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The Common Wind:Afro-American Currents in the Age of the Haitian Revolution
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A remarkable intellectual history of the slave revolts that made the modern revolutionary era
The Common Wind is a gripping and colorful account of the intercontinental networks that tied together the free and enslaved masses of the New World. Having delved deep into the gray obscurity of official eighteenth-century records in Spanish, English, and French, Julius S. Scott has written a powerful “history from below.” Scott follows the spread of “rumors of emancipation” and the people behind them, bringing to life the protagonists in the slave revolution.
By tracking the colliding worlds of buccaneers, military deserters, and maroon communards from Venezuela to Virginia, Scott records the transmission of contagious mutinies and insurrections in unparalleled detail, providing readers with an intellectual history of the enslaved.
Though The Common Wind is credited with having “opened up the Black Atlantic with a rigor and a commitment to the power of written words,” the manuscript remained unpublished for thirty-two years. Now, after receiving wide acclaim from leading historians of slavery and the New World, it has been published by Verso for the first time, with a foreword by the academic and author Marcus Rediker.
Reviews
A captivating odyssey across the age of Revolution.
“Over the past three decades, scholarship on the Black Atlantic and black internationalism has flourished. The Common Wind deserves a great deal of credit for this development … Julius Scott offers an inspiring history about the subaltern production, transformative power, and global circulation of ideas.”
"Scott has done what very few scholars have been able to do; he has uncovered a vast communication network that relied primarily on the ephemeral — word of mouth rather than paper...Scott’s storytelling abilities are singularly compelling...[His] prose is highly accessible, not to mention mellifluous and full of striking imagery...Its singular contribution remains unmatched."
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The Common Wind is a magnum opus, a subaltern tale that occupied a then-burgeoning space in historical writing – a “history from below” focusing on the disenfranchised rather than the powerful.
Vice News Tonight on HBO -
renowned for its creativity, imaginative research and graceful prose
Publishers Weekly -
a tour de force. Rigorously researched and beautifully written, it has profoundly shaped our understanding of Black Atlantic history. Indeed, Scott’s study of the movement of people, ideas, words, papers, and even feelings among people of African descent in the eighteenth century is a stunning model for any kind of history
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clear, persuasive, and (owing to understatement in the face of great crimes) even calming
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"so exciting, original, and profound"[it inspired] "an entire generation to create a new field of knowledge about the past"
, Time Magazine -
a beloved and consequential work
, Chronicle of Higher Education -
pathbreaking and enormously influential. . .like any truly classic piece of scholarship, Scott’s study offers fresh insights with each rereading.
, Journal of American History -
Scott has listened carefully for the voices—sometimes only whispers—that carried radical ideas and information around the Caribbean, leaving faint but distinct traces in the archives. He brilliantly translates to the Caribbean setting ideas originally developed by European historians about “history from below” and the ways “masterless,” itinerant men and women could drive political change. His prose beautifully evokes bustling ports and markets, remote jungle and mountain hideaways, wind-swept ship decks and fetid, cargo-laden hulls
, New York Review of Books -
This iconic book speaks to what we all see unfolding in the world today where masses are seeing, becoming, and most of all moving ideas that are taking collective hold across the globe. ... One of the most highly sought out intellectual histories of slavery that centers “rumors of emancipation,” [The Common Wind] shows the parallel not only to protest but the unending fears of the global influence that mobilization can have.
, Age of Revolutions -
The Common Wind, which takes its title from Wordsworth’s sonnet to Louverture, is based on Scott’s 1986 doctoral dissertation. Photocopies – and, later, PDFs – of his thesis had circulated among historians like an ‘underground mixtape’. As the dissertation did the rounds, through at least two generations of professors and students, it helped define the emerging field of Atlantic world history.
, London Review of Books