Olaudah Equiano: The Life Of Slavery In America

Olaudah Equiano undergoes multiple traumatic experiences as a slave; based on his experiences he discovers that there are many criticisms against the institution of slavery. From the time Olaudah Equiano was a small child he lived a life as a slave, Equiano along with his sister were kidnapped in Eboe and sold to slave traders. Equiano recounts the horrific experiences he shared with many others, and how he was ultimately stripped of his identity and lost all sense of his past history, culture, and family. Equiano is ultimately writing his stories to share with white European slaveholders, he wanted to show them what he and others like him were facing and why slavery should be abolished. Throughout all of Equianos experiences as a slave he realizes that it is not the practice of slavery that he is critiquing but the institution of it.

In the documents “Considering the Evidence: Voices from the Slave Trade” it shows how the Atlantic slave trade was an enormous enterprise and enormously significant in modern world history. In document 15.1 - The Journey to Slavery it talks about the voice of an individual victim of the slave trade known as Olaudah Equiano. Equiano was taken from his home and sold into the slave trade. He worked for three different families while in the slave trade but what is different about him is that he learned to read and write while being a slave. He traveled extensively as a seaman aboard one of his masters' ships, and was allowed to buy his freedom in 1766.

The autobiography of Olaudah Equiano, also known as Gustavus Vass, was first published in 1789. However, his exert from the narrative, “An African captive describes the middle passage” puts slave trade into perspective. This writing accounts for the horrible mistreatment of Equiano and other slaves along with him during his journey across the middle passage. “I now saw myself deprived of all chance of returning to my native country” [Document Collection 23]. Olaudah Equiano was kidnapped from his homeland in Nigeria and sold to slave traders heading west.

The definition of slavery can be known as a condition of a slave in respect to arduous labor work and/or extremely limited freedom. Therefore, three different forms of slavery are depicted in Olaudah Equiano’s “Chapter 2: Horrors of a Slave Ship.” These consist of the slavery that Equiano endured while still in Africa, suffered through on the slave ships, and saw the beginnings of in Barbados. The only thing we learn about slavery hardships, in Barbados, is the buyers of the slaves purchase them in such a fashion that leads to family and loved ones being forever separated, with no hope of reuniting. Equiano rhetorically asks the reader wonderfully, Are the dearest friends and relations, now rendered more dear by their separation from their

In Equiano’s case, this seems to have worked since he stated, “This made me fear these people the more…” (Equiano). Additionally, the horrors of these slave ships did not end with the brutality of the crew. “The closeness of the place, and the heat of the climate, added to the number in the ship, which was so crowded that each had scarcely room to turn himself…the air soon became unfit for respiration…and brought on a sickness among the slaves, of which many died” (Equiano). For these slaves, death came at the hands of their captors and through disease. The perilous journey that led Equiano to a new land was similar to the journey of many slaves and servants across the

This chapter addresses the central argument that African history and the lives of Africans are often dismissed. For example, the author underlines that approximately 50,000 African captives were taken to the Dutch Caribbean while 1,600,000 were sent to the French Caribbean. In addition, Painter provides excerpts from the memoirs of ex-slaves, Equiano and Ayuba in which they recount their personal experience as slaves. This is important because the author carefully presents the topic of slaves as not just numbers, but as individual people. In contrast, in my high school’s world history class, I can profoundly recall reading an excerpt from a European man in the early colonialism period which described his experience when he first encountered the African people.

Slavery is one of the most horrific things that human beings have ever been involved with. It is the unwilful subduing of another human under the guise of working, performing, or helping their master in a multitude of ways. Slavery was very prominent in the New World, specifically in the regions of Brazil and the Caribbean. Through firsthand accounts, sources, and historiographies, we will analyze the structures, experiences, and lifestyles of enslaved African people in these regions of the New World. Slavery is typically seen through a lens of oppression, mistreatment, and suffering.

The autobiographical tale of Equiano Travels by Olaudah Equiano is a powerful look at one of the most prolific and interesting men of color. The narrative allows readers to get to see the world through Equiano's own personal experiences. In the book, Equiano recounts his happy childhood in Eboe his and sister's kidnapping when he was eleven. He later recounts his early time as a slave in Africa being forced to endure a torturous journey across Africa. Than being separated from his sister, and never seeing her or his family again being whisked farther away from them and into the slave trade by boat where he remained enslaved for several more years.

‘I will teach you to keep your temper,’ said he, with an oath. ‘He was the best slave in the lot.’ (Romaigne, 593). The Captain did not care about the well-being of the African due to his kind heart, or his outstanding humanity, but rather because he was property and being damaged reduced the price he caught. This was the main difference in the European’s treatment towards these two groups of people.

In this article “African Dimensions Of The Stono Rebellion”, John Thornton a professor of history and African American studies, who wrote about the African slaves in the Americas, and specifically the servants in South Carolina during the early eighteenth century. In his writing, the author describes the personality of Africans and their desire to escape from slavery, going through obstacles on their path to freedom. John Thornton is primarily an Africanist, with a specialty in the history of West Central Africa before 1800. His work has also carried him into the study of the African Diaspora, and from there to the history of the Atlantic Basin as a whole, also in the period before the early nineteenth century. Thornton also serves as a consultant

The trade of African slaves in the 17th century was perceived as so commonplace that a good deal of the world's population gave it little or no thought. British involvement with slavery became unavoidable at the end of the 17th century, when abolitionist literature gained public attention. The first hand account of life as a slave in Olaudah Equiano's auto-biography was like no other piece of abolitionist literature at the time. The three methods of persuasion in his writing are ethical appealing ethos, logic engaging logos, and his most effective of emotional appealing pathos. Equiano's use of pathos in his auto-biography was effective in persuading the British that slavery is wrong, because of the emotional effects, such as misery, sympathy,

David Walker acknowledged that slavery had long been practiced in Africa, but he charged white Christian slaveholders with greater crimes against humanity and greater hypocrisy in justifying those crimes than any prior slave system had been guilty of. Twentieth century scholarship has lent much support to the contentions of Walker’s and others in the African American antislavery vanguard that slavery as perpetrated by the European colonizers of Africa and the Americas brought man’s inhumanity to man to a level of technological efficiency unimagined by previous generations. When Portuguese mariners began trading gold, ivory, and spices with the chieftains of the coast of West Africa in the mid-fifteenth century, they discovered that African prisoners of war and their children could be readily supplied for sale as slaves.

Equiano writes how the white men would throw the dead over board as if they were basically trash, slaves were beaten severely if they refused to eat or tried to escape. These severe acts of punishment

Slavery is still a concept that the horror and brutality that is learned about in books become just another set of facts to be assimilated impassively to continue working through large course loads of material to be memorized. Dispassionate and clinical summations of the lives of the allowed for the harshness of the existences of those in bondage to become words on a page since modern society is not exposed to those experiences any longer. However, first-hand recollections by former slaves, such as Mary Prince and Olaudah Equiano, somehow make the realities conveyed to become less opaque and more tangible. Mary Prince and Olaudah Equiano were both subjected to being slaves based on the color of their skin.

The Interesting Narrative of The Life of Olaudah Equiano, Chapter II This document was written as an autobiography by a former slave, Olaudah Equiano. This was the first slave narrative to reveal such detailed effects on one victim of the slave trade and provides an interesting insight into a time where few people survived to give an account of their experiences. Olaudah is a skilled and bright young man who wrote this as a way for the world to be aware of the horrors of the slave trade. This source is a interesting historical account of the Atlantic slave trade Through his writing, Equiano is appealing to the British government in a bid to plead his case for the release of slaves.