Olaudah Equiano: The former slave who made the world face up to the human impact of slavery

He stated in his autobiography that he was born in 1745 in the Igbo region of present-day Nigeria, where his father held a position of authority within their village community, although some records suggest he may have been born in South Carolina a few years earlier.

When he was about eleven, in approximately 1754, raiders kidnapped him and his sister and sold them to African traders who transported him to the coast, likely to ports used by European slavers such as Bonny or Calabar.

He was forced onto a slave ship and endured the Middle Passage to the Americas.

The voyage lasted several weeks, and he witnessed disease, overcrowding, and violence that killed many of the hundreds of captives on board.

Those memories later became central to his autobiography. 

Equiano’s circumstances changed when Michael Henry Pascal, a lieutenant in the Royal Navy, purchased him.

Pascal gave him the name Gustavus Vassa, which Equiano had to use for many years.

As Pascal’s enslaved servant, he travelled widely during the Seven Years’ War, and he may have been present on ships that fought in key naval campaigns.

English sailors taught him to read and write, and on 9 February 1759, he was baptised in London.

Those experiences, together with his growing literacy, prepared him for his later role as a writer and activist.

After years of trading goods at ports where ships docked, including Montserrat in the Caribbean, he saved enough to buy his freedom in 1766 for £40, and the final manumission process finished the following year. 

As a free man, Equiano built a career as a merchant sailor and travelled widely across the Atlantic world.

His work took him to the Caribbean, North America, Europe, Turkey, and even the Arctic during the 1773 expedition led by Captain Constantine Phipps.

This gave him a clear understanding of the trade networks that depended on enslaved labour.

He traded in goods such as sugar, rum, and furs, and his experience in commerce increased his knowledge of the Atlantic economy.

In the late 1780s, he settled in Britain where he became active in the abolitionist movement.

He joined the Sons of Africa after its formation in 1787 and had already contributed to the campaign by reporting the 1783 Zong massacre.

He collaborated with Granville Sharp and Thomas Clarkson, two of the most influential reformers of the period, who accepted his credibility as someone who had survived both the Middle Passage and slavery. 

In 1789, Equiano published his autobiography, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African.

He described his African childhood, his abduction, the terrible conditions of the Middle Passage, and the lives of enslaved Africans in the Americas.

He also recounted his path to freedom and his Christian faith and used both as arguments that Africans were equal to Europeans in intellect and morality.

The book achieved commercial success, ran to nine editions during his lifetime, and earned him considerable income.

Abolitionists distributed it widely, and it became a strong argument against the slave trade that influenced leading figures such as William Wilberforce. 

Equiano travelled throughout Britain to promote his book and spoke in towns and cities including Glasgow, Birmingham, and Edinburgh to audiences who were often unfamiliar with the realities of slavery.

His vivid descriptions of suffering affected readers’ feelings when he linked his life story to a moral argument for abolition.

Contemporary newspapers reported on his lectures, which attracted large crowds and started discussion about the slave trade.

He became an example of what freedom could allow an African to achieve, and his achievements challenged racist ideas that justified the trade.

His efforts helped shift public opinion and gave the abolitionist cause a convincing human voice. 

Eventually, Equiano died in London on 31 March 1797, a decade before Parliament voted to abolish the British slave trade.

In his will, he left money to schools and charitable causes, in honour of his Christian convictions.

His autobiography, however, continued to influence the campaign that eventually achieved this goal.

Historians still study his book as one of the earliest and most valuable firsthand accounts of slavery and the Atlantic world in the eighteenth century.

His life and words are still some of the most powerful evidence of the human suffering caused by slavery, and they continue to inform our understanding of that period in history.