1. Early Life

Toussaint Louverture summed up the inhumanity of slavery in its systematic tendency:

‘to tear away the son from his mother, the brother from his sister, the father from his son’.

Sudhir Hazareesingh looks at what little is known of Toussaint's early life, his progress to coachman and his education by the Jesuits.

As an intelligent man who could read, it is likely he was key in shaping the strategy of the slave uprising in 1791.

But he was also a man of mystery and very little is documented about his life. He spread misinformation about himself and had a complex extended family with possibly 16 children.

Toussaint was a tactical leader and, after the uprising, he took time to consolidate his military position and as a rebel leader declared;

‘I was the first to favour a cause that I have always upheld ...what we have begun, I will finish’.

Abridged in five parts by Libby Spurrier.

Read by Adrian Lester

Producer: Celia de Wolff

A Pier production for BBC Radio 4, first broadcast in November 2020.