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You can find the link in our episode description. Hello and welcome to the History Extra podcast from BBC History magazine, Britain's best-selling history magazine. I'm Ellicothon. Today we've got an interview with Sudhir Hazari Singh who's an expert on

on French politics and history at the University of Oxford.

He's recently published a major new biography of the 18th century Haitian

revolutionary, Toussaint Leavature, which has already garnered a great deal of critical acclaim.

Sute was joined in conversation by our editor Rob Attle.

So first of all, why do you think this is a good time to be telling the story of Toussaint Louvertur?

Well, I think, first of all, this is a moment when people are talking a lot about the history of

colonialism and Toussaint-Luverture is one of the leading figures in the perhaps the first wave of anti-colonial struggles in the Atlantic world.

And I would say that he was probably the most famous figure in that anti-colonial struggle.

So that's one important reason why I think it's very valuable to be talking about him now, especially as the issue of how we think about

colonial memory is becoming increasingly important in our collective life.

And the second reason, of course, is that we're talking about race at the moment

around Black Lives Matter, around the issue of how we commemorate or talk about the impact of slavery.

And these were issues that were not abstract issues for Tucson of Aet year. He was born a slave and he devoted his entire adult life to first of all helping eliminate the scourge of slavery from what was then the French colony of Saint-Amand.

And then towards the end of his life, actually promulgating a constitution which abolished slavery and then devoting the last two years of his life to fighting off a French attempt to re- enslave his own people.

...