Details

ISBN-10: 0822356511
ISBN-13: 9780822356516
Publisher: Duke University Press
Publish Date: 08/18/2014
Dimensions: 9.00" L, 5.90" W, 0.60" H

The Life of Captain Cipriani: An Account of British Government in the West Indies, with the pamphlet The Case for West-Indian Self Government

Paperback

Price: $25.95

Overview

The Life of Captain Cipriani (1932) is the earliest full-length work of nonfiction by the Trinidadian writer C. L. R. James, one of the most significant historians and Marxist theorists of the twentieth century. It is partly based on James’s interviews with Arthur Andrew Cipriani (1875-1945). As a captain with the British West Indies Regiment during the First World War, Cipriani was greatly impressed by the service of black West Indian troops and appalled at their treatment during and after the war. After his return to the West Indies, he became a Trinidadian political leader and advocate for West Indian self-government. James’s book is as much polemic as biography. Written in Trinidad and published in England, it is an early and powerful statement of West Indian nationalism. An excerpt, The Case for West-Indian Self Government, was issued by Leonard and Virginia Woolf’s Hogarth Press in 1933. This volume includes the biography, the pamphlet, and a new introduction in which Bridget Brereton considers both texts and the young C. L. R. James in relation to Trinidadian and West Indian intellectual and social history. She discusses how James came to write his biography of Cipriani, how the book was received in the West Indies and Trinidad, and how, throughout his career, James would use biography to explore the dynamics of politics and history.

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Reviews
"[I]n The Life of Captain Cipriani, James passionately and with his characteristic devastating wit exposed the lie behind the dictatorial British colonial authorities' line of 'self government when fit for it', showing how the growth of the TWA demonstrated beyond doubt that Trinidadians were manifestly ready for 'self government'. Indeed on re-reading the work without the off-putting miniscule print of the original publication I was struck by James's radical daring democratic spirit, and it is not surprising it proved such a revelation and such an inspiration to many who came across it back in the 1930s." –Christian Høgsbjerg "Review 31"
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Details

ISBN-10: 0822356511
ISBN-13: 9780822356516
Publisher: Duke University Press
Publish Date: 08/18/2014
Dimensions: 9.00" L, 5.90" W, 0.60" H
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