The Common Wind cover art

The Common Wind

Afro-American Currents in the Age of the Haitian Revolution

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About this listen

The Common Wind is a gripping and colorful account of the intercontinental networks that tied together the free and enslaved masses of the New World. Having delved deep into the gray obscurity of official eighteenth-century records in Spanish, English, and French, Julius S. Scott has written a powerful "history from below." Scott follows the spread of "rumors of emancipation" and the people behind them, bringing to life the protagonists in the slave revolution.

By tracking the colliding worlds of buccaneers, military deserters, and maroon communards from Venezuela to Virginia, Scott records the transmission of contagious mutinies and insurrections in unparalleled detail, providing listeners with an intellectual history of the enslaved.

Though The Common Wind is credited with having "opened up the Black Atlantic with a rigor and a commitment to the power of written words," the manuscript remained unpublished for thirty-two years. Now, after receiving wide acclaim from leading historians of slavery and the New World, it has been published for the first time, with a foreword by the academic and author Marcus Rediker.

©2018, 2020 Julius S. Scott (P)2022 Tantor Americas Caribbean & West Indies Colonialism & Post-Colonialism Politics & Government Colonial Period Caribbean Haitian History
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The narrator doesn't know how to read properly. Everything sounds the same. Great voice for reading a children's story, but not for an important work such as this.

Poor narration

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An interesting perspective on the Haitian revolution completely ruined by the narrator. His breathy whispered mumbling makes following the story impossible and not being able to correctly pronounce many French place names in book about the Haiti is unforgivable. I will try and get a refund and buy the hard print version.

Ruined by choice of narrator

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