Syllabus
Syllabus
-Week 1 Introduction: Marx and the Caribbean critique of slavery
-Week 2 Eric Williams, Slavery and Capitalism; Nesbitt Ch. 1a
-Week 3 CLR James, Black Jacobins; Nesbitt ch.4
-Week 4 Beckert, Slavery’s Capitalism; Nesbitt ch. 1c
-Week 5 Wood, Origin of Capitalism; Nesbitt ch. 1b
-Week 6 Marx, Capital (selections); Nesbitt ch. 2a
- Week 7 Henry Christophe, Code Henry
- Week 8 Marx, Capital (selections); Nesbitt ch. 2b
- Week 9 Tomich, Slavery in the Circuit of Sugar (selections)
- Week 10 Suzanne Césaire, Le grand camouflage; Histories of Racial Capitalism
- Week 11 Aimé Césaire, The Tragedy of King Christophe
- Week 12 (12/12) Conclusions
Annotation
The course will examine the place of plantation slavery in the development of capitalist modernity. We will focus on two classic texts: Eric Williams' Capitalism and Slavery, and CLR James' famous history of the Haitian Revolution, The Black Jacobins.
We will also discuss in this context Marx's critique of capitalist slavery in the pages of Capital, and its importance for the tradition of Caribbean critique. Also to be considered are the writings of Toussaint Louverture, Henry Christophe, Aimé Césaire, and Suzanne Césaire—key figures of the 'Black Jacobin' tradition—as they develop original critiques of slavery, colonialism, and Antillean capitalism, these being understood as what Marx called the 'social forms' of labour and wealth.