Does Equiano Still Matter?

Abstract

Historically Speaking January/February 2006 Olaudah Equiano, the South Carolinian? A Forum OLAUDAHEQUIANO 'S THE INTERESTING NARRATIVE OF THE LIFE OF OLAUDAH Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African is widely used in college classrooms to acquaint students with the horrors ofthe transatlantic voyage on slave ships as well as with life in 18thcentury West Africa. As Vincent Carretta notes below, "it is difficult to think ofany historical account ofthe Middle Passage that does not quote... [Equiano s] eyewitness description ofits horrors as primary evidence. " But what ifthis definitive account was created by an ex-slave born in South Carolina, not Africa? In the newlypublished Equiano the African: Biography of a Self-Made Man (University ofGeorgia Press, 2005), Carretta, who has also edited the Penguin edition ofEquiano s Interesting Narrative, argues that Equiano may havefabricated his African identity. That said, Carretta maintains that Equiano is still extremely valuable to historians because ofhis constructed identity as an "Atlantic creole. " Carretta 's thesis is gristfor a very livelyforum. He begins by laying out the contours ofhis argument developed in Equiano the African. Paul Lovejoy, Trevor Burnard, andJon Sensbach respond. Theforum concludes with Carrettas rejoinder. Does Equiano Still Matter? Vincent Carretta I have been invited to address the question ofwhether—despite the possibility that he fabricated his personal and African identities —the man best known today as Olaudah Equiano remains a central figure in the reconstruction ofAtlantic history, and to our understanding ofthe Atlantic world. Before I do so, let me briefly summarize his life, as he recounts it in his autobiography, and touch on the significant role he has played in historical and literary studies. According to The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African. Written by Himself (London, 1789), Equiano was born in 1745 in what is now southeastern Nigeria. There, he says, he was enslaved at the age ofeleven, and sold to English slave traders who took him on the Middle Passage to the West Indies. Within a few days, he tells us, he was taken to Virginia and sold to a local planter. After about a month in Virginia he was purchased by Michael Henry Pascal, an officer in the British Royal Navy who brought him to London. Pascal ironically renamed him Gustavus Vassa after the 16th-century Swedish monarch who liberated his people from Danish tyranny. During the 18th century slaves were often given ironically inappropriate names of powerful historical figures like Caesar and Pompey to emphasize their subjugation to their masters' wills. With Pascal, Equiano saw military action on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean during the Seven Years' War. In 1762, at the end of the conflict, Pascal shocked Equiano by refusing to free him, selling him instead in the West Indies. Escaping the horrors of slavery in the sugar islands, Equiano managed to save enough money to buy his own freedom in 1766. In Central America he helped purchase and supervise slaves on a plantation. He set off on voyages of commerce and adventure to North America, the Mediterranean, the West Indies, and the North Pole. He was now a man of the Atlantic. A close encounter with death during his Arctic voyage forced him to recognize that he might be doomed to eternal damnation. He resolved his spiritual crisis by embracing Methodism in 1774. Later, he became an outspoken opponent of the slave January/February 2006 Historically Speaking trade, first in his letters to newspapers and then in his autobiography. He married an Englishwoman in 1792, with whom he had two daughters. Thanks largely to profits from his publications, when Equiano died on March 31, 1797, he was probably the wealthiest, and certainly the most famous, person of African descent in the Atlantic world. Over the past thirtyfive years, historians, literary critics, and the general public have come to recognize the author of The Interesting Narrative as one of the most accomplished English-speaking writers of his age, and unquestionably the most accomplished author of African descent. Several modern editions are now available of his autobiography . The literary status of The Interesting Narrative has been acknowledged by its inclusion in the Penguin Classics series. It is universally accepted as...