Olaudah Equiano

Background

Olaudah Equiano was born in 1745 in the region now known as Nigeria. He was the youngest of the seven children born to his parents who belonged to the Igbo tribe.

Career

At age 11 he was kidnaped into domestic slavery. After short service in African households he was sold to British slavers in 1756 and sent to Barbados in the West Indies. Transshipped immediately to Virginia, Olaudah, who said his African name meant "vicissitude" or "fortune, " became the personal slave of Lt. Michael Henry Pascal of the Royal Navy, who gave him his second name, Gustavus Vassa.

Thus spared the fate of plantation laborer, Equiano spent the next 30 years as servant, barber, seaman, and trader, traveling widely to such varied places as Turkey, the Arctic, Honduras, North America, and London. In the process he became a literate and articulate observer of the slave trade, slavery, and his own condition.

After service in the Seven Years War, including the siege of Louisburg on Cape Breton Island and the capture of Belle Isle, Lt. Pascal surprisingly disappointed Equiano's expectation of freedom and sent him back to the West Indies for resale in 1763. Equiano's new master, a Quaker merchant of Montserrat and Philadelphia named Robert King, gave him both recognition for his abilities and the opportunity for manumission. Employed as a clerk and captain's assistant on vessels trading in the islands and carrying slaves to the American colonies, Equiano was allowed to trade on his own account and bought his freedom in 1766 for £40, the price King had paid for him. Equiano went to London, where he qualified as a barber and musician and improved his education before taking to the sea again as a free servant in 1768.

Subsequently Equiano rose to prominence in London's society of free blacks, became a close friend of Ottobah Cugoano, and associated with the British humanitarians opposed to the Atlantic slave trade. In 1783, for example, he brought the famous case of the ship Zong to Granville Sharp's attention. Sharp made it a cause célèbre in the parliamentary battle for abolition. One hundred thirty-two sick and shackled slaves had been thrown overboard alive and then claimed for cargo insurance. In this connection also, late in 1786 Equiano was appointed by Charles Middleton, the comptroller of the navy, to be commissary steward of Granville Sharp's subsidized expedition to repatriate London's "Poor Blacks" in Sierra Leone. However, the scheme was beset with delays and mismanagement, and in a letter which his friend Cugoano published in London before their departure, Equiano charged his superior, Joseph Irwin, with theft of stores and ill treatment of the blacks. Middleton supported Equiano, but Irwin and several colleagues, acting through London businessmen interested in the venture, engineered his dismissal by Treasury authorities.

Equiano's famous autobiography The Interesting Narrative of the Life of O. Equiano, or G. Vassa, the African was then written in 1787-1788 partly to vindicate his role in the Sierra Leone affair, as well as to recount his exemplary rise from slavery to freedom and to argue the case for abolition of the slave trade. Although one critic (G. I. Jones, 1967) has doubted Equiano's sole authorship because of its stylistic felicities, there is little doubt that the work was essentially his own. Unlike Ottobah Cugoano's sophisticated Bible-based discourse, Equiano's is an account of action in which the realities and iniquities of slavery and the trade emerge eloquently in the telling of his own story. Besides its importance as "the first truly notable book in the genre" of slave narratives (Arna Bontemps, 1969) and its value as one of the few genuine personal recollections of the slave trade as seen by the victims themselves (Philip Curtin, 1967), Equiano's account is especially interesting in two respects: first, for its extensive recollections of the author's African childhood and his retention of an African point of view in judging experience and, second, for its rational economic argument against the slave trade. Not only did he argue the moral transgressions of the trade but also its economic insanity. On the basis of demographic projections he urged the potential of legitimate commerce for British manufactures in Africa as an economic alternative to the trade in lives. This was a view shared with Cugoano's book, and it figured prominently in the ideological preparation for abolition.

Despite his sense of mission, Equiano was destined never to return to Africa. He lectured extensively in Britain against the slave trade during the 1790s and married an English girl, Susan (or Susanne) Cullen of Ely, in April 1792. He is believed to have died in London in 1801.

Achievements

• The Equiano Society was formed in London in November 1996. Its main objective is to publicise and celebrate the life and work of Olaudah Equiano.
  
  Equiano lived at 13 Tottenham Street, London, in 1788; in 1789 he moved to what was then 10 Union Street and is now 73 Riding House Street. A City of Westminster commemorative green plaque was unveiled there on 11 October 2000 as part of Black History Month celebrations. Student musicians from Trinity College of Music played a fanfare specially composed by Professor Ian Hall for the unveiling.
  
  Equiano is honoured as a holy man in the Anglican Church, and honoured annually in a lesser festival on 30 July, along with Thomas Clarkson and William Wilberforce, who all worked for abolition of the slave trade and slavery.
  
  In 2007, the year of the celebration in Britain of the bicentenary of the abolition of the slave trade, Equiano's life and achievements were included in the National Curriculum, together with William Wilberforce. In December 2012 it was reported, by The Daily Mail newspaper, that both would be dropped from the curriculum, along with other social reformers, in favour of a "back to basics" curriculum. In January 2013 Operation Black Vote launched a petition to request Education Secretary Michael Gove to keep both Equiano and Mary Seacole in the National Curriculum. American Rev. Jesse Jackson and others wrote a letter to The Times protesting against the mooted removal of both figures from the National Curriculum.
  
  A statue of Equiano, made by pupils of Edmund Waller School, was erected in Telegraph Hill Lower Park, Brockley, London in 2008.
  
  The head of Equiano is included in Martin Bond's 1997 the sculpture Wall of the Ancestors in Deptford, London.
  
  U. S. author Ann Cameron adapted Equiano's autobiography for children, leaving most of the text in Equiano's own words; the book was published in 1995 the U. S. by Random House as The Kidnapped Prince: The Life of Olaudah Equinano, with an introduction by the U. S. historian, Henry Louis Gates.
  
  On 16 October 2017, Google Doodle honoured Equiano by celebrating the 272nd year since his birth.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Sold as a Slave (Penguin Great Journeys)

    (Inspired by PenguinÂ's innovative Great Ideas series, our...)

  • The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African. Written by Himself

    (This is a memoir written by Olaudah Equiano an influentia...)

Religion

Equiano had been baptized as a youth in 1759, but Christian religion did not deeply influence his life until during or just after participating in an Arctic expedition in search of the Northeast Passage in 1773 which nearly ended in disaster. At that time he experienced profound depression and soul-searching that resulted in his conversion to Evangelicalism in 1774. Living in London again after 1777, he petitioned the bishop of London to ordain him a missionary for service in Africa, but he failed.

Views

Quotations: "Is it not enough that we are torn from our country and friends, to toil for your luxury and lust of gain? Must every tender feeling be likewise sacrificed to your avarice?'

"The first object which saluted my eyes when I arrived on the coast was the sea, and a slave ship, which was then riding at anchor, and waiting for its cargo. These filled me with astonishment, which was soon connected with terror, when I was carried on board. I was immediately handled, and tossed up to see if I were sound, by some of the crew; and I was now persuaded that I had gotten into a world of bad spirits, and that they were going to kill me. "

"I believe there are few events in my life which have not happened to many; it is true the incidents of it are numerous, and, did I consider myself an European, I might say my sufferings were great; but when I compare my lot with that of most of my countrymen, I regard myself as a particular favorite of heaven, and acknowledge the mercies of Providence in every occurrence of my life. "

Connections

Olaudah Equiano married Susannah Cullen on April 7, 1792, in St Andrew's Church in Soham, Cambridgeshire. The couple was blessed with two daughters, Anna Maria and Joanna.

Spouse:

Susannah Cullen

Daughter:

Joanna Vassa

She was the only surviving child of the former slave and anti-slavery campaigner Olaudah Equiano.

Friend:

Ottobah Cugoano

References

• Olaudah Equiano: The Interesting Man
• Olaudah Equiano: The Life and Legacy of the Freed Slave Whose Autobiography Fueled Britain’s Abolitionist Movement
• The Kidnapped Prince: The Life of Olaudah Equiano
• African's Life, 1745-1797: The Life and Times of Olaudah Equiano (Black Atlantic)