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Equiano, the African: Biography of a Self-made Man
 
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Equiano, the African: Biography of a Self-made Man (Hardcover)

by Vincent Carretta (Author)
5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
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Product details

  • Hardcover: 436 pages
  • Publisher: University of Georgia Press (31 Oct 2005)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0820325716
  • ISBN-13: 978-0820325712
  • Product Dimensions: 23.6 x 15.7 x 4.1 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 766,870 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Product Description

Product Description

An epic of slavery, freedom, and the will to succeed. This definitive biography tells the story of the former slave Olaudah Equiano (1745?-97), who in his day was the English-speaking world's most renowned person of African descent. Equiano's greatest legacy is his classic 1789 autobiography, "The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African." A key document of the early movement to ban the slave trade, it includes the earliest known firsthand description by a slave of the horrific Middle Passage from Africa to the Americas. "Equiano, the African" is filled with fresh revelations about this many-sided figure - most notably that Equiano may have been born not in Africa, as he claimed, but in South Carolina. For Vincent Carretta, such disconnects between the public persona and actual life of Equiano only increase his importance as a window into a number of complex, overlapping worlds. Equiano was a sailor, adventurer, entrepreneur, and jack-of-all-trades. Carretta distills years of scholarly detective work on Equiano's life and writings into a richly textured portrait of the man whose many transformations took him from slave to slave trader to anti-slave-trade advocate, and from pagan to Christian. This is "life and times" history at its best. Throughout, Carretta relates The Interesting Narrative to the historical record on Equiano, as well as to the century's economic, political, and religious undercurrents. Carretta argues that Equiano may have fabricated his African roots and his survival of the Middle Passage not only to sell more copies of his book but also to help advance the movement against the slave trade. Equiano, the African will leave readers with a fuller appreciation of the man's achievements and a deeper understanding of race and slavery in the Atlantic world.


About the Author

Vincent Carretta, professor of English at the University of Maryland, is currently a senior fellow at Harvard University's W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research. His books include scholarly editions of the works of Equiano and of Equiano's contemporaries Ignatius Sancho, Ottobah Cugoano, and Phillis Wheatley.

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Olaudah Equiano aka 'Gustavus Vassa, the African' - a possible fraud?, 15 Mar 2009
By Geoffrey Woollard (Cambridgeshire, England) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)      
Not being able now to afford as many books as I would want, I have taken to borrowing from my local library at Soham in Cambridgeshire and, on my last visit there, I came across what has turned out to be one of the most interesting, intriguing and thought-provoking tomes that I have ever read. I picked it up because I had read elsewhere of a Soham link with Olaudah Equiano, aka 'Gustavus Vassa, the African.' What I had picked up was that Equiano was married to a local white lady at St. Andrew's Church, Soham, in 1792, but I knew little else.

Professor Vincent Carretta, of the University of Maryland, has written what is clearly the definitive biography of Olaudah Equiano, hitherto supposed to have been born in 1745 in what is now Nigeria and transported, as a slave and via 'the Middle Passage,' to the West Indies, along with his subsequent adventures in the Americas, Europe and the Middle East until he was eventually regarded as a 'gentleman' - even if only by himself - and a leading anti-slave-trade campaigner in late-eighteenth-century London.

The main material for the biography is Equiano's autobiography, 'The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African, Written by Himself' (London, 1789), and Carretta examines the latter work, seemingly line-by-line and with forensic skill, comparing it with other records and newly-discovered information that is extremely relevant to the truth or otherwise of Equiano's assertions.

Not to put to fine a point on it, it now appears more than possible that the narrative of Equiano's early life in Africa is either the product of a very fertile imagination or the result of fraudulent intent. Moreover, if the early life in Africa is fictitious, how much reliability can one place upon his account of his travails during 'the Middle Passage'? And another thing has often puzzled me. Assuming that the slave traders' object was to get as many live slaves from Africa to the other side of the Atlantic, how come we hear so much of the suffering and deaths of the slaves? I suspect that it is because opinion was based - and is still based - on the publication in 1788 of a print purporting to be of the layout of the British slave ship 'Brookes,' showing the slaves packed as sardines. Quite frankly, I don't believe what I have seen reproduced again in this book: it's too far-fetched. My guess is that the passage was extremely hazardous for both the white crews and the black passengers and it appears that privations and losses were proportionate.

Carretta also draws attention to the possibility - nay, the likelihood - that Equiano's 'narrative' could have included plagiarism from other authors and also could have been produced in collusion with, or the help of, other contemporary campaigners. Thomas Clarkson and William Wilberforce are the best known of the anti-slave trade pantheon of heroes, but it was, of course, in their interest that a well-known black person's story should have been published when they were at their busiest. And so it transpired.

Another thought has also been provoked by this excellent book. I have read that the anti-slave-trade campaigners, Equiano included, made much of the slogan shown on the seal of the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade as designed for Josiah Wedgwood, one of their number, in 1787, which bears the legend, "Am I Not A Man And A Brother?" I can well understand that the effect of this on Englishmen and others who believed then that they were all descendants of Adam and Eve would have been both convincing and transformative as well as destructive to those who opined that Africans were in some respects inferior to Europeans and did not merit the same freedoms as the latter. Today, of course, only fundamentalists or ignoramuses still believe our respective peoples' biblical birth and more are content with Darwin's theory of evolution. If Darwin was right - and I believe that he was - then African peoples may have evolved differently or with less or greater speed than did white people. (I was much amused by the idea, supposedly espoused by Equiano, that we all descend from a 'tawny' coloured people and that those in more Northern parts became whiter due to the colder climate whilst those to the South became blacker for the same reason).

As soon as I opened this book, I knew that its contents were explosive and I recommend it most highly to readers, not because I want to see an explosion, but because I believe that it contains enough fresh information and fresh interpretation to ensure a substantial re-evaluation of accepted events and opinions. Professor Carretta has done us all a great service by his researches and his top-rate writings.
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