Oludah Equiano History Homework

HISTORY HOMEWORK

I was captured in 1756, and thrust down into the stinking hold of a slave ship. No doubt my captors believed to be little me more than an animal. Yet I was to utterly confound their prejudices.

Thirty years later I published an account of my life that became a rallying cry for all who wanted to end slavery.

I became a tireless campaigner who sought to forge links between the anti-slavery movement and the demands of British workers for emancipation from capitalist "wage slavery".

I was born in what is today Nigeria. When I was 11 I was snatched and taken to the coast.

I was one of 30 million people transported from Africa to the plantations of the Americas and the West Indies.

The sugar, tobacco, cotton and other commodities the slaves produced were a massive boost for the early capitalists. I remembered how I was forced into the hold of a slaver, and there I received such a salutation in my nostrils that I have never experienced in my life - so that with the loathsomeness of the stench and crying together, I became so sick that I was not able to eat.

I was force-fed - the crew had decided that I was literally worth the effort.

I spent the next ten years in bondage. First I slaved on the tobacco plantation of Virginia, North America, where my master gave me the name "Gustavus Vassa".

One day I was summoned to the plantation house. I was shocked to come across a slave cooking dinner who was "cruelly loaded with various kinds of iron machines - she had one particularly on her head which locked her mouth so fast that she could not scarcely speak, and could not eat and drink". This was her punishment for crossing her master.

In 1757 I was resold and sent to England. I then served on various British naval