Olaudah Equiano

Olaudah Equiano (born c. 1745, Essaka [now in Nigeria]?—died March 31, 1797, London, England) was an abolitionist and writer whose autobiography, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano; or, Gustavus Vassa, the African, Written by Himself (1789), became the first internationally popular slave narrative. In it, Equiano expresses a strong abolitionist stance and provides firsthand testimony of the transatlantic slave trade as well as a detailed description of life in what is present-day Nigeria.

According to his own account, Equiano was captured in his Igbo village at age 11, sold into slavery, and taken to the West Indies. From there he went to Virginia, where he was enslaved by a sea captain, Michael Henry Pascal, who gave him the name Gustavus Vassa and with whom he traveled widely. Equiano was subsequently enslaved by two other people. He received some education during his enslavement, which ended when he purchased his emancipation in 1766. After Equiano settled in England, he became an active abolitionist, agitating and lecturing against the cruelty of British enslavers in Jamaica. He briefly was commissary to Sierra Leone for the Committee for the Relief of the Black Poor; he was replaced after he expressed his concerns for settlers—some 500 to 600 formerly enslaved people—and how they were poorly treated before their journey to Sierra Leone.

Publication of Equiano’s autobiography in 1789 was aided by British abolitionists, including Hannah More, Josiah Wedgwood, and John Wesley, who were collecting evidence on the sufferings of enslaved people. In The Interesting Narrative Equiano idealized Africa and showed great pride in the ways of life there, and he attacked those who trafficked in slavery across Africa. He set forth not only the injustices and humiliations endured by those enslaved but also his own experiences of kindness shown by Pascal and a community of English women, among others.

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Equiano’s autobiography was so popular that it ran through nine English editions and one printing in the United States and was translated into Dutch, German, and Russian during his lifetime. Because of its wide influence, Equiano is sometimes regarded as the originator of the slave narrative, although numerous autobiographies in various forms by people formerly enslaved in the United States were published beginning in the mid-18th century. The Interesting Narrative is an essential work because of Equiano’s vivid rendering of enslaved people’s experience of the slave trade, his picture of 18th-century Africa as a model of social harmony defiled by greed, and his eloquent argument in support of abolition.

At the turn of the 21st century, the scholar Vincent Carretta discovered documents that, he argued, suggested Equiano may have been born in North America, and he raised questions about whether Equiano’s accounts of Africa and the Middle Passage were based on memory, reading, or a combination of the two. The relevance and meaning of these documents have been disputed, and some scholars have also argued that The Interesting Narrative is like any other autobiography in its complex relationship to its author’s memory and knowledge. A critical edition of The Interesting Narrative, edited by Werner Sollors—which includes an extensive introduction, selected variants of the several editions, contextual documents, and analytical essays—was published in 2001.

Equiano died in London in 1797, but the location of his grave is no longer known. In 2009 a tablet memorializing Equiano was installed at London’s St. Margaret’s Church, where he was baptized in 1759.