Book review: making the Black Jacobins: C.L.R. James and the drama of history by Rachel Douglas

In Making The Black Jacobins: C. L. R. James and the Drama of History, Rachel Douglas examines the formation of James’s groundbreaking work on the Haitian Revolution, exploring its genesis, transformations and afterlives through its different texts, stagings and editions. Positioning The Black Jacobins as a ‘palimpsestually multilayered text-network’ formed through processes of rewriting and revision, this book is a welcome addition to scholarship on James and offers a thoughtful approach to the relationship between Marxist theory and historical analysis, writes Scott Timcke.