As an Abolitionist, Olaudah Equiano stands as tall as William Wilberforce, Thomas Clarkson, Granville Sharp and any other, in bringing about the 25 March 1807 Act of Parliament. Yet, history books do not mention him as an Abolitionist. In his autobiography The Interesting Narrative, he tells us he was born in an Igbo village in the kingdom of Benin around 1745. When he was about eleven, he was kidnapped along with his sister, and after six months of captivity he was brought to the West African coast. Sold to slave-traders, Equiano was transported to Barbados. After a two-week stay in the West Indies Equiano was taken to the English colony of Virginia. He was later purchased by Captain Henry Pascal, a British naval officer, and served in the seven-year war with France. He was renamed Gustavus Vassa, and was beaten until he answered to his new name.

© Anti-Slavery International

Pascal took him to London, and he stayed with two relatives of his master: two women who helped him to read and write. After serving in the Seven Year War, he was sold by Pascal at Deptford to a Captain James Doran, who took him to the island of Montserrat, and resold him to a merchant named Robert King. Equiano saved whatever money he could, and in 1766 purchased his freedom for £40, perhaps more than a year’s pay in those days. In 1767 he return to London, and found work as a hairdresser in Coventry Court, Haymarket. The following year Dr Charles Irving, who was well known for his successful experiments in making fresh water from seawater, employed him at Pall-Mall. He later went on an expedition to the North Pole.
It was Equiano who reported the Zong disaster to Granville Sharp, asking Sharp to seek justice for the 133 slaves who were thrown overboard by slave traders. The traders later successfully claimed insurance for the dead slaves. Sharp took the trader to court, but was unable to gain justice for the slaves.
It was this case that raised Equiano awareness to work for the abolition of slavery. There were many obstacles. The slavery laws had to be abolished. It was in the 1780s that brought matters to a head. Other individuals also dedicated their time and energies to abolition. Among them were Ottobah Cugoano, Granville Sharp, William Wilberforce, Thomas Clarkson, and many others. Equiano formed a group called The Sons of Africa, and they also lobbied Members of Parliament, and the Lords. In 1787, Equiano was appointed Commissary for a project to settle former black slaves in Sierra Leone. He was later sacked because he was outspoken against corruption among some of the people who were involved. During that year one of the Sons of Africa, Ottobah Cugoano, published a book, Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil of Slavery. Cugoano was the first African to put in writing a formal and bold attack on the slave trade and slavery.
The following year Equiano (1789) published his autobiography ‘The Interesting Narrative’, regarded as the most important single literary contribution to the campaign for the abolition of the Slave Trade. In 1791 Wilberforce was urged by John Wesley to do his best to bring about abolition. Wesley had read Equiano’s book, and was inspired to write to Wilberforce whom he knew well.

Equiano travelled throughout Britain promoting the book and lobbying for abolition. It became a bestseller and was also published in Germany (1790), New York (1791) and Holland (1791). He also visited Ireland where he made several speeches on the evils of the slave trade. In Equiano's lifetime, his Narrative went through nine British editions; many other editions followed after his death in 1797.
Equiano's was the only account of the Transatlantic Trade and of Slavery in Africa, on the Middle Passage, as well as in the West Indies, North America, Holland, France, Portugal and Britain. His first reviewers quickly acknowledged the significance of the Narrative, which also greatly influenced the development of the nineteenth-century African-American slave narrative.

In spite of the popularity and power of the book and the cause it promoted, Equiano did not live to see the abolition of the Transatlantic Slave Trade, which was legislated by an Act of Parliament ten years after his death on 31 March 1797.

His life and times will be celebrated in a major exhibition by Birmingham Museum & Gallery and The Equiano Society in 2007.

Arthur Torrington
Secretary, The Equiano Society