The Black Jacobins uniquely addressed the colonized, not the colonial powers

Evidence

Nevertheless, James’s intervention had been significant. He had made a singular contribution to radical Black historiography when he and his comrades in the IASB were mapping out their contending positions in the last years of the third, and during the fourth decade of the century. It was then that Padmore had written How Britain Rules Africa, Eric Williams his The Negro in the Caribbean, Kenyatta his Kenya: Land of Conflict, and James The Black Jacobins. The first three had proposed national independence for African peoples but were addressed to the colonial powers. The fourth had not appealed. Instead, it was a declaration of war for liberation. “[T]hose black Haitian labourers and the Mulattoes have given us an example to study… . The imperialists envisage an eternity of African exploitation: the African is backward, ignorant… . They dream dreams.” — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1283

Categorization

• XREF: Distinguishing address-to-masses from address-to-power parallels the earlier scholarship on the Pan-African Congress trajectory Robinson has been building.