James's approach is based on his need to resolve two central problems: to understand why the Haitian slave revolt was the only example of a successful slave rebellion in history, and also to grasp the ways in which its history was intertwined with the history of the French Revolution. In CLR James's The Black Jacobins, we have one of the earliest, and most defining, examples of how 'history from below' ought to be written.
Other forms of history - the histories of gender, class, rebellion and nonconformity - add much-needed context and color to our understanding of the past. Today we take it for granted that history is much more than the story of great men and the elites from which they spring.
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