the Haitian Revolution has been produced in the UK. Previous productions were both London-based, Toussaint Louverture (1936) and The Black Jacobins (1986). As this will be the first time that The Black Jacobins has been performed in twenty-five years, and the only time it has been shown outside London, this is likely to be one of the most high profile events of Black History Month in Liverpool, drawing in high numbers and generating interest among members of the public and the media. It will create new partnerships between the UK theatre sector, in particular Britain's first-and today foremost-black theatre company (Talawa), the International Slavery Museum and National Museums Liverpool, and the University of Liverpool. Staging The Black Jacobins will be an opportunity to highlight both Liverpool's slaving past as inherent to the fabric of the city, and the Caribbean character and cultural roots of Liverpudlians of Caribbean origin, uncovering intersections between international and local culture. An international conference will also be held at the International Slavery Museum, which will strengthen international relations between the city, the museum, the University and a number of high-profile keynote speakers, including Madison Smartt-Bell, author of acclaimed popular histories of the Haitian Revolution and biography of Toussaint Louverture, and academics including historians, politics and literary specialists, sociologists, geographers, and scholars working in the interrelated fields of Caribbean studies, postcolonial studies, cultural studies, and American studies. To maximise the reach of the events and their educational and cultural benefits, I plan to involve younger members of the wider local community further by organising workshops at the museum on The Black Jacobins and the significance and relevance of the Haitian Revolution today. These outreach events will be organised as part of the University of Liverpool's current Widening Participation topic of 'the African Diaspora', which aims to promote a deeper understanding of the impact of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade on a local, regional, national, and international level. Further impact related to this project will result from my contribution during the award to an audio archive about C.L.R. James and his play and history The Black Jacobins produced by Adrian Leibowitz, audiovisual expert from the Open University, and David Neita, the Caribbean 'people's poet'. This recording will be produced as a radio broadcast, as a CD for sale at performances of the play in 2011, and will also be deposited with the British Library Sound Archive to extend the reach of the project still further to the media and thereby nationally to the wider pu