C. L. R. Lionel Robert James
C. L. R. James
The Trinidadian Trotskyist and Pan-Africanist intellectual who revived the Haitian Revolution for Marxist historiography
“What do they know of cricket who only cricket know?” — Beyond a Boundary preface, inverting Kipling
Trinidadian Marxist historian. The Black Jacobins (1938) reframed the Haitian Revolution as liberation from below. He debated Black self-determination with Trotsky, co-developed the state-capitalist theory of the USSR, and analysed empire through cricket in Beyond a Boundary.
Career timeline
- 1901Born in Tunapuna, Trinidad, first child of schoolteacher Robert Alexander James and Ida Elizabeth
- 1910–1918Wins scholarship to Queen's Royal College; later teaches English and History there (Eric Williams among his pupils)
- 1932Moves to Lancashire; cricket correspondent for The Manchester Guardian; begins anti-colonial writing
- 1934–1936Joins ILP; Trotskyist activism; play Toussaint Louverture staged with Paul Robeson; publishes Minty Alley
- 1937–1938Publishes World Revolution and The Black Jacobins — praised by Trotsky, Orwell, and E.H. Carr
- 1938–1939US speaking tour at SWP invitation; debates the 'Negro Question' with Trotsky in Coyoacán, Mexico
- 1941–1951Forms Johnson–Forest Tendency with Dunayevskaya; state-capitalist analysis of USSR; Notes on Dialectics
- 1953Deported from US; writes Mariners, Renegades and Castaways on Melville while detained at Ellis Island
- 1957–1960Visits independent Ghana, writes on Nkrumah; edits The Nation, PNM party paper in Trinidad
- 1963Publishes Beyond a Boundary — cricket memoir exploring colonialism, class, and race
- 1970–1980Teaches at Federal City College (UDC), Washington D.C.; four volumes of selected writings published
- 1989Dies of chest infection in Brixton, London, aged 88; buried at Tunapuna Cemetery, Trinidad