Equiano, Olaudah

By: John Saillant

Source:

 Encyclopedia of African American History, 1619-1895: From the Colonial Period to the Age of Frederick Douglass

Equiano, Olaudah

Sex:  Male

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

Died:  London, England, United Kingdom
March 1797

Activity/Profession:  Abolitionist, Sailor, Autobiographer / Memoirist

(b. c. 1745; d. 1797),
slave, freedman, mariner, author, abolitionist, and employee of the British government.

Olaudah Equiano identified himself by this name only once in his life—on the title page of The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African (1789). In the Narrative itself Equiano wrote of his forename that it was an Ibo word meaning “change,” “fortunate,” or “loudly or well spoken,” but this derivation has not been corroborated. Words similar to his surname have been identified in languages spoken both east and west of the Niger River, which flows south through Iboland, the southeastern region of present-day Nigeria, where Equiano claimed to have been born. He was accused almost immediately of fabrication, however, and he may have been born in North America. All other documentation of his life, including vital records and his own signatures, used the name Gustavus Vassa (sometimes Vasa, Vassan, and other variations). Both the Narrative and commercial and public records reveal that Equiano worked at sea as both a slave and a freedman beginning in the 1750s and continuing through much of his life. He purchased his own freedom in 1766 but worked within the slave system as a purchaser, conveyer, and overseer in the 1770s.

Olaudah Equiano's Interesting Narrative frontispiece and title page of the eighth edition, 1794. The narrative intertwined several thematic threads—abolitionist, religious, and entrepreneurial.

Library of Congress.

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Equiano began to identify himself as a Christian in the 1770s and then to associate with British abolitionists in the 1780s. He became an active member—indeed an employee of the British government—in the effort of the mid-1780s to establish a West African settlement of blacks then living in England. The settlement at Granville Town, later Freetown, in Sierra Leone was intended to offer opportunities for impoverished black Britons, usually called London's black poor, as well as to establish a commercial foundation and naval base to undermine the slave trade. In the language of the times, the goal was legitimate trade as a substitute for the illegitimate trade in slaves, although the slave trade had not yet been outlawed. Equiano lost his commission in 1787 because of conflict with other principals of the effort; nevertheless, black emigrants from England, Nova Scotia, and Jamaica did establish a settlement in Sierra Leone despite such difficulties as endemic malaria and inability to weaken the slave trade in the area.

Equiano went on to publish his Narrative and to promote it over the course of its nine editions as well as to answer critics who either defended the slave system or denounced him as a liar. He married and fathered two daughters, one of whom survived him and received a substantial inheritance upon his death on 31 March 1797. His influence on abolitionism was strong in the late eighteenth century but declined in the mid-nineteenth century. Twentieth-century interest in black literature and history reestablished him as a crucial figure in what has come to be known as the black Atlantic, the subculture created by eighteenth-century black people who traveled among points in West Africa, Great Britain, and the Americas or articulated ideas and values, uniformly antislavery, drawing from African, European, and American sources.

The Narrative intertwined several thematic threads—abolitionist, religious, and entrepreneurial. None was unique to Equiano—indeed, he identified many of his sources—but he was the first black man to unite these elements in an autobiography. As an abolitionist, Equiano wrote at a time when the slave trade and the institution of slavery came under concerted attack for the first time in Europe and the Americas. His strategy was to concede that slavery had seemed legitimate in earlier times and places but that both the horrors of the Atlantic slave system and the eighteenth-century understanding of Christianity had revealed unambiguously that slavery was indeed morally illegitimate.

In general, Equiano acknowledged that ancient slavery, particularly the Israelites' enslavement of conquered people as described in the Bible, had seemed acceptable before the period of the New Testament but should not be tolerated in the Christian world. Like many of his contemporaries, he considered sub-Saharan Africans to be descendants of the Israelites, and he attributed the ownership and sale of slaves in Ibo society to its supposedly Jewish roots. Thus slaves in Equiano's home society were in some ways protected by remnants of Old Testament laws mandating fair treatment of the enslaved, but in this biblical interpretation slavery itself was a feature of ancient times that should be erased from the modern world.

Moreover, in contrast to the relatively humane treatment of Ibo slaves, only obdurate defenders of the slave system claimed that New World slaves were treated fairly. Abolitionists like Equiano pointed to the abuses and cruelties of the Atlantic slave trade and New World slavery. Equiano himself had come to embody the abolitionism he promoted in the 1780s: his African family had owned slaves, and he himself had been both a victim of and an overseer within the slave system, but he finally converted to abolitionism. Whatever the accuracy of his historical argument, it was aimed at his contemporaries, who had often taken the enslavement of others for granted but lived in an era in which leading reformers envisioned the termination of both the slave trade and institutionalized slavery. In this regard Equiano shared the moral and historical understandings of eighteenth-century abolitionists, both black and white.

As a man of faith, Equiano claimed to recognize providence, a divine plan, at work in his life, even in the miseries of the Middle Passage, the westward ocean crossing to the Americas. He acknowledged that events did not happen at random in his life and that the divine plan involved his subjugation in slavery, his liberation, and his establishment as a spokesperson for black people. In this sense he conformed to such Old Testament models as Moses and Joseph. The Narrative contrasted belief in chance or fortune, which was a sign of an unconverted individual, to belief in providence, which was the mark of a Christian. Equiano's faith also prevented him from committing suicide in a time of despair.

The form of Christianity to which Equiano was most attracted was Calvinistic Methodism, represented by the Countess of Huntingdon, who supported several lateeighteenth-century black authors; the clergyman William Romaine, who preached in churches attended by Equiano and by London's black poor; and the revivalist George Whitefield, who preached in Britain and America—at least once with Equiano in the audience. While Wesleyan Methodism emphasized the individual's ability to earn grace and salvation through prayer, preparation, and good works, Calvinism, albeit demanding those acts, insisted that nothing the individual did was worthy of grace and salvation, which were God's free gifts. The appeal of Calvinistic Methodism derived from its vivid sense of divine providence and a social ethic that emphasized love and benevolence. The former assured black men and women that their sufferings were ultimately meaningful as part of a divine plan, while the latter suggested the means by which racism could be overcome and blacks and whites could coexist harmoniously. These religious convictions were shared by many Americans and Britons in the Calvinist tradition.

As an entrepreneur, Equiano exemplified one way in which blacks could gain and extend their freedom as well as improve their status in the world. Despite the horrors of the Middle Passage, as described in the Narrative, the young Equiano acquired an education in navigation and commerce during the voyage. He was curious about the functioning of the ship and found that some members of the crew were willing to answer his questions. As he matured, his commercial interests grew stronger, and he became a petty trader in glassware, produce, and livestock. Of course, employment in the slave trade and in plantation work was one of the impulses that he soon resisted.

Equiano's business sense and his honesty in bargaining formed one of the major themes of the Narrative, as when he noted that white men stole his goods, refused to pay him, or even threatened violence when he sought a fair exchange. These commercial interests led to his two major efforts of the 1780s and 1790s: the Sierra Leone venture and the publication and promotion of the Narrative. Although Equiano never sailed to Sierra Leone, the settlement project reflected one of the premises of eighteenth-century abolitionism—that commerce profitable to blacks and whites alike would be necessary to subdue the slave system, because trading in human beings would not cease without an advantageous replacement. Whatever the Narrative's abolitionist and religious import, the book was meant to earn money for its author, thus gaining him some financial independence and security. Equiano registered his text in order to hold copyright, promoted the book, and saw it through nine editions in his lifetime; he left a legacy, probably derived largely from the book's proceeds, to his only surviving child.

As a leading figure of the black Atlantic, Equiano has appealed to modern readers for his written record of West African life as well as for his commercial ambition. Yet it is possible that he constructed the account of an Ibo boyhood out of materials available in eighteenth-century abolitionist texts and travelogues, supplemented by tales of African life he had heard from blacks he encountered in the Caribbean islands, North America, and England. Moreover, one cannot understand his entrepreneurship apart from his abolitionism and his religious beliefs, for all three were intertwined in his experience.

See also Abolitionism; Autobiography; Black Seafarers; Entrepreneurs; Free African Americans to 1828; Literature; Maritime Trades; Methodist Church and African Americans; Slave Narratives; and Slave Trade.

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