Cyril Lionel Robert James (4 January 1901 – 19 May 1989) was an Afro-Trinidadian historian, journalist, socialist theorist and essayist. He was influential in the United Kingdom and the United States in socialist parties and Marxist thought, as well as leading ideas about the end of colonialism. He is also famed as a writer on cricket. A central figure in the Pan-African movement and the struggle for colonial emancipation, he returned to Trinidad in 1958 in its run-up to independence. He later went back to London, where he died in 1989.