essay equiano
Assignment #1 “The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano (1789)” by Olaudah Equiano
1. Author is Olaudah Equiano, he was born in Essaka, Benin Empire(1745). His ethnicity is Igbo, his occupations are writer, merchant, explorer.
2. Document was published in 1789.
3. It is an autobiography.
4. It was written during the era of slave trades, and it mainly focuses on the African slave’s journey from Africa to the Americas, and England.
5. It reflects the author’s point of view that is against the slave trade, he mostly arguing against the white man and their slave trade system.
6. When the author writes,” If I am not misinformed, the manufacturing interest is equal, if not superior, to the landed interest, as to the value, for reasons which will soon appear. The abolition of slavery, so diabolical, will give a most rapid extension of manufactures, which is totally and diametrically opposite to what some interested people assert. ... [Similarly], the manufactures of [England] must and will, in the nature and reason of things, have a full and constant employ by supplying the African markets....”(94) he suggests that slavery and British people’s marketing strategy contradict each other.
7. Since it is an autobiography and the author gives his own experiences such as “And after a sale, it was not uncommon to see negroes taken from their wives, wives taken from their husbands, and children from their parents, and sent off to other islands, and wherever else their merciless lords choose; and probably never more during life see each other!” (93), I found it believable and accurate.
1. Author is Olaudah Equiano, he was born in Essaka, Benin Empire(1745). His ethnicity is Igbo, his occupations are writer, merchant, explorer.
2. Document was published in 1789.
3. It is an autobiography.
4. It was written during the era of slave trades, and it mainly focuses on the African slave’s journey from Africa to the Americas, and England.
5. It reflects the author’s point of view that is against the slave trade, he mostly arguing against the white man and their slave trade system.
6. When the author writes,” If I am not misinformed, the manufacturing interest is equal, if not superior, to the landed interest, as to the value, for reasons which will soon appear. The abolition of slavery, so diabolical, will give a most rapid extension of manufactures, which is totally and diametrically opposite to what some interested people assert. ... [Similarly], the manufactures of [England] must and will, in the nature and reason of things, have a full and constant employ by supplying the African markets....”(94) he suggests that slavery and British people’s marketing strategy contradict each other.
7. Since it is an autobiography and the author gives his own experiences such as “And after a sale, it was not uncommon to see negroes taken from their wives, wives taken from their husbands, and children from their parents, and sent off to other islands, and wherever else their merciless lords choose; and probably never more during life see each other!” (93), I found it believable and accurate.