Here's one of the earliest of the so-called “slavery narratives,” works from those who lived through slavery times. Thus, they are firsthand tales of one of the most miserable things humans have ever done to each other. Many of these were, unsurprisingly, published after African-American slavery came to an end. Not this one. It was published in 1789, while American slavery was still thoroughly entrenched, and even slavery in England was still legal; that didn't change for another 18 years, and this narrative was part of the effort to bring that about.
Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa as he was renamed upon entering into slavery, was born in what is now Nigeria in roughly 1745. When he was 11 or 12 years old, he and his sister were kidnapped, taken to the coast, and sold. His “interesting narrative” covers his life in Africa, his work as a slave in England and the South Atlantic, his struggle to buy his freedom, and parts of his life afterwards. We also read a considerable amount about his growth and development as a Christian.
I was a little surprised to read that the lives of Equiano's African countrymen resembled the lives of traditional Jews in many ways, such as the insistence upon washing before eating (not nearly as widespread among Christians then as it is now), and that he was aware of this. After he was taken away from his home, he spent many years at sea and around the south Atlantic islands. He mostly did his utmost to obey his masters, although in the “Narrative” he makes no bones about the cruelty he and others of his ancestry experienced at the hands of the white people he met.
The “Narrative” doesn't have a very clear through-line, especially in the beginning. That is, it focuses on individual incidents – various commercial voyages, difficulties with storms and rocks at sea, Equiano's attempts to earn money to buy himself – instead of on his own character. Apart, that is, from his spiritual development – he follows that pretty consistently. Whenever his life is threatened, for instance, he emphasizes his efforts to submit to the will of God, whether he lives or dies. There's nothing here that I can see regarding how he came to religious faith, although that would doubtless be a fascinating story in its own right.
In about the book's last third, when Equiano has purchased his freedom. he tells us much more about his search for a church that agreed with his own ideas and with his Bible reading. As usual, I struggled a bit with this material – as a Jew, it said less to me than I imagine it would to others. Still, Equiano's humility made his search more readable to me than other similar tales have been.
More interesting was the last chapter, in which he finally gets around to advocating abolition. In previous chapters, although he made clear how unjust and evil slavery is to him and others, he says nothing about the need to stop the practice. Indeed, in some of his voyages he participates in transporting black slaves from one place to another for purchase with no apparent qualms. In the last chapter, though, he argues very effectively that abolishing slavery would be not only moral and just, but good business. He points out that the African continent, being as fertile, populous, and enormous as it is, would be an ideal place to buy natural resources for transport to England, and an ideal market for finished goods. This would only work, he says, if the slave trade were removed and the people living there treated as partners rather than as goods themselves. And he's got a point. Unfortunately, he could not possibly know that in future years, this kind of mercantilism (requiring Africans, or other subject peoples, to provide raw goods at reduced prices and requiring them to buy finished goods at inflated prices) would be not only unjust, but a contribution to the dissolution of empires like the British.
Oh well. How could he know that? Olaudah Equiano was a sailor, later a hairdresser, and then an activist and a writer, not an economist. As we see here plainly, he was also a good man, and his autobiography is worth reading for that reason alone.
Benshlomo says, You can only judge a person by how they live in the world they're given.
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