James' reflections on the context of his writings echo his concerns on the context of the events, as traditionally narrated. The text represents, according to some commentators, a challenge to the conventional "geography" of history, which usually identifies the national histories of states as discrete phenomena, and with "Western civilization" in particular being bounded away from its actual constituent elements. In "The Black Jacobins", according to Edward Said, "events in France and in Haiti criss-cross and answer each other like voices in a fugue." "The blacks were taking their part in the destruction of European feudalism", according to James, and, as the workers and peasants of France stiffened in their resistance to local tyranny, they also became passionate abolitionists despite their geographical remove from the French slave enterprise in the Western hemisphere.