By 1789 two-thirds of France's overseas trade came out of a single Caribbean possession, San Domingo, and the whole of that wealth — arguably the most profitable colony anywhere — was generated by half a million people held in slavery.

When the unrest set off by the French Revolution crossed the Atlantic in 1791, it split the loyalties of the island's white population. The enslaved, who had been treated with great brutality, took the opening and rose against their owners. James follows that rebellion, the one slave revolt in history to succeed, and gives an unsparing portrait of the man who led it.

Toussaint L'Ouverture emerges from the account as, in James's phrase, one of the most remarkable men of an age already full of them — a judgment the book earns rather than assumes.