Why olaudah equiano is important

A partnership project from eight museums in Greater Manchester. Enlarge image. Olaudah Equiano about was one of the most prominent people of African heritage involved in the British debate for the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade. The book was a best seller, and is still in print today. He travelled widely throughout Britain promoting the book. Resource Bank Contents. Captured far from the African coast when he was a boy of 11, Olaudah Equiano was sold into slavery, later acquired his freedom, and, in , wrote his widely-read autobiography, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African.

The youngest son of a village leader, Equiano was born among the Ibo people in the kingdom of Benin, along the Niger River. He was "the greatest favourite with [his] mother.

Slavery was an intregal part of the Ibo culture, as it was with many other African peoples. His family owned slaves, but there was also a continual threat of being abducted, of becoming someone else's slave. This is what happened, one day, while Equiano and his sister were at home alone. Two men and a woman captured the children. Olaudah Equiano died in , ten years before the slave trade was abolished and 36 years before Parliament outlawed slavery throughout the British Empire.

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Now every leading providential circumstance that happened to me, from the day I was taken from my parents to that hour, was then, in my view, as if it had but just then occurred. I was sensible of the invisible hand of God, which guided and protected me, when in truth I knew it not: still the Lord pursued me. Much of what we know today about Equiano comes through his own words.

According to his Interesting Narrative , the author was born in what is now eastern Nigeria, in Igboland, in In fact, the text goes so far as to argue that Igbos—all Africans in fact—originated from the Jews. As one of only a handful of 18th-century Afro-British writers, Equiano makes the countercultural argument that Igbos and Africans are equal image-bearers to Europeans, and they live in functioning societies complete with a sexual division of labor, a robust system of justice, and a complex religious system.

Further, he refutes the idea that darker skin denoted inferiority, instead, drawing upon European writings that argued that climate produced dark skin.

Equiano was 11 years old when Igbo-speaking slave catchers stole him and his sister away from their home. Instead, he worked as a slave in numerous households in what is now Nigeria before reaching the coast. While enslaved in his homeland, kidnappers kept Equiano separated from his sister.

In his memoir, he writes that he grew to the point where he yearned for death. After about half a year, Equiano arrived on the west coast of Africa, where he was sold once more to European slave traders, and then boarded a slave ship bound for the Caribbean.

The slave vessel carried Equiano to Barbados, the eastern-most Caribbean island and an inglorious port of entry for thousands of captive Africans. Equiano remained in Barbados for only two weeks before embarking on another voyage to Virginia.