Formerly enslaved African helped to abolish slavery Part 1 – His early life

The following is the first in a three-part series on the life of Olaudah Equiano, a former enslaved African who was credited with helping in the abolition of slavery.

THERE WERE many reasons why slavery was abolished at the time it did. White abolitionists and anti-slavery agitators were at the front of the movement to abolish one of the most brutal and evil systems of servitude in history.

However, in their own active and passive ways, enslaved people in the West Indies resisted and rebelled against the plantocracy and all that it contained. Those who tried were not singled out and written about gloriously. They were invariably silenced with death and doom.

Yet, there was one man, Olaudah Equiano, born in Essaka, an Eboe (also Ibo and Igbo) province in what is now southern Nigeria, whose story had a significant impact on the anti-slavery movement in England, and subsequently the abolition of the trade in Africans, and slavery itself.

According to his 1789 autobiography, The Interesting Narrative Of The Life Of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African, Written by Himself, Equiano was born about 1745. He recounted how, as a little child, traders in people attempted to kidnap him and other children in his village. Adults intervened, and the children were rescued. However, when he was 11, he was not so lucky. The kidnappers returned when he and his sister were alone at home.

BOUGHT AND SOLD SEVERAL TIMES

They were kidnapped and taken far from their home, separated and sold to other traders. His attempt to escape was futile, and he found himself in a cycle of being bought and sold several times. By chance, he was reunited with his sister, but fate separated them again.

About seven months after he was kidnapped, he arrived at the coast where he was put onboard a ship. He was transported with approximately 244 Africans across the Atlantic Ocean to Barbados from which he was transported to the British colony of Virginia, in what is now the United States of America.

There were attempts to discount Equiano’s story of his origin in Africa even though there is overwhelming evidence that he was an Eboe. One of his doubters was literary scholar Vincent Carretta, who maintained in his 2005 biography of Equiano, that the African could have been born in colonial South Carolina rather than in Africa, based on a 1759 parish baptismal record that lists Equiano’s place of birth as Carolina and a 1773 ship record that indicates South Carolina.

Even now, BBC online says, “In the absence of written records it is not certain whether Equiano’s description of his early life is accurate. Doubt also stems from the fact that, in later life, he twice listed a birthplace in the Americas … Apart from the uncertainty about his early years, everything Equiano describes in his extraordinary autobiography can be verified.”

In Virginia, Michael Henry Pascal, a lieutenant in the Royal Navy bought and renamed Equiano, Gustavus Vassa, after the 16th-century King of Sweden Gustav Vasa, who began the Protestant Reformation in Sweden.

But, he was renamed twice before, Michael, while he was onboard the ship that brought him to the Americas, and Jacob, by his first owner. He was beaten when he was renamed Michael, preferring to be called Jacob, so he acquiesced.

TIMES OF BATTLE

Pascal took Equiano with him to England, Equiano becoming his valet during the Seven Years’ War with France from 1756 to 1763. Trained in seamanship, Equiano assisted the ship’s crew in times of battle. His duty was to haul gunpowder to the gun decks. Pascal, realising that Equiano was a brilliant youngster, sent him to his sister-in-law in Great Britain so he could attend school to learn to read and write.

They converted him to Christianity and baptised him at St Margaret’s, Westminster, London on February 9, 1759. His god-parents were Mary Guerin and her brother, Maynard, who were Pascal’s cousins. But, Pascal eventually let Equiano go, selling him in December 1762 to Captain James Doran, of the Charming Sally, who brought him to Montserrat in the Leeward Islands. There, he was sold to Robert King, an American Quaker merchant from Philadelphia who traded in the Caribbean.

King forced Equiano to work on his shipping routes and in his stores. In 1765, when Equiano was about 20 years old, King promised to sell him his freedom for £40. He also taught Equiano to read and write more fluently, and allowed him to engage in profitable trading for both of them. Equiano peddle fruits, glass tumblers, and other items.

King sold Equiano his freedom in 1766, but urged him to stay on as a business partner. Yet, Equiano was uncomfortable in the colonies of America. The region was a dangerous place for freed Africans, who could easily lose their freedom. While he was loading a ship in Georgia, he was almost taken back into slavery. By about 1768, Olaudah Equiano had returned to Britain, where his very interesting life continued to unfold.