It is hard to put this book into just one category, but let’s go with Caribbean and Europe because the historian C.L.R. James was originally from Trinidad and wrote this book while being an academician in England. This book is one of the Marxist activist’s seminal works that retrace historical revolutions in the name of Black progress around the world. It has chapters on pre-colonial and colonial Africa and the Caribbean. At a national level, it covers South Africa, the U.S., and Ghana. All of these are set against the backdrop of the San Domingo – Haitian Revolution. This body of work is usually paired with texts from writer/activists, like Walter Rodney and Franz Fanon, who also took a global approach to understanding the oppression of Black people around the world and a Pan-African approach to de-colonization and self-rule, among other types of cultural and economic independence. This is a required staple on any Black history bookshelf.
A History of Pan-African Revolt (1938 & 1969)
