The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Equiano Olaudah, or Gustavus Vassa, the African became popular reading for abolitionists in Europe and the United States when it came out in 1789. The book documented the author's birth in West Africa, kidnapping, enslavement, and passage to the Americas on a slave ship. The account revealed the evils of the slave trade to a western readership, causing a particular stir in England and Ireland, where Olaudah delivered lectures and sold books. Abolitionism was still in its relative infancy and Equiano's account contributed to the movement. Dr. Alexander Falconbridge, a British physician and abolitionist, had published his influential book, An Account of the Slave Trade on the Coast of Africa, in the previous year. At that time, abolition came with colonization: freed slaves would be sent back to Africa. The British Anti-Slavery Society had founded a settlement for freed slaves: what would later become Freetown in Sierra Leone. In the United States, in 1822, the American Colonization Society established Liberia as a destination for freed slaves: there was no serious thought of integrating freed blacks into American society until the more militant abolitionism of the 1830s. In this sense, Equiano was a man before his time.
In recent years, there has been some question as to whether Equiano's account was truly biographical and if he was born in Africa at all. While it is likely that elements of fiction and second-hand information contributed to his account, the questioning of his African birth is based on fairly shaky evidence.
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Olaudah-Equiano
Saturday, October 12, 2019
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