Black History Month 2: Olaudah Equiano

Since 1987, October has been designated as “Black History Month” in the United Kingdom. This is an annual opportunity to reflect specifically on the men and women of the African diaspora, and to commemorate their courage and contributions. Over the course of the rest of the month, I will be publishing brief articles relevant to black history month - especially but not necessarily limited to short biographies of often neglected or largely forgotten black men in Britain that I hope might prompt further reading and research. 

Olaudah Equiano

It is therefore, I confess, not a little hazardous in a private and obscure individual, and a stranger too, thus to solicit the indulgent attention of the public; especially when I own I offer here the history of neither a saint, a hero, nor a tyrant.

These words form part of the opening paragraph to The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African. This autobiographical work, published in 1789, would become one of the most significant documents in the battle against the enslavement of Africans in the British Empire.

Olaudah Equiano, known to his friends in Britain as Gustavus Vassa, belonged to the Igbo people of modern-day South-eastern Nigeria. Although a couple of documents have been found that suggest he was actually born in South Carolina, these can be accounted for without discarding the weight of evidence in his own account that he was born in Africa and was intimately familiar with the Igbo customs and culture of his time.

Equiano was kidnapped as a child with his sister from their home in Isseke, they were separated, and he spent time as a slave to various owners in Africa before being passed on to European traders, who transported him to Barbados and then to Virginia. His native name was taken from him on the ship and replaced with “Michael”. His first owner renamed him “Jacob”. Then around 1754, Equiano was sold to a Royal Navy Officer, Michael Pascal, who renamed him yet again (as though he were a pet to be renamed at the whim of its owners) Gustavus Vassa. Olaudah resented this latest name change, and insisted that he preferred to stick with “Jacob”, but was beaten into accepting the new name, which he kept for the rest of his life, only returning to the name he received at birth when publishing his autobiography.

Equiano returned to England with Pascal, where he was taught English, and favoured with the unusual opportunity of being sent to school. He was baptised into the Church of England at this time, but his genuine conversion to Christianity would come later.

Equiano accompanied Pascal through the Seven Year’s War (a conflict known to some as World War Zero, as it spanned as far west as America and as fear east as Philippines, involving each of the European superpowers of the day and fought over five continents). His primary task was supplying gunpowder to one of the ship’s cannons, and despite fierce fighting that saw Pascal injured and many of Equiano’s companions blasted to pieces, he survived unscathed. His years of faithful service, his baptism, and the prize money from his military service that Pascal pocketed led Equiano to believe that legally he was a free man and could not be sold. These hopes were however dashed and his now somewhat soured master sold him to a Captain bound for the West Indies. He was then sold to a Quaker merchant named Robert King, who provided him with further education, allowed him to trade on his own account, and eventually let him buy his freedom. Equiano was little older than 20.

After working as a seaman (including an ill-fated Naval expedition to discover a route to India via the North Pole) and attempting to ameliorate the conditions of slaves and share the gospel with them as an overseer on a failed sugar cane plantation, Equiano returned to England where he became a leader in the campaign to abolish the slave trade.

At some point in the midst of all this, Equiano moved from being an Anglican church goer to an evangelical Christian. He writes movingly and at length of this time in his life. Afflicted by a profound awareness and deep conviction of his own sinfulness, together with suicidal thoughts and a depressingly nihilistic outlook on life he began to properly investigate religious systems, reading the Bible and studying Judaism and Islam. Invited to a Christian gathering one night, he was moved by the kindness and love of the Christians he encountered - for God and for each other.

when they spoke of a future state, they seemed to be altogether certain of their calling and election of God; and that no one could ever separate them from the love of Christ, or pluck them out of his hands. This filled me with utter consternation, intermingled with admiration. I was so amazed as not to know what to think of the company; my heart was attracted and my affections were enlarged. I wished to be as happy as them, and was persuaded in my mind that they were different from the world 'that lieth in wickedness,' 1 John v. 19. Their language and singing, etc. did well harmonize; I was entirely overcome, and wished to live and die thus...This last twenty-four hours produced me things, spiritual and temporal, sleeping and waking, judgment and mercy, that I could not but admire the goodness of God, in directing the blind, blasphemous sinner in the path that he knew not of, even among the just; and instead of judgment he has shewed mercy, and will hear and answer the prayers and supplications of every returning prodigal:

O! to grace how great a debtor

Daily I'm constrain'd to be!

After this I was resolved to win Heaven if possible; and if I perished I thought it should be at the feet of Jesus, in praying to him for salvation.

By his own admission, he was not yet trusting in the good news of Christ, but after consistent church attendance where the Scriptures were preached, and several interactions with Christian men and women who gave him reading literature and explained God’s law and the gospel to him, he was on a journey at sea reading the Bible and suddenly it all made sense.

The amazing things of that hour can never be told—it was joy in the Holy Ghost! I felt an astonishing change; the burden of sin, the gaping jaws of hell, and the fears of death, that weighed me down before, now lost their horror; indeed I thought death would now be the best earthly friend I ever had. Such were my grief and joy as I believe are seldom experienced. I was bathed in tears, and said, “What am I that God should thus look on me the vilest of sinners?” I felt a deep concern for my mother and friends, which occasioned me to pray with fresh ardour; and, in the abyss of thought, I viewed the unconverted people of the world in a very awful state, being without God and without hope.

Equiano wanted to return to Africa as a missionary, but was refused ordination by the Church of England. He devoted himself instead to living a life of Christian devotion in England:

·       He campaigned with abolitionist Granville Sharp to bring the crew of the slave ship Zong to justice for massacring their human cargo - 142 living men and women were thrown overboard allegedly to save water, and later claim insurance on them. Though unsuccessful the campaign raised awareness of the evil barbarity of the slave trade.

·       Equiano joined others on the Committee for the Relief of the Black Poor, seeking the relief and ultimately return to Africa of impoverished former slaves either brought as slaves to London and eventually freed, or set free by the British Army for leaving their rebel masters to fight for King George III in the American Revolutionary War.

·       In 1789, Equiano published his autobiography, The Interesting Narrative. It spread rapidly, becoming the first influential slave narrative, and one of the first widely-read books by a sub-Saharan African in the Western world. This literary demonstration of slavery’s inhumanity and slaves’ humanity would play a vital role in altering public opinion and political action in the British Empire. Additional to this, Equiano gave lectures and provided occasional commentary to the British press.

Equiano married an English woman, Susannah, in 1792 and together they had two daughters - Anna Maria and Joanna. Susannah died in 1796, to be followed by Equiano in 1797, and their eldest daughter shortly thereafter at the age of four. Their daughter Joanna would live until 1857, marrying Henry Bromley at the Parish Church of St. James, Clerkenwell in 1821. Her husband would become an Independent pastor in Devon and later, Essex. The Bromleys are both buried in Abney Park Cemetery, Stoke Newington.

Equiano was buried on 06 April 1797 at Whitefield’s Methodist Chapel on Tottenham Court Road. He lived a full and fascinating life, much of which we know about through the writings he left behind. Equiano's purpose was not simply to inform, but to transform - socially and spiritually for the glory of God. As the penultimate sentences of The Interesting Narrative say

I early accustomed myself to look for the hand of God in the minutest occurrence, and to learn from it a lesson of morality and religion; and in this light every circumstance I have related was to me of importance. After all, what makes any event important, unless by its observation we become better and wiser, and learn 'to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly before God'?

For further reading:

Vincent Carretta, Equiano, the African: Biography of a Self-made Man, (UoG: 2005)

Samantha Manchester Earley , “Writing from the Center or the Margins? Olaudah Equiano's Writing Life Reassessed”, African Studies Review, Vol. 46, No. 3 (Cambridge University Press: Dec., 2003), pp. 1-16 https://www.jstor.org/stable/1515039?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

Olaudah Equiano, The Interesting Narrative and Other Writings (London: Penguin Classics, 2003); the full text of Equiano’s Interesting Narrative is available free online at: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/15399

Adam Hochschild, Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire's Slaves, (London: Macmillan 2012)

Paul E. Lovejoy, "Autobiography and Memory: Gustavus Vassa, alias Olaudah Equiano, the African", Slavery and Abolition 27, no. 3 (2006): 317-347 http://www.yorku.ca/nhp/equiano/articles_and_debates/Lovejoy%20Vassa%20Slavey%20and%20Abolition.pdf

O. S. Ogede, "'The Igbo Roots of Olaudah Equiano' by Catherine Acholonu", Africa: Journal of the International African Institute, Vol. 61, No. 1 (1991) https://www.jstor.org/stable/1160281?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

Support my writing with a tip below: