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Olaudah Equiano

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Historical figures

   Olaudah quiano
   Olaudah quiano
   Frontpage of The interesting narrative of the life of Olaudah Equiano
   Frontpage of The interesting narrative of the life of Olaudah Equiano

   Olaudah Equiano (c. 1745 – 31 March 1797), also known as Gustavus
   Vassa, was an eighteenth century merchant in the American colonies and
   in Britain. He was a leading influence in the abolition of slavery.

Biography

Early life and slavery

   By his own account, Olaudah Equiano's early life began in the region of
   "Essaka" (in his spelling; now called Isseke) near the River Niger, an
   Igbo-speaking region of Nigeria, now in Anambra State. 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.

   At the age of eleven, he was sold to white slave traders and taken to
   the New World. On arrival, he was bought by Michael Pascal, a
   lieutenant in the Royal Navy. Pascal renamed him Gustavus Vassa,
   renaming being a common practice among slave owners.

   Being the slave of a naval captain, Equiano was afforded naval training
   and was able to travel extensively. He was sent to school in England by
   Pascal to learn to read. 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. After the war, Equiano felt he had done his duty and
   deserved his share of the prize money awarded to the other sailors,
   along with his freedom, but Pascal refused to grant it.

   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. 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,
   promising him in 1765, that for forty pounds, the price King had paid
   for Equiano, he 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. Equiano returned to Britain, where slavery was much
   more limited.

   In England, he received his wages from the Navy, but not from Pascal.
   He worked for a while as a hairdresser but the pay was not adequate, so
   he returned to working at sea.

Pioneer of the abolitionist cause

   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.

   Olaudah 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. He 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, fueling a growing
   anti-slavery movement in England and the USA.

   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 slaver 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.

Family in Britain

   At some point, after having traveled widely, Olaudah Equiano appears to
   have decided to settle in Britain and raise a family. Equiano is
   closely associated with Soham, Cambridgeshire, where, on the 7 April
   1792, he married Susannah Cullen, a local girl, in St Andrew's Church.
   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' novel
   non-denominational Abney Park Cemetery, in Stoke Newington.

Last days and will

   Although Equiano's death is recorded in London, the location of his
   burial is unknown. One of his last London addresses appears to have
   been Plaisters Hall in the City of London (from 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 (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. 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 . In December 1797, unaware that he 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.

Modern views

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.

   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.

   This current doubt about his origins arises from records that suggest
   Equiano may have been born in South Carolina. Carretta suggests that
   there are baptismal records and a naval muster roll linking Equiano to
   South Carolina. Other academics have reported an oral history record of
   his upbringing, as he claimed, in Isske, Africa, principally based on
   Catherine Obianuju Acholonu's study: The Igbo Roots Of Olaudah Equiano:
   An Anthropological Research ( 1989). A more recent paper (June 2005)
   that favours Olaudah Equiano's own account of his African birth, is the
   Canadian academic study by Paul Lovejoy, Autobiography and Memory:
   Gustavus Vassa, alias Olaudah Equiano, the African.

   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. It's possible that at one time he may
   have found it in his self-interest to lie by saying his birthplace was
   South Carolina. It could also have simply been a case of a language
   barrier. A further discussion of the arguments on this will be found at
   Retrieved from " http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olaudah_Equiano"
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