Thinkers Timeline

Cyril Lionel Robert James was a Trinidadian historian, political thinker, novelist, and cricket writer. He is one of the most important intellectuals the Caribbean has produced. He was born on 4 January 1901 in Tunapuna, Trinidad, then a British colony. His father was a schoolteacher. His mother was a strong reader who filled the house with books. Young Cyril grew up reading English literature, the Bible, and Greek classics. He was also obsessed with cricket. These three loves, literature, politics, and cricket, stayed with him all his life. He won a scholarship to Queen's Royal College in Port of Spain, one of the best schools in Trinidad. He became a teacher, a cricketer, and a writer of short stories. In 1932, he sailed to England. In Lancashire, he lived with his friend Learie Constantine, the great West Indian cricketer. He wrote cricket reports for the Manchester Guardian. But he also became deeply involved in politics. He joined Trotskyist groups. He met African leaders like Kwame Nkrumah and Jomo Kenyatta who were then studying in London. He helped build the movement for African independence from outside Africa. In 1938, he published The Black Jacobins, his masterpiece, a history of the Haitian Revolution and Toussaint Louverture. That same year he moved to the United States. He lived there for fifteen years, writing, teaching, and working with labour movements. In 1953, he was arrested during the anti-communist scare and held on Ellis Island. He was eventually deported. He returned to Trinidad in the late 1950s to support his former student Eric Williams, then leading the country toward independence. The two later fell out. James spent his final decades moving between England, Trinidad, the United States, and Africa. He died in London on 31 May 1989, aged 88. He had lived through almost the whole 20th century and written about most of it.