Abstract
Abstract: In 2022, Google's "Equiano," a submarine fiber optic cable, began providing broadband internet access to the western coast of Africa, stretching along the Atlantic seafloor from Lisbon to Cape Town. This piece examines the overlapping colonial histories that draw together Google's subsea cable and its namesake, Olaudah Equiano, an eighteenth-century Black abolitionist best known for his immensely popular and influential autobiography, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano (1789). Placing these two "Equianos" in conversation can, this piece argues, helpfully situate Equiano's own controversial relationship with colonial capitalism, while at the same time making plain the imperialist logics that continue to drive infrastructural development in the postcolonial world.
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