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Quotation by C.L.R. James:

(French General) Hedouville and his superiors belonged to the same breed as (the British historian, Frederick) Maitland and his. Uninhibited, they wallowed with zest in the filth and mire of their political conceptions and needs, among the very leaders of their society, but nevertheless the very dregs of human civilisation and moral standards. A historian who finds excuses for such conduct by references to the supposed spirit of the times, or by omission, or by silence, shows thereby that his account of events is not to be trusted. Hedouville after all was a product of the great French Revolution. Voltaire and Rousseau were household words and died before the Revolution. Jefferson, Cobbett, Tom Paine, Clarkson and Wilberforce had already raised banners and were living lives which to Maitland and his kind made them into subversive elements of society. They had their reasons. So have their counterparts of to-day. They fill our newspapers and our radios. The type is always with us, and so are their defenders.

C.L.R. James     (more by this author)

1901-1989 (Age at death: 88 approx.)

Cyril Lionel Robert James, who sometimes wrote under the pen-name J.R. Johnson, was an Afro-Trinidadian historian, journalist, socialist theorist and essayist. His works are influential in various theoretical, social, and historiographical contexts. His work is a staple of subaltern studies, and he figures as a pioneering and influential voice in postcolonial literature. His work is often associated with Caribbean and Afro-nationalism, though James himself contended that the "either-or" was a false dichotomy, and that Caribbean peoples were indebted to European as much as African cultural traditions. A tireless political activist, James's writing on the Communist International stirred debate in Trotskyist circles, and his history of the Haitian slave uprising, The Black Jacobins, is a seminal text in the literature of the African Diaspora. Characterized by one literary critic as an "anti-Stalinist dialectician", James was known for his autodidactic facility, for his occasional playwriting and acting, and as an avid sportsman. He is also famed as a writer on cricket.

Author Information from Wikipedia

Country: Venezuela

Type: Prose
Context: Unknown