Equiano, the African: Biography of a Self-Made ManThis definitive biography tells the story of the former slave Olaudah Equiano (1745?–1797), who in his day was the English-speaking world’s most renowned person of African descent. Equiano’s greatest legacy is his classic 1789 autobiography, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African, Written by Himself. A key document of the early movement to ban the slave trade, as well as the fundamental text in the genre of the African American slave narrative, it includes the earliest known purported firsthand description by an enslaved victim of the horrific Middle Passage from Africa to the Americas. Equiano, the African is filled with fresh revelations about this many-sided figure. |
From inside the book
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Page 4
... nearly forgotten , but those of which I have been a witness for many years , that they might have influenced your decision . " He invokes , for the first time , a memory of Africa , but a memory very different in detail and tone from ...
... nearly forgotten , but those of which I have been a witness for many years , that they might have influenced your decision . " He invokes , for the first time , a memory of Africa , but a memory very different in detail and tone from ...
Page 15
... nearly the same as theirs , except that they were not permitted to eat with those who were free born and there was scarce any other difference between them , than a superior degree of importance which the head of a family possesses in ...
... nearly the same as theirs , except that they were not permitted to eat with those who were free born and there was scarce any other difference between them , than a superior degree of importance which the head of a family possesses in ...
Page 19
... Nearly half of the deaths of crew members of slave ships occurred while they waited offshore in the hostile disease environment to collect their human cargoes . Approximately 50 percent of the Europeans who went ashore in Africa died ...
... Nearly half of the deaths of crew members of slave ships occurred while they waited offshore in the hostile disease environment to collect their human cargoes . Approximately 50 percent of the Europeans who went ashore in Africa died ...
Page 21
... nearly a decade after it had abolished its own trade in black Africans . As a free adult Equiano observed the brutal treatment of white galley slaves in Italy . From the perspective of history we are living in an unusually slave - free ...
... nearly a decade after it had abolished its own trade in black Africans . As a free adult Equiano observed the brutal treatment of white galley slaves in Italy . From the perspective of history we are living in an unusually slave - free ...
Page 26
... nearly , that we understood each other perfectly . They had also the very same customs as we . There were likewise slaves daily to attend us , while my young master and I , with other boys , sported with our darts and bows and arrows ...
... nearly , that we understood each other perfectly . They had also the very same customs as we . There were likewise slaves daily to attend us , while my young master and I , with other boys , sported with our darts and bows and arrows ...
Contents
1 | |
17 | |
39 | |
Chapter Four Freedom Denied | 71 |
Chapter Five Bearing Witness | 92 |
Chapter Six Freedom of a Sort | 119 |
Chapter Seven Toward the North Pole | 135 |
Chapter Eight Born Again | 161 |
Chapter Ten The Black Poor | 202 |
Chapter Eleven Turning against the Slave Trade | 236 |
Chapter Twelve Making a Life | 270 |
Chapter Thirteen The Art of the Book | 303 |
Chapter Fourteen A SelfMade Man | 330 |
Notes | 369 |
Bibliography | 395 |
Index | 419 |
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Common terms and phrases
Abolition abolitionist African British African descent America appeared Atlantic autobiography Benezet Bight of Biafra black poor boat Britain British called captain century Christian Church Clarkson coast colonies command crew Cugoano death deck Eboe edition eighteenth eighteenth-century England English enslaved Africans European Farmer freedom French frontispiece George Granville Sharp Guinea Gustavus Vassa History House of Commons human identity Igbo Ignatius Sancho Indian Interesting Narrative Irving island Jamaica James John King land letter London Lord Mansfield master Middle Passage Montserrat Morning Post Mosquito Mosquito Coast muster list naval Negroes never North Norwich Olaudah Equiano owners Pascal passage Phipps Pitt planters Public Advertiser published Quakers Ramsay readers Royal Navy sailed Sancho seamen servant ship Sierra Leone slavery Society sold soon subscribers Thomas thought tion told transatlantic slave trade Vasa vessel voyage West Indies William writing