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THE
COMMON
WIND
Afro-American Currents in the
Age of the Haitian Revolution
Julius S. Scott
Foreword by Marcus Rediker
This paperback edition first published by Verso 2020
First published by Verso 2018
© Julius S. Scott 2018, 2020
Foreword © Marcus Rediker 2018, 2020
All rights reserved
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
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Verso
UK: 6 Meard Street, London W1F 0EG
US: 20 Jay Street, Suite 1010, Brooklyn, NY 11201
Verso is the imprint of New Left Books
ISBN-13: 978-1-78873-248-2
ISBN-13: 978-1-78873-249-9 (UK EBK)
ISBN-13: 978-1-78873-250-5 (US EBK)
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress
To my parents and to the
memory of my grandparents
Contents
Foreword by Marcus Rediker
Preface
Acknowledgements
List of Abbreviations
1“Pandora’s Box”: The Masterless Caribbean at the End of the Eighteenth Century
2“Negroes in Foreign Bottoms”: Sailors, Slaves, and Communication
4“Ideas of Liberty Have Sunk So Deep”: Communication and Revolution, 1789–93
5“Know Your True Interests”: Saint-Domingue and the Americas, 1793–1800
Epilogue
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Foreword
Marcus Rediker
TOUSSAINT, the most unhappy man of men!
Whether the whistling Rustic tend his plough
Within thy hearing, or thy head be now
Pillowed in some deep dungeon’s earless den;—
O miserable Chieftain! where and when
Wilt thou find patience? Yet die not; do thou
Wear rather in thy bonds a cheerful brow:
Though fallen thyself, never to rise again,
Live, and take comfort. Thou hast left behind
Powers that will work for thee; air, earth, and skies;
There’s not a breathing of the common wind
That will forget thee; thou hast great allies;
Thy friends are exultations, agonies,
And love, and man’s unconquerable mind.
This book takes its title from a sonnet William Wordsworth wrote in 1802: “To Toussaint L’Ouverture,” the great leader of the Haitian Revolution, who would soon die of pneumonia as a prisoner of Napoleon in Fort de Joux in eastern France.
Julius S. Scott shows us the collective human power behind Wordsworth’s words. He focuses on “the breathing of the common wind,” asking who inhaled the history of Toussaint and the revolution and who whispered it all out again as subversive stories, to circulate with velocity and force around the Atlantic. Scott gives substance to Wordsworth’s beautiful abstraction by showing “unconquerable minds” at work—a motley crew of sailors, runaway slaves, free people of color, maroons, deserted soldiers, market women, escaped convicts, and smugglers. These people, in motion, became the vectors through which news and experience circulated in, around, and through the Haitian Revolution. Scott gives us a breathtaking social and intellectual history of revolution from below.
It would not be exactly right to call The Common Wind an “underground classic.” Its status as a classic is not in doubt, but the landed metaphor would be wrong: the book is about what happened, not underground, but rather below decks, at sea, and on the docks, on ships and in canoes, and on the waterfronts of rough-and-tumble port cities in the era of the Haitian Revolution. It would, however, be right to say that the book and its reputation parallel the world of sailors and other mobile workers who are its central subject: both have had a fugitive existence—hard to find and known about largely through word-of-mouth stories. For decades historians have spoken at conferences in hushed, admiring, conspiratorial tones about Scott’s work—“have you heard …?” From its inception as a doctoral dissertation in 1986, through its endless citation by scholars in a variety of fields down to the present, The Common Wind has long occupied an unusual place in the world of scholarship.
I vividly recall the moment I first heard. Julius S. Scott’s friend and mentor
