Olaudah Equiano

The slave who became a best selling author and abolitionist

When thinking of the abolitionists of the 18th Century, there are several names that naturally come to mind - William Wilberforce, John Newton and Granville Sharp to name but a few. Yet there was one man whose bitter experiences proved a watershed moment for the abolitionist movement. He was a former slave who became a best selling author. His publication The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African revealed the disturbing realities of the slave trade.

Life and death in the hold

Olaudah Equiano (1745 - 97) was kidnapped from a West African village at the age of 11 and sold into slavery. There began a period when he experienced the trauma of being packed with hundreds of fellow captives in a slave ship’s hold. In these appalling conditions, he was transported across the Atlantic, which led him to despair:

“I now wished for the last friend, Death, to relieve me.”

He spent the next ten years travelling between Africa’s west coast, the West Indies, America and Europe. This crucial period coincided with Britain’s Seven Years War with France, and Equiano witnessed the dual horrors of slavery and naval warfare at first hand.

Equiano buys his freedom

At the end of this period, he purchased his own freedom for £40, money gathered from his savings. After becoming a free man, he returned to sea working on merchant ships. He joined an expedition to find the North West passage, a voyage on which a young Horatio Nelson was present. In between his travels, he spent time on land working as a civil servant.

During this time he began working within the abolitionist movement, and it was his publication The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano which caused a sensation in 1789. His writings served to pave the way in shifting the mindset of a nation accustomed to slavery.

A first hand account

Equiano’s autobiography powerfully described his experiences of being a slave between 1756 and 1766. His narrative reached a wide audience in Britain and America; his book was reprinted nine times during his lifetime, and was also translated into Dutch and Russian.

Here, for the first time, ordinary people could read about the realities of what it meant to be a slave. Equiano was frankly honest and unequivocal in his accounts. He noted that slavery brutalised everyone - the slaves, plantation owners and their wives, and society as a whole:

“Is not the slave trade entirely a war with the heart of man? Such a tendency has the slave trade to debauch men’s minds and harden them to every feeling of humanity! For I will not suppose that the dealers in slaves are born worse than other men….it corrupts the milk of human kindness and turns it into gall. Surely this traffic cannot be good, which spreads like a pestilence and taints what it touches!”

Westminster’s African population

Equiano was an astute man, pious yet with a streak of ambition. He wanted to make money, initially to buy his own freedom, but also to enjoy a comfortable living in England. In between his voyages he spent several years living in Westminster. There he had many African contemporaries, some of them servants of the wealthy, others free men like himself. It’s thought the African population in London numbered between 10,000 and 15,000 during the late 18th Century.

Following the commercial success of his publication, he was able to use his position as a best selling author to speak of the horrors of slavery. Equiano demonstrated that the abolitionist movement was not the preserve of Wilberforce and fellow campaigners, but also of those who had experienced slavery at first hand.

Equiano settles into married life

This powerful narrative showed the ugliness of an international trade operating throughout Europe, the Americas and Africa. His work eloquently spoke for millions (it’s thought that nearly 12 and a half million Africans were taken into slavery during the 18th Century), delineating a world that for him had disappeared and to which he never returned. In 1792, he settled into marriage with Susannah Cullen, from Soham in Cambridgeshire and went on to have two daughters, one of whom died in infancy. He died the year after his wife, leaving an estate equivalent to £100,000 to his surviving daughter.

Although he never saw the changes in his lifetime, he had played an eloquent part in bringing an end to the slave trade. Ten years after his death, the first piece of British legislation was enacted abolishing slave trade on British ships. It took a further forty years to see the abolition in the British colonies.

Equiano’s legacy

Olaudah Equiano lived up to his name. He described it as meaning ‘vicissitude… or one favoured and having a loud voice and well spoken’. This resourceful man overrode many hardships, dealing with life’s adversities and taking advantage of educational opportunities. His loud and well spoken voice was used not only to his own financial gain, but to further the cause for abolishing a trade that debased everyone involved in it.

Rosie Hopley
First published on the LHI site www.lhi.org.uk

Additional Links on Equiano
http://www.brycchancarey.com/equiano/index.htm
"According to his famous autobiography, written in 1789, Olaudah Equiano (c.1745-1797) was born in what is now Nigeria. Kidnapped and sold into slavery in childhood, he was taken as a slave to the New World. As a slave to a captain in the Royal Navy, and later to a Quaker merchant, he eventually earned the price of his own freedom by careful trading and saving...."

http://www.soham.org.uk/history/olaudahequiano.htm
Soham Village's excellent website includes this piece on their famous resident.

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