Daisy's Blog

Perhaps you’ve never heard of Olaudah Equiano, born in 1745, when the British Commonwealth was at the forefront of the slave trade. His name is virtually unknown in Italy but he played an important role in the abolition of slavery in the British Commonwealth.

A couple of days ago a BBC documentary told the story of this African man who was sold into slavery when he was a child. According to his autobiography he was born in Nigeria and then taken to the New World where he had many adventures and eventually managed to buy his own freedom from his Quaker owner.

He learned to read and write and ended up in London where he became acquainted with the people who counted. He then published his famous book The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African in 1789.

In the book, which is quite extraordinary for its eloquence, reasoning and lucidity, he proposes the abolition of slavery not only for moral reasons but also for economic reasons, which he knew was the key to having the abolition of slavery passed in Parliament.

He proposed trade between the British Commonwealth and Africa instead of the stealing away of its citizens, as the right solution. He argued that if Africans were allowed to remain in their own country and become producers and consumers, this trade would certainly increase dramatically with beneficial effects for everybody concerned.

Equiano married an English woman and had two daughters. He died in 1797, a rich and very famous man, without seeing his dream come true. It was only in 1807 that Parliament passed the Abolition of the Slave Trade bill, which only meant that the transport of slaves was prohibited, and not slavery itself. Moreover, captains of ships who knew they were going to be fined for transporting slaves simply ended up throwing them into the sea!

It was not until 1833 that the Slavery Abolition Act was passed and all slaves in the British Empire were really freed, of course… after giving compensation to the plantations owners!

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