By Chukwuemerie Anyene
Olaudah Equiano wrote to present the history of the slave trade and its concomitant brutalities and bore testimony to the humiliation of the black race.
He wrote to explain Africa unambiguously to the outsiders and not only assent but also justify his own existence. Equiano who was christened Gustavus, championed the role of human dignity.
His book titled Equiano’s Travel and subtitled, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano or Gustavus Vassa, published in 1879, has several themes which are not unrelated to the prevailing social conditions of the black people in the white man’s land.
He analyses not only the horrors but also the implications of the dehumanizing practice of slavery and slave trade when you make men your slaves; you deprive them of half their virtue. Gustavaus Vassa established his reputation with an autobiography, first printed in England.
Granvile Shaarp was also quoted as saying Gustavus Vassa, a negro called on me with an account of a hundred and thirty negroes being thrown alive into the sea on board as English slave ship. Olaudah Equiano wants the authorities to know how terrible the blacks feel when they are being ill-treated and me across and tied my feet while the others flogged me.
Of the horror of slavery are rape and merciless killing of the black people. Equiano uses rhetorical language that appeals to the humanistic feelings of the white enslavers.
He explains what it takes to be a slave by asking: “is it not enough that we are torn from our country and friends to toil for your luxury and lust to gain? Must every tender feeling be likewise sacrificed to your avarice? Why are parents to lose their children, brothers and sisters or husbands and their wives? When it comes to projecting Africans image and asserting the humanity of African.”
“Our land is uncommonly rich and fruitful and produces all kinds of vegetables in great abundance. We have plenty of India corn and vast quantities of cocoa. Our pineapples grow without culture, they are about the size of the largest sugar loaf and finally flavoured,” he asserted.
The discrimination and subjection of African-Americans to attitude inspired Equiano to prove that Africans are equals of European-American authors. He challenges the hypocritical nature of white Christians.
He asserts that Africans are more Christainly, “O ye Normial Christians, might not and African ask you, learn you this from your God who says unto you do unto men as you would like men should do unto you.”
Equiano proclaimed his African birth without equivocation. In his description of his early travel, he noted, “I was again sold and carried through a number of places, till after travelling a considerable time, I came to a town called Timmah, in most beautiful country I had yet seen in Africa.”
He further stated that “all the nations and people I had hitherto passed through resembled our own in their manners, customs and language.”
This is a clearly un-invented simple and honest comparism of his natural experiences and consciousness. It is not just that he is very emotional but his attachment to things and values that were African could only normally derive from his African birth.
Equiano says, “we are almost a Nation of dancers, musicians and poets. He justifies his own existence, saying: This kingdom is divided into many provinces or districts. In one of the most remote and fertile of which is called Eboa, I was born in the year 1745 situate in a charming fruitful vole, named Essaka.”
In 1789, in England, a freed slave and abolitionist, Olaudah Equiano published his autobiography, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano or Gustavus Vassa, The African.
It is the prototype of the genre of the slave narrative and the beginning of the canon of African literature in English. Olaudah was abducted from his village in West Africa at the age of eleven and was sold into slavery. Approximately thirty years later, as an emancipated slave, he published his autobiography.
At the time of his death in 1797, the memoir and polemic against slavery had gone through nine editions including European translation and was a best seller of the time. The American edition was in 1791 while the German and Dutch editions were in 1790 and 1791 respectively. By 1837, there were nine more editions.
The work of Olaudah Equiano added powerful influence to the nascent abolitionist movement. In the book, he covers from his boyhood in Africa and recounts his childhood memories of the society he was born into. He was a young man destined for an important role in the society.
Slavery changed his role but did not diminish its importance. His early slave home was in Africa where the institution of slavery was much humane than the New World. The work recounted his experience as a white slave, the journey to the New World on a slaveship.
Equiano described the graphic horror and terror, the voyage, whipping, shrieks and grief, the ill-treatment he received and sufferings of his fellow enslaved Africans which inspired Equiano to fight the slave trade.
He married an English woman, Sussan Cullen. They had two daughters, one of whom inherited a sizeable estate from the father when Equiano died in 1797 at the age of 52. He was buried in Cambridgeshire, England.
Ten years after Equiano’s death, Great Britain abolished slavery. He had regarded and referred to the black slaves in West Indies and Europe as his brethren.
Again, all linguistic, cultural, economic, preoccupational and geographical information, understandably imperfect as they were, could be remembered by a person who had first-hand experience of operating socio-cultural environment. It has been established that Equiano was an authentic African of Igbo origin.
The question now is: what is Equiano’s actual Igbo community? as seen by Jone in Curtin, 1967; Achebe 1964; Nwogu, 1964. The foremost and no doubt, the most critical Igbo historian, A.E. Afigbo, 1981 referred to him as an Ibo man to the marrow and so he was an Africa.
According to Equiano in 1792, three years after his Interesting Narrative was published, his nativity was questioned by two London newspapers, The Oracle and The Star, which suggested that he never was born upon that continent (Africa) but was born upon Danish Island of Santa Cruz, in the West Indies. The newspaper propagated that he was making false claim of African birth just to deceive the world.
Equiano, however, was alive to recognize and respond to the spurious and malicious charge in a (manner that would have satisfied future contestants to his claim to African descent.
Writing to the founder of the London Correspondence Society, Thomas Hardy, Equiano lamented, “Sir, I am sorry to tell you some rascals have asserted in the newspapers viz Oracle of the 25th April, and the Star, 27th that I am a native of a Danish Island, Santa Cruz, in West Indies.
He requested Hardy to get a copy of The Star and take care of it. He signed Gustavus Vassa, the African. In the next edition of his book, The Interesting Narrative, he reacted to debunk the gossips no doubt generated by the newspaper publications.
“An invidious falsehood having appeared in the Oracle of the 25th, and Star of 27th April 1792, with a view to hurt my character, and to discredit and prevent the sale of my native, asserting, that I am born in the Danish Island of Santa Cruz, in the West, it is necessary that in this edition I should take notice thereof and it is only needful for me to appeal those numerous and respectable persons of character who knew me when I first arrive England, and could speak no language but that of Africa,” he said.
The erudite and much celebrated scholar, Catherine Acholonu, 1989, after a two-year intensive search, and study in Isseke, a rustic community in Ihiala Local Government Area, Anambra, established that Equiano was an Igbo from Isseke.