Alex von Tunzelmann
Evil under the Sun
Empire’s Crossroads: A History of the Caribbean from Columbus to the Present Day
By Carrie Gibson
Macmillan 480pp £25 order from our bookshop
A night of August 1791 saw the beginning of an event that would be one of human history’s most remarkable – and one of the most shamefully ignored by traditional first-world historians. A Jamaican-born slave, Dutty Boukman, gave a signal at a Vodou ceremony in Bois Caïman, Haiti: possibly he sacrificed a pig, possibly he blew on a conch shell, accompanied by prayers and drumming. Thus began the Haitian Revolution, a black and mulatto uprising that would one day defeat Napoleon, and would become the first and only successful slave revolt in history.
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