![]() ![]() This excerpt from his autobiography concerns material from the second chapter which describes his first-ever sea voyage –on a slave trading ship from the west coast of Africa after he had been enslaved and kidnapped in what is now southern Nigeria. By the 1780s, living in London, Equiano had become active in the British abolitionist movement, which in those years focused heavily on ending the African slave trade. Equiano (also called Gustavus Vassa) spent much of his adult life on seas, enslaved to an officer in the British Royal Navy, and then later, after he purchased his own freedom, as a free Black deckhand and sailor in numerous voyages around the globe and even to the Arctic. Olaudah Equiano’s autobiography was one of the most important abolitionist tracts of the eighteenth century. INTRODUCTION Equiano in his mid-50s (Wikipedia) ![]() They told us we were not to be eaten, but to work, and were soon to go on land, where we should see many of our country people. ![]()
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