Olaudah Equiano

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Olaudah Equiano
Born	c. 1745 Essaka, Nigeria (disputed)
Died	31 March 1797 London, England
Other names	Gustavus Vassa
Occupation	Slave, Explorer, Writer
Known for	Influence over British lawmakers to abolish the slave trade
Spouse	Susannah Cullen
Children	Anna Maria Vassa and Joanna Vassa

Olaudah Equiano (c. 1745 – 31 March 1797), also known as Gustavus Vassa, was one of the most prominent people of African heritage involved in the British debate for the abolition of the slave trade. His autobiography depicted the horrors of slavery and helped influence British lawmakers to abolish the slave trade through the Slave Trade Act of 1807. Despite his enslavement as a young man, he purchased his freedom and worked as a seaman, merchant, and explorer in South America, the Caribbean, the Arctic, the American colonies, and the United Kingdom.

Contents 1 Early life and slavery 2 Pioneer of the abolitionist cause 3 Family in Britain 4 Last days and will 5 Modern views 5.1 Controversy of origin 5.2 Portrayal in mass media 6 References 7 External links 7.1 Dramatic recreations 7.2 Birthplace dispute

[edit] Early life and slavery

By his own account, early life began in the region of "Essaka" (in his spelling) near the River Niger, an Igbo-speaking region of modern day Nigeria. His father was an important elder in the village, who helped settle disputes. Equiano's people were tribesmen with few wants. At an early age, he was kidnapped by kinsmen and forced into domestic slavery in another native village in a region where the African chieftain hierarchy was tied to slavery. This was the first time he had ever seen white men, showing how isolated he was from the rest of the world.^[1][2]

Equiano lived with six brothers and a sister, and was part of a large family. He was the youngest son with one younger sister. At the age of ten and a half, Equiano and his sister were kidnapped by fellow Africans and sold to slave owners. Equiano was sold to white slave traders and taken to the New World, specifically Barbados. Equiano changed hands a few times before being shipped across the Atlantic Ocean. He was not purchased because of his small size; the work on a sugar plantation required strong people. He was then sent to Virginia. On arrival, he was bought by Michael Pascal, a lieutenant in the Royal Navy. Forcing slaves to accept a new name was common practice among slave owners when slaves changed hands. Pascal decided to rename him Gustavus Vassa, a Latinized form of the name Gustav Vasa, a Swedish noble who had become king of Sweden in the 16th century, Gustav I of Sweden. This was but one of many names Equiano had been given by slave owners through his life, however, this time Equiano refused and boldly told his new owner that he would prefer to be called Jacob. As a punishment, Pascal had him cuffed and told him that he would remain in shackles until he accepted the name chosen for him. According to Equiano's narrative, he remained shackled for a long time and was thus forced to accept an odd new name he initially detested. The reason behind the rather unusual choice of name for a slave is unknown; according to historian Simon Schama, a possibility is that Pascal may have served on a ship with that name and therefore felt a sentimental attachment to it.^[3] The most famous Vasa ship, built for participation in the Thirty Years' War when Sweden and England were allies, sank within one nautical mile of the start of her maiden voyage in 1628. The recovery attempts by the English engineers called in to assist proved fruitless; the ship was firmly stuck in the mud until 1961. During the period Equiano was enslaved by Pascal, the Seven Years' War had pitted Sweden against England and as a reference to the enemy's early 17th century flag ship Vasa, the name would have appeared mocking.

In the book about his life, Equiano wrote that the treatment of slaves working inside the slave owners' homes in Virginia was extremely cruel, including several unusual forms of punishments and customs such as the lee lee use of "iron muzzlesth of the enslaved to keep the house quiet, which hindered their ability to sleep and eat. The narrative conveys the fright and amazement Equiano experienced in his new environment. He thought that the eyes on pictures hanging on the wall followed him wherever he went, and a clock hanging from the chimney would tell his master about anything Equiano would do wrong.

Being the slave of a naval captain, Captain Pascal, Equiano was afforded naval training and was able to travel extensively. This was during the Seven Years War with France. Equiano was Pascal's personal servant but was also expected to contribute in times of battle; his duty was to haul gunpowder to the gun decks. As one of his favorite servants Equiano was sent to Ms. Guerin, Pascal's sister, to attend school and learn to read in England. At this time the other servants warned Equiano that if he wasn't baptized he wouldn't be able to go to Heaven. Eventually his master allowed him to be baptized in St. Margaret's church, Westminster, in February 1759. Despite the special treatment, after the war was won Equiano didn't receive his share of the prize money awarded to the other sailors, along with his freedom, even though he thought he deserved it. It was on these journeys that Equiano was taught how to read and write from various sources.

Later, Olaudah Equiano was sold on the island of Montserrat in the Caribbean Leeward Islands. Equiano's literacy and seamanship skills made him too valuable for plantation labour. It also made him less desirable to some slave traders. Equiano was too well educated for some and the fact that he knew how to navigate a ship scared many away from him. He was acquired by Robert King, a Quaker merchant from Philadelphia who traded in the Caribbean. King set Equiano to work on his shipping routes and in his stores. In 1765 King promised that for forty pounds, the price he had paid for Equiano, Equiano could buy his freedom. King taught him to read and write more fluently, educated him in the Christian faith, and allowed Equiano to engage in his own profitable trading as well as on his master's behalf, enabling Equiano to come by the forty pounds honestly. In his early twenties, Equiano succeeded in buying his freedom.

King urged Equiano to stay on as a business partner, but Equiano found it dangerous and limiting to remain in the British American colonies as a freed black. While loading a ship in Georgia, he was almost kidnapped back into slavery. He was released when the level of his education was made apparent. Equiano returned to England, where after Somersett's Case of 1772 (although the details are unclear when analyzed by lawyers) it was generally believed than no person could be a slave in England itself.

[edit] Pioneer of the abolitionist cause

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After several years of travels and trading, Equiano traveled to London and became involved in the abolitionist movement. The movement had been particularly strong amongst Quakers, but was by now non-denominational. Equiano himself was broadly Methodist, having been influenced by George Whitefield's evangelism in the New World.

Equiano proved to be a popular speaker and was introduced to many senior and influential people, who encouraged him to write and publish his life story. Equiano was supported financially by philanthropic abolitionists and religious benefactors; his lectures and preparation for the book were promoted by, among others, Selina Hastings, Countess of Huntingdon. His account surprised many with the quality of its imagery and description, literary style, as well as its narrative which was profoundly shaming towards those who had not joined the abolitionist cause. Entitled The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African, it was first published in 1789 and rapidly went through several editions. It is one of the earliest known examples of published writing by an African writer. It was the first influential slave autobiography, and its first-hand account of slavery and of the experiences of an 18th-century black immigrant caused a sensation when published in 1789, fuelling a growing anti-slavery movement in England.

Equiano's narrative begins in the West African village where he was kidnapped into slavery in 1756. He vividly recalls the pestilence and horror of the Middle Passage: "I now wished for the last friend, Death, to relieve me." As described in his book, the young Equiano was eventually shipped to a Virginia plantation where he witnessed slaves tortured with thumbscrews and the iron muzzle. Slavery, he explained, brutalizes everyone - the slaves, their overseers, plantation wives, and the whole of society.

The autobiography goes on to describe how Equiano's adventures brought him to London, where he married into English society and became a leading abolitionist. His exposé of the infamous slave-ship Zong - 133 slaves thrown overboard in mid-ocean for the insurance money - shook the nation. But it was Equiano's book that would prove his most lasting contribution to the abolitionist movement, a book which vividly demonstrated the humanity of Africans as much as the inhumanity of slavery.

The book not only furthered the abolitionist cause while providing an exemplary work of English literature by a new, African author, but also made Equiano's fortune. It gave him independence from his benefactors and enabled him to fully chart his own life and purpose, and develop his interest in working to improve economic, social and educational conditions in Africa, particularly in Sierra Leone.

Equiano recalls his childhood in Essaka (an Igbo village formerly in southeast Nigeria), where he was adorned in the tradition of the "greatest warriors." He is unique in his recollection of traditional African life before the advent of the European slave trade. Equally significant is Equiano's life on the high seas, which included not only travels throughout the Americas, Turkey and the Mediterranean; but also participation in major naval battles during the French and Indian War (Seven Years' War), as well as in the search for a northwest passage led by the Phipps expedition of 1772-1773. Equiano also records his central role, along with Granville Sharpe, in the British Abolitionist Movement. As a major voice in this movement, Equiano petitioned the Queen of England in 1788. He was appointed to the expedition to settle London's poor Blacks in Sierra Leone, a British colony on the west coast of Africa. Sadly, he did not complete the journey back to his native land.

[edit] Family in Britain

At some point, after having traveled widely, Equiano decided to settle in Britain and raise a family. Equiano is closely associated with Soham, Cambridgeshire, where, on 7 April 1792, he married Susannah Cullen, a local girl, in St Andrew's Church. The original marriage register containing the entry for Equiano and Susannah is today held by Cambridgeshire Archives and Local Studies at the County Record Office in Cambridge.

He announced his wedding in every edition of his autobiography from 1792 onwards, and it has been suggested his marriage mirrored his anticipation of a commercial union between Africa and Great Britain. The couple settled in the area and had two daughters, Anna Maria, born October 16, 1793, and Joanna, born April 11, 1795.

Susannah died in February 1796 aged 34, and Equiano died a year after that on 31 March 1797, aged approximately 52. Soon after, the elder daughter died, aged four years old, leaving Joanna to inherit Equiano's estate, which was valued at £950: a considerable sum, worth approximately £100,000 today. Joanna married the Rev. Henry Bromley, and they ran a Congregational Chapel at Clavering near Saffron Walden in Essex, before moving to London in the middle of the nineteenth century. They are both buried at the Congregationalists' non-denominational Abney Park Cemetery, in Stoke Newington.

[edit] Last days and will

Although Equiano's death is recorded in London, 1797, the location of his burial is unknown. One of his last London addresses appears to have been Plaisterer's Hall in the City of London (where he drew up his will on 28 May 1796).

Having drawn up his will, Olaudah Equiano moved to John Street, Tottenham Court Road, close to Whitefield's Methodist chapel (rebuilt for the Congregationalists in the 1950s and now the American Church in London, where there is a small, recent memorial); and lastly Paddington Street, Middlesex where he died. His death was reported in newspaper obituaries at the time, but seems not to have been widely known. He may have moved frequently and left an unclear trail to his burial place out of concerns for his safety and a desire to rest in peace. citation needed Factions of the political elite sought to suppress reformers and those linked to them in the 1790s, the time of the French Revolution and close on the heels of the American Revolution. Equiano had been an active member of the London Corresponding Society that campaigned to extend the vote to working men, and had seen his close friend Thomas Hardy, the Society's Secretary, prosecuted by the government (though without success) on the basis that this amounted to treason. In December 1797, unaware that Equiano had died nine months earlier, the government-sponsored Anti-Jacobin, or Weekly Examiner presumed him to still be alive, for it satirised him at a fictional meeting of the Friends of Freedom.

Olaudah Equiano's will demonstrates the sincerity of his religious and social beliefs. Had his daughter Joanna died before reaching the age of inheritance (twenty-one), half his wealth would have passed to the Sierra Leone Company for the continued provision of assistance to West Africans, and half to the London Missionary Society, which promoted education overseas. This organisation had been formed the previous November at the Countess of Huntingdon's Spa Fields Chapel. By the early nineteenth century, The Missionary Society had become well known worldwide as non-denominational, though it was largely Congregational.

[edit] Modern views

[edit] Controversy of origin

Vincent Carretta, a professor of literature and author of Equiano, the African: Biography of a Self-Made Man (2005), points out that a major problem facing any biographer is how to deal with Equiano's account of his origins. In his book, Carretta argues that Equiano may have fabricated his African roots and his survival of the Middle Passage not only to sell more copies of his book but also to help advance the movement against the slave trade.

As Carretta explains:

Equiano was certainly African by descent. The circumstantial evidence that Equiano was also African American by birth and African British by choice is compelling but not absolutely conclusive. Although the circumstantial evidence is not equivalent to proof, anyone dealing with Equiano's life and art must consider it.

Carretta has found baptismal records and a naval muster roll linking Equiano to South Carolina. Records have been found of Equiano's first voyage to the Arctic; they say that he was from Carolina, not Africa.^[4] The most troubling thing about this historical record for those who believe he was indeed born in Africa, is that Equiano himself would have been the source for this information, not a slave master who might have changed the locations. Again this is circumstantial evidence, but it is very difficult to dispute this evidence, so a group of academics, including Paul Lovejoy, are trying to find evidence to prove that Equiano was indeed from Africa. There is no current concrete evidence which supports Equiano's story of his origin.

Other academics have claimed an oral history record of his upbringing in a Nigerian town known as Isseke, principally based on Catherine Obianuju Acholonu's study: The Igbo Roots Of Olaudah Equiano: An Anthropological Research (1989). Prior to Dr. Acholonu's book there was no town bearing a name of that spelling. Acholonu's claims have been soundly dismissed by others, including Nigerian scholars who have pointed out grave errors in her research. For instance, Acholonu claims in her book to have interviewed living respondents in the 1980s who remembered growing up with Equiano before his capture in the mid-18th century.^{[citation needed]}

"Historians have never discredited the accuracy of Equiano's narrative, nor the power it had to support the abolitionist cause [. . .] particularly in Britain during the 1790s. However, parts of Equiano's account of the Middle Passage may have been based on already published accounts or the experiences of those he knew." [1]

[edit] Portrayal in mass media

A BBC production in 2005 employed dramatic reconstruction, archival material and interviews with scholars such as Stuart Hall and Ian Duffield to provide the social and economic context of the 18th-century slave trade.

Equiano was portrayed by the Senegalese singer and musician Youssou N'Dour in the 2007 film Amazing Grace.

African Snow, a play by Murray Watts, takes place in John Newton's mind. It was first produced at the York Theatre Royal as a co-production with Riding Lights Theatre Company in April 2007 before transferring to the Trafalgar Studios in London's West End and a National Tour. Newton was played by Roger Alborough and Equiano by Israel Oyelumade.

Stone Publishing House has published a book aimed at schoolchildren entitled Equiano: The Slave with the Loud Voice. Illustrated by Cheryl Ives, it was written by Kent historian Dr. Robert Hume, who had previously authored books about Dr. Joseph Bell, Christopher Columbus, and Perkin Warbeck. Also in 2007, David and Jessica Oyelowo appeared as Olaudah and his wife in "Grace Unshackled – The Olaudah Equiano Story", a radio adaptation of Equiano's autobiography. This was first broadcast on BBC 7 on Easter Sunday 8 April 2007.^[5]

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African Brycchan Carey's comprehensive collection of resources for the study of Equiano.
• Works by Olaudah Equiano at Project Gutenberg
• Audio recording of The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano at LibriVox
• Olaudah Equiano at the BBC
• Africans in America - Olaudah Equiano at PBS
• Equiano at Parliament and the British Slave Trade 1600-1807
• Olaudah Equiano: Black Britain's Political Founding Father at 100 Great Black Britons
• The Equiano Project The Equiano Society and Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery
• Remembering Equiano - Soham at the Time of the Abolition Soham Community History Museum & Soham Action 4 Youth

[edit] Dramatic recreations

• Let Justice Be Done Mixed Blessings Theatre Group. 2008 play with Equiano playing a possible part in a meeting with the Earl of Mansfield in the late 1770s
• African Snow Riding Lights Theatre Company. 2007 play featuring Equiano's story
• Amazing Grace official US website
• Amazing Grace official UK website
• A Son of Africa 1998 short film from California Newsreel

[edit] Birthplace dispute

• Autobiography and Memory: Gustavus Vassa, alias Olaudah Equiano, the African Paul E. Lovejoy. May-October 2005.
• "Where Was Olaudah Equiano Born?" [2] Brycchan Carey's list of Africanist/Americanist positions. (accessed 11 June 2007)
• Unraveling the Narrative Jennifer Howard. The Chronicle of Higher Education, September 9, 2005.
• Olaudah Equiano: A Critical Biography Brycchan Carey. 13 December 2005.