genius, a seducer, a self-destructive wreck… the firebrand author, historian and critic was a complex, fragile human being, as John L Williams’s biography reveals.

Cyril Lionel Robert James — better known as CLR James — was a cultural historian, journalist, intellectual and socialist and cricket writer. He was born on January 4, 1901, in Tunapuna, in the East–West Corridor of the island of Trinidad and Tobago and died on May 31, 1989, in London, England.

He was a leading figure in the Pan-African movement. His biographer, Paul Buhle called James’s 1932 work, The Case for West Indian Self Government, “The first important manifesto for national independence in the British West Indies.” But his most famous work is The Black Jacobins. Published in 1938, it is a history of the Haitian slave revolution in the 1790s. Written from a Marxist perspective, it won him widespread acclaim.

In the Global North, James is primarily known for two books; The Black Jacobins is one of those. It arguably founded the Atlantic Studies. The second one is Beyond a Boundary (1963). It influenced the research agenda of the late 20^th Century cultural studies. Each of the book is indicative of the various wings of James’s wide intellectual project. The first asked scholars to reconsider the role of racial oppression in capitalism and the second prompted a reconsideration of the role of class formation in popular culture via his treatment of sport, race and imperialism.

These projects combine to provide a Marxist inspired analysis of modernity in which questions of combined and uneven development are foregrounded. The result is a demonstration of the enduring links between advanced capitalist countries and colonised regions along the lines of race, class and everyday experience. But along with George Padmore, James’s advocacy for pan-Africanism is of extreme significance. Hence, it will be pertinent to shed some light on pan-Africanism and its role in the employment of the connection that colour and class have in the modern politics. Pan-Africanist ideas first began to circulate in the mid-19th Century in the United States. These were led by Africans from the Western hemisphere.

The most important early pan-Africanists were Martin Delany and Alexander Crummel, both African Americans, and Edward Blyden, a West Indian. Those early voices for pan-Africanism emphasised the commonalities between Africans and the black people in the United States. Delany, who believed that black people could not prosper alongside the whites, advocated the idea that African Americans should separate from the United States and establish their own nation.

Crummel and Blyden, both contemporaries of Delany, thought that Africa was the best place for that new nation. Motivated by Christian missionary zeal, the two believed that Africans in the New World should return to their homelands and convert and civilise the inhabitants there.

James was certified as a teacher at Queen’s Royal College in the Port of Spain, Trinidad (1918). That appetite — that audacity — was evident from James’s devotion as a teacher, organising, choreographing and directing a school play of his choosing, The Merchant of Venice. To James’ delight, the all-black student body “picked up the Shakespearean rhythm to perfection”. However, in 1932 he moved to England and started his career in journalism.

But his love for literature remained paramount. It was in literature that he spent silent hours and days engrossed in Balzac, Hazlitt and Melville. While in England, he published, The Life of Captain Cipriani (1932, revised as The Case for West-Indian Self-Government, 1933) which was sponsored by the West Indian cricketer, who later became a politician, Learie (later Lord) Constantine. Because of the uniqueness of the theme, the book got critical acclaim. During the 1930s James was a cricket correspondent for The Guardian (Manchester) and became increasingly involved in Marxist politics and the African and West Indian independence movements.

In 1936, James and his Trotskyist Marxist Group left the ILP (Independent Labour Party, established at the behest of Trotsky) to form an open party. It is common knowledge that Trotsky self-identified as an orthodox Marxist, a revolutionary Marxist and Bolshevik–Leninist, a follower of Marx, Engels, and 3Ls: Vladimir Lenin, Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg.

Trotsky’s most cherished notion of permanent revolution is an explanation of how socialist revolutions could occur in societies that had not achieved advanced capitalism. In 1939, James met Trotsky, who was then living in exile in Mexico, where James also met the artists Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. In 1938, this group took part in several mergers to form the Revolutionary Socialist League (RSL). The RSL was a highly functionalised organisation.

In 1939, with the onset of the World War II, James left England to live in the United States. There he increasingly wrote and lectured, with great clarity of language and deep conviction, on social and political reform. It was perhaps inevitable that he was expelled in 1953 when America was gripped by Senator McCarthy’s obsession with un-American activities. This meant that his efforts were channelled into West Indies politics, especially the move towards a Caribbean federation.

His expulsion came to a pass when the Cold War had peaked. While in the USA, he was interned at the Ellis Island in New York City, where he wrote an analysis of Herman Melville’s Moby Dick called Mariners, Renegades and Castaways (1953). Thereafter, he remained in transit, shifting between London and Trinidad, where he was secretary of the West Indies Federal Labour Party (1958–60).

To conclude this article, I want to highlight his fondness for cricket. In 1963, he leapt from his considerable status in the world of radical politics to fame as a writer on cricket with Beyond a Boundary, widely regarded by many as the greatest book on the game yet written. Its argument that cricket was a delight but must always be set in context against more significant matters, and written in near classic language, made it one of the few books on cricket qualified to rank as literature.

In 1986 a wide-ranging collection of his writings was published under the simple title, Cricket. This included letters to friends, ranging from the famous West Indian cricket great, George Headley, to by far the best cricket commentator, John Arlott, and a selection of newspaper and magazine articles. James’s impact was such that the book was published in paperback in 1989, a fortnight before his death.

The writer is Professor in the faculty of Liberal Arts at the Beaconhouse National University, Lahore.  He can be reached at  tahir.kamran@bnu.edu.pk