Touissant Louverture

John Kay: Touissant Louverture, Edinburgh, 1802, Radierung.
© The Trustees of the British Museum

Toussaint Louverture was a brilliant military strategist and became a key figure in the Haitian Revolution. Napoleonic troops arrested him in 1802, deporting him to France, where he died a short time later. His life story is more than complex, his actions ambiguous. For the Black Power movement, the general became a central identification figure.