After the abolition of slavery in 1793, Toussaint Louverture, himself a former slave, became the leader of the French Caribbean colony of Saint-Domingue's black population, the commander of its republican army and eventually its governor. During the course of his extraordinary life he confronted some of the dominant forces of his age -slavery, settler colonialism, imperialism and racial hierarchy. Shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction