Olaudah Equiano, or, Gustavus Vassa, the African


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. As a seaman, he travelled the world, including the Mediterranean, the Caribbean, the Atlantic and the Arctic, the latter in an abortive attempt to reach the North Pole. Coming to London, he became involved in the movement to abolish the slave trade, an involvement which led to him writing and publishing The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa the African (1789) a strongly abolitionist autobiography. The book became a bestseller and, as well as furthering the anti-slavery cause, made Equiano a wealthy man.

What is this man famous for and why should we take note of him?

Did you watch the documentary about Equiano they showed on I think BBC3 a few days ago? It made me ask the same question... According to the documentary he initially thought he could be "an equal" to the whites if he became like them. He learned to read and write and helped his master aquire wealth as he turned out to be a good trader. He was hoping that eventually his loyality will be rewarded by freedom and acceptance by the whites. Even after he was set free and after marrying a white woman, he was still treated as a second class citizen and then now became involved in the anti-slavery campaign. He was definitely a good business man...

Exactly my thoughts too which is why i asked!

I've never personally heard of anyone celebrating "him" per se. I think the interest in him and his life is in the idea that he is one of a handful of slaves/former slaves to write an extensive "autobiography" (I've heard disputes over how biographically accurate it actually is).

Not to mention that assuming all of his life experiences were true, it's a pretty rare and unique perspective, and I think that if anything has been celebrated it's that.

I also don't see why he would be celebrated by the black community, it seems like it's more-so the literary community that celebrates him because of his autobiography. I remember him being referenced in many of my literature courses in college, and "The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano" was an assigned reading for three of my classes.

Dont know about celebrating him. But his account of life in Africa prior to being kidnapped is a wealth of knowledge in itself.

Also give the guy a break. He was 10 years old when taken / so a young boy would be susuceptible to brain washing and cultural domination.

Yes he turned into a nauseating bible bashing hymn singing christian/ but given the times and the fact that his white friends kept him away from the plantation life/ its easy to see how his culture and identity were eroded.

I have far less respect for Mary Seacole who was a bigger coconut in my view and showed it to the extreme in her actions. But then she was half white so there you go.

africanmix wrote:

He was hoping that eventually his loyality will be rewarded by freedom and acceptance by the whites. Even after he was set free and after marrying a white woman, he was still treated as a second class citizen and then now became involved in the anti-slavery campaign. He was definitely a good business man...

I dont think your being fair to him. And mind the BBC. They were the ministry of propaganda 50 years ago. If I remember rightly he was allowed to trade small goods and provisions etc. much like people in Jamaica during slavery used to go to market.. and sell his wares and triple or quadrupule his profit. Sometimes the ships had slaves which were being carried. But you cant fight the man down for being in a isolated position trying to make some cash to buy his freedom. The boy turned man was in a worldwide system where he as a so called free man got skanked left right and centre by white man while hustling his money and goods.

He bruk up a white man who tried to take his goods and cash and escaped a witchunt by good timing and knowing the right people. His freind a cook and one of the ships/ an African/ was kidnapped before his eyes and sold into slavery to die a wretched death. A free man who had bought his freedom. Equino never stop write letter and ask the white men he knew of influence to plead his cause. It never stopped burning him to see black women routinely raped before his eyes. When he had to pick slaves/ he picked his countrymen so that they would feel at ease and he could ensure their care. Even if he wanted to be a complete coconut he would of been a fool to himself. Because he too must of known he could get kidnapped in the wrong town/ wrong place/ wrong time. He most certainly was no fool.

I dont see how you can fault a man for working within a cruel system in a isolated position (i.e a free African) for making money. He never forget his people. He never hunted man down in the woods for reward. He didnt to my knowldege buy and trade his countrymen or other Africans for money and profit. He wasnt a mentally twisted overseer ( like the brother in the film Sankofa).

The white media will play him as a coconut but I think he was far from. In fact read the history of any rebellions against slavery at the time and you will find 70%or more it was by men and women who were born free.

I must go to Turkey one day and find out if it still stay like how he said.

Actually just to correct you the book itself says that he owned slaves once he was a free man.

I read the whole of his narrative here: The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano

a few months ago.. I dont know about the book.

What I do know is he had a philandtrophist (sp) friend who had an idea of a system of slavery that was supposedly more humane and all that bull...

For a period of about six months he and this man ran this plantation / he picked his countrymen etc.. 3 months or so after the white man packed up and went home/ because war cut off supplies etc/ and so his enterprise flopped. But Equino was full up of Christian nonsense by then/ which had robbed him of his spirit/ and so was sold on the prevailing white humantitarian notions of the time. Thats what explains his escapade to me.

But speaking to the core of the matter I dont see how you can fault a 10 year old boy given special treatment and the chance to buy his freedom. To his detractors I ask what would you have done in his place. Mutiny on the navy ships? Set up camp in Regents Park in London with the rest of the brothers? Hijacked cargo ships from england to the Caribbean with his lone black face. In fact what shouldnt he of done? He was a coconut but so are most 10 year old African boys with no African family or people close by/ in all white environments.

In fact how does anyone think in a system of slavery that anyone bought their freedom without colluding in the whole operation at the time. Unless your saying rude bwoy no buy freedom/ him tek it.

Equino is a very important figure in African history of the period.

Olaudah Equiano's significance to the African Diaspora and wider African people, resides in the fact that he recorded his own experience.

The fact that he opposed the European Slave trade and was a prominent abolitionist highlights the fact, that it was the African who fought the greatest against enslavement; the greatness contradiction lay with those who did not wish to be chattel. It was Africans, who freed themselves and not the goodwill of nations who profited from the mass murder and torture of a race over many generations.

Africans have experience in Diaspora and that experience has been continuous – lasting for centuries and over generations. All healthy people need that sense of continuity for it then implies culture and helps guide, inform and give real meaning to one’s existence.

Ideology that puts the European as superior and at the center of the African’s world is written. Equiano’s Narrative, informs us of the African’s journey, from an African home, to being the object of European Chattel. Through Olaudah’s work, we are allowed to think about how the Diaspora came into being, through the words of one of our own – not via the ideas of a people, who even today, talk about the “legality of African genocide (“It is hard to believe that what would now be a crime against humanity was legal at the time,” -Tony Blair, New Nation, 28 Oct 2006).

The Narrative reminds us that we all once dwelt within our own traditional culture on the Continent and it is horror that brought about the Africa and African we know today.

The African Diaspora has always been dynamic and contains Africans who have been here for different lengths of time; all ethnicities have rich and proud experiences that we should all remember and celebrate. The fact that Equiano should have been kidnapped soo young by European imperialism, yet still have the pride in culture and race to make his name live forever as one who fought for Africa while living in racist britain, is reason to celebrate his life (well part of it anyway).


History is unimportant or of no use if it has no meaning or feeling. Ethnicity amongst Africans was used to further divide and fuel the export of African life to the Americas; today Africans wave their flags in the faces of other Africans, with a pride that maintains the divisions caused by our enemies. When Africans write and record their experiences, through time, it becomes easier to see that our own reality is either correct and has been shaped via the experience of our ancestors, or that the words and propoganda of the “new world” has shaped our consciousness: a consciousness created with the one purpose of keeping the African as an ahistorical/apolitical beast designed as fuel for global economies, in perpetuity.

Ideas do not change, unless force is applied to them. Hence why today, we can easily find ideas, identical to the same class of people that benefited from our enslavement. These ideas are the wilful thoughts of non Africans, that became the subconscious thoughts of Africans forced to live in societies that had us, just like today, at the bottom.

Equiano and other Africans, made sure their lives would be known by their descendants in Diaspora and back home. With such knowledge, Africans can begin to question their reality: a reality that has been distorted and then made normal and “modern”, by men who hated us.

Either we think from our own center as Africans, or anybody and anything will influence us; and whatever they tell us will make total and complete, sense.

"But how strange is the race of creole Negroes - of Negroes, that is, born out of Africa! They have no country of their own, yet they have not hitherto any country of their adoption. They have no language of their own, nor have they as yet any language of their adoption; for they speak their broken English as uneducated foreigners always speak a foreign language. They have no idea of country, and no pride of race. They have no religion of their own, and can hardly as yet be said to have, as a people, a religion by adoption. The West Indian Negro knows nothing of Africa except that it is a term of reproach. If African immigrants are put to work on the same estate with him, he will not eat with them, or drink with them, or walk with them. He will hardly work beside them, and regards himself as a creature immeasurably the superior of the newcomer."

Anthony Trollope (1850)
Celebrated European Novelist

Thanks for the all the responses thus far..however i have a question....If we acknowledge Olaudah Equiano for his recording of the African slave experience and as a prominent abolitionist then it begs the question why accept him but not Wilberforce, who it could be argued did a similar thing?

Ps.. playing devils advocate here...

Because he's white. Who feels it knows it.

Also because he still supportd simultaneously the christianizantion and missionary mission to Africa. Wilborforce still thought of African people as those who needed saving.

The sad thing is Equiano in the end thought much the same thing and was trying to convert Africans and even a Native American prince who he met on a voyage into Christianity.

For me its also a lesson in how religion and culture are often the same thing and how our adoption of the one inevitiably leads to adoption of the other.
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Breadfruit. Chilling quote. Thank god we have come a long way from such a mentality. It reminds me of the fact that African in Jamica prior to being exposed to Christianity still followed Akan ethnic groups naming of children according to day of the week. We went from that /to the saturday name taking on the meaning of 'fool'. What a ting.

It's all in that quote there - no need to go any further.








"BT

Hear that Bredda! Rastamen taught me years ago there are those who have culture and those who do not. Those who understand and those who are dumb.


My love of "The Rock" lies in that African resistance that can be seen anywhere you find Africans who love themselves. Through culture, all can be seen.

Ancient Power!