Toussaint Louverture was one of the leading figures of the Haitian Revolution. This biography was first published in 1803 shortly after his death following his imprisonment and deportation to France.
Written as a propaganda piece on the outbreak of war in Europe in 1803 to provide an ‘influence of the minds of the lower classes of the English readers’ and to ‘counteract the false impressions by which many of them had received of the character of Buonaparte’, the book emphasises Louverture’s role as a revolutionary leader, fighting for freedom against the tyranny of France under the emperor Napoleon.
This edition was printed in 1814, following Napoleon’s retreat from Russia and subsequent abdication at the Treaty of Fontainebleau. It was dedicated to the Russian Tsar Alexander I, who the author, the prominent abolitionist James Stephen, praised as ‘liberator of Europe’.