# The Opening *A Biography of Toussaint Louverture* — Legendary Biographies No. 076 - **Subject:** François-Dominique Toussaint Louverture - **Written by:** Edward Forrester - **Shelf:** Power & Politics / History - **Published:** 2026 - **Extent:** 198 pages, 6 × 9 in, 60# uncoated cream, black ink - **Paperback:** $19.99 — 6 × 9 in · 198 pp · 60# uncoated cream, black ink · perfect-bound paperback - **EPUB:** $3.99 — EPUB 3 · DRM-free · reads on Kindle, Kobo and Apple Books (ISBN 979-8-90623-081-2) - **Audiobook:** $5.99 — Unabridged · measured from the masters · read by Edmund Hartley (ISBN 979-8-90623-159-8) Buy it, or read the opening free: volumes/076-the-opening.html ## About this book He was born around 1743, an enslaved man on the Bréda plantation in the French colony of Saint-Domingue, the most profitable sugar colony in the world. He was granted his freedom around 1776, became a modest property owner with enslaved labour of his own, and was fifty when the August 1791 slave uprising began. He led the formerly enslaved through the Spanish-allied years and the 1794 French abolition decree, became governor general of Saint-Domingue in 1801, and was captured by Napoleon Bonaparte's expeditionary force on June 7, 1802, deported in chains across the Atlantic, and died of pneumonia in the Fort de Joux dungeon in the Jura mountains of France on April 7, 1803. He never saw the independence of Haiti, declared by Jean-Jacques Dessalines nine months after his death. Edward Forrester's biography traces the arc through the Bréda plantation childhood and the long apprenticeship as a coachman, the 1791 Bois Caïman ceremony, the long Spanish alliance and the 1794 French defection, the unification of the colony in 1801 and the constitution he promulgated that summer, the February 1802 Leclerc expedition, the June 1802 betrayal at Le Gonaïves and the Atlantic crossing in irons, and the death in the high cold of the Fort de Joux dungeon. What emerges is a portrait of the formerly enslaved general who led the only successful slave revolution in modern history — and the French Republic that, in the end, killed him for it. ## Contents 1. The Pearl of the Antilles 2. Bréda 3. The Making of a Mind 4. Bois Caïman 5. The Fire 6. The General Emerges 7. The Spanish Gambit 8. Defeating the British 9. Governor-General 10. The Constitution 11. Rebuilding on Ruins 12. Moïse and the Cracks Within 13. Napoleon Decides 14. Leclerc's Invasion 15. Guerrilla and Fever 16. Fort de Joux 17. Haiti 18. The Roots ## Questions **Who is The Opening about?** François-Dominique Toussaint Louverture. The title never carries the subject's name: it names one concrete thing out of the life — in this case The Opening — and the name goes on the line underneath. **Is this an authorised biography?** No. No subject, estate, label or foundation had approval over the text, and none paid for a word of it. The cost of that independence is that no new interviews were conducted for the book; it is built from the public record, and it says on the page where a scene is reconstructed rather than documented. **Can I read some of it before buying?** Yes — the whole opening chapter and the writer's foreword, free and in full, with no email address and no account. That is 3,887 words of the book. **How long is it?** About 60,000 words, 18 chapters, 198 pages in the paperback. **What is the printed book like?** 6 × 9 in, 60# uncoated cream, black ink, perfect-bound paperback, matte laminate. Every title in the series uses the same specification, so they line up on a shelf. ## The writer Edward Forrester is a Princeton-trained historian whose work for The New York Review of Books and the Times Literary Supplement has focused on the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries — the long arc by which the modern political world was made. His detailed biographies explore how individual leaders and pivotal figures navigated the shifting tides of historical change. His published works include The Opening, The Castro Camera Storefront, The Bedroll, The Burkhan Khaldun, and The Saint Helena Exile. These volumes demonstrate his commitment to archival research and accessible historical storytelling. He lives in Princeton, New Jersey, where he spends his free time restoring antique furniture and hiking.