Witnessing peasant uprisings in Ethiopia and the Caribbean converted James to armed rebellion

Evidence

In the crushing of the Ethiopian people he had seen the naked face of Western imperialism. More importantly, however, in Ethiopia, Spain, and the Caribbean, he had witnessed the capacities for resistance of ordinary Black people, the transformation of peasants and workers into liberation forces. Unlike Padmore, whose sojourn at the pinnacle of international Communism had left him uncertain, when he could no longer rely on that source, or Kenyatta and Williams, whose encounters with the imperial and capitalist metropoles so impressed them as to advise caution, James became convinced that successful armed rebellion among Black peoples was possible. The “colonial struggle and the metropolitan struggle” were identical on that score. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1277

Categorization

• XREF: Feeds the reader’s stated project of tracing the Black radical tradition’s rise and decline — this is a formative moment in its mid-century peak.