Equiano, Olaudah

By: Leyla Keough

Source:

 Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience, Second Edition

Equiano, Olaudah

Sex:  Male

Born:  Possibly, Eboe, Essaka, Nigeria
c.1745

Died:  London, England, United Kingdom
March 1797

Activity/Profession:  Abolitionist, Sailor, Autobiographer / Memoirist

First published in Britain in 1789, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African, became a best seller in Equiano’s lifetime, with nine English editions and one American as well as translations in Dutch, German, and Russian. Though Ottobah Cugoano, an African abolitionist in England, had published an autobiographical account in 1787, it was probably heavily edited. Thus, The Interesting Narrative is considered the first autobiography of an African slave written entirely by his own hand. This places Equiano as the founder of the slave narrative, a form central to African American literature. In the book, Equiano describes his abduction in Africa, his enslavement in the West Indies and his manumission in Britain, as well as the legal insecurity and terror faced by enslaved and free West Indian blacks. Equiano’s autobiography greatly influenced the rhetorical strategies, content, and presentation of later nineteenth-century slave narratives, such as Frederick Douglass’s Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845). Equiano was born the son of an Igbo chief in present-day Nigeria. When he was eleven years old, he and his sister were captured by African traders and sold to Europeans. He was transported to the West Indies, where an Englishman, Michael Pascal, bought Equiano and named him after Swedish hero Gustavus Vassa. Though Equiano at first detested the name, he later used it in most of his writings and became known by it. Equiano served as a seaman with Pascal in the Seven Years’ War (1756–1763) in Canada and in the Mediterranean. In 1757 Pascal took Equiano to England, where his honesty and trustworthiness won him friendship and support from many English people. During this formative period, Equiano was educated and converted to Christianity. To Equiano’s dismay, in 1763 Pascal sold him to an American, Robert King. By this time, Equiano knew seamanship, hairdressing, wine making, and arithmetic and had become fully literate in the English language. Equiano worked for King as a seaman and trader, once again coming in close contact with the atrocities of the transatlantic slave trade. Even after he bought his freedom in 1766, Equiano elected to remain at sea for several more years. He voyaged to the Arctic as a surgeon’s assistant as well as to the Mediterranean as a gentleman’s valet, and for a time lived among the Moskito Indians of Nicaragua. Equiano returned to England in 1777 and became active in the abolitionist movement. He brought the massacre of 130 slaves on the ship Zong to the attention of white abolitionist lawyer Granville Sharp, thereby greatly influencing public support for abolition of the slave trade. He also wrote on behalf of abolition and interracial marriages. In 1792 he married Susannah Cullen, a white Englishwoman, with whom he had two daughters. In 1787 Equiano was appointed commissary for stores to a government-sponsored expedition to settle freed slaves in Sierra Leone. Although at first he was “agreeably surprised that the benevolence of government had adopted the plan of some philanthropic individuals,” he soon discovered fraudulence among the organizers. Equiano invited outsiders to view the negligent conditions under which the blacks lived on board the ship after their departure to Sierra Leone was delayed, and he described corrupt procedures to a friend in a letter that was later published. After this, he was dismissed from his post as a “troublemaker.” Though demoralized, Equiano returned to England and published his autobiography. He fought unceasingly for abolition as a member of the group the Sons of Africa and in his letter writing and public speaking campaigns until his death.

See also London’s Black Poor and the Sierra Leone Settlement Plan.

processed xml | source xml