Tom Reiss

‘The Black Count’ tells the epic life story of the novelist Alexandre Dumas’ father, an incredibly successful general of the same name who was figuratively and literally larger than life. Reiss argues, with copious support from a memoir Dumas wrote of his father, that the son’s fictional heroes were heavily inspired by his father’s actual exploits. His life story is very exciting; full of duels, battles, peril, narrow escapes, captivity, and success against the odds. However Alexandre Dumas is not just interesting as an exceptional individual. His life also charts the evolution in laws and social attitudes around race in France. Britain likes to think we took an unprecedented moral stand against slavery in the 19th century, but France had already banned it in the 18th century during the revolution. In fact, the association between the revolution and abolition proved a setback for British abolitionists, given hostility to the revolution! Reiss recounts how Alexandre Dumas, son of a dissolute white Count and an enslaved black woman, rose from slavery in Saint-Domingue (now Haiti) to command armies in France. Then he incurred the rancour of Napoleon, who effectively pushed him out of the army. Under the Empire, slavery was reinstated and the law changed from racial equality to explicit anti-black racism. (Reiss also notes that the revolution outlawed antisemitism, which likewise returned under the Empire.) Dumas married a white woman, to the joy of both families, yet under Napoleon such unions became illegal.

I enjoyed this book a great deal, however I am always sensitive to the treatment of the French Revolution in histories that do not focus on it. In particular, I find it interesting how the Terror is often treated as an atrocity unprecedented in history, somehow vastly more shocking than anything ever perpetrated by a monarch or emperor during the same period. This asymmetry is glimpsed in ‘The Black Count’ as Reiss recounts the pressure put on commanders in the French army during the 1793-4 wars. They were at risk of being deposed, even lynched, by their soldiers. The paranoia caused by conflict on so many fronts undoubtedly made the effective organisational functioning of the army difficult. For one thing, it had transformed completely in a few short years. However, why is the risk of soldiers attacking their commander so much more serious than the prior of centuries of commanders buying their ranks then abusing their soldiers with impunity? I appreciated that Reiss showed the viciousness of reactionary micro-kingdoms in Italy as a contrast to France. He also demonstrates the gradual loss of freedoms gained under the revolution, as Napoleon consolidated his power and rewrote the law.

In the late 18th century Dumas fought with spectacular success in an amazing variety of places, from the peaks of the Alps to the sands of the Sahara. I know much less about the Directory and early Napoleonic period than that of the revolution, so found the account of Napoleon’s rather futile invasion of Egypt particularly interesting. It seems like a bizarre choice now; an invasion of Britain was the most obvious option at the time. Reiss recounts such military exploits by drawing on a pleasing array of primary evidence, including copious letters. I smiled at his comparison between the constant letters between army commanders in the field and the eternal circulation of emails in an office. The minutiae of resource management may not have been so very different. Reiss does not mythologise his subject, nor treat him as an unalloyed hero. He certainly killed a lot of people in battle, although he also exhibited a strong sense of justice and lack of venality. He was undoubtedly highly skilled at war and much liked by his peers (except Napoleon) and subordinates. His son absolutely idolised him and, Reiss suggests sought to memorialise him through fiction. As history is so frequently white-washed, I hadn’t come across him before hearing about this book. Apparently there was a statue of him in Paris, until the Nazis melted it down during the occupation. 'The Black Count' reads well with [b:The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution|775985|The Black Jacobins Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution|C.L.R. James|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1348230897l/775985._SY75_.jpg|826133], which recounts in much greater detail how France turned from abolishing slavery to trying and failing to brutally suppress the Haitian Revolution.… (more)