James and his fellow Trotskyites remained opposed to Stalinism and offered virulent critiques of the system throughout the 1930s.Ĭ.L.R. He published his landmark work, The Black Jacobins, in 1938, offering a Trotskyist analysis of the 1791 slave revolution in Haiti. James was becoming more interested in revolution and social liberation as well as questions of race.

He produced a play, Toussaint L’Ouverture, with Paul Robeson in the lead role which reflected his political leanings. He became a major Trotskyist thinker as well as an ardent critic of fascism. James was increasingly exposed to social issues and turned to the writings of many Communist thinkers in this period. He published The Case for West Indian Self-Government in 1933. While in England, James spent a great deal of time focusing his writing on issues relevant to the expatriate West Indian community. James wrote several early works of fiction in Trinidad before sailing for England in 1932 at the age of 31. Yet he was deeply interested in and influenced by the game of cricket introduced by the British and became a local cricket reporter before turning to fiction.

He attended Queen’s Royal College in Port of Spain, but chafed at the rigid disciplinarianism of the educational British system. James was a bright youth who absorbed literature, history, music, sports, and art-the foundational texts of Western civilization. Cyril Lionel Robert James was born in the British colony of Trinidad on January 4, 1901.

The Black Jacobins by C.L.R. James