Imagine being kidnapped at the age of 11, enslaved, and made to fight another country’s war as a white man pockets your wages – only to be sold off the moment you are finally owed your freedom. This was the plight of African man Olaudah Equiano – also known as Gustavus Vassa – who was passed from master to master until in 1766, aged just 21, he bought back his own freedom.
From that point on, he carved out his own destiny in a way that almost none in a similar situation before him had managed. Not only did he become one of the most widely travelled individuals of the 18th century, but also a one-man publishing powerhouse.
Join us as we tell the incredible story of Olaudah Equiano – Royal Navy veteran, entrepreneur, merchant, hairdresser – and the spark that lit the flame under the British abolitionist movement.
In his lifetime, he set foot in countries ranging from Canada and America to Barbados, Portugal, France, Turkey, Nicaragua and Italy. He even sailed to the Arctic as a lab assistant on the same expedition as a young Horatio Nelson. But it was his memoir – The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano or Gustavus Vassa, the African – that turned him into a global sensation in his own right, and led to real, lasting change.
This episode traces Equiano’s life from a childhood in what is now Nigeria, through the Middle Passage and the Caribbean sugar trade, to freedom, marriage, and a self-published book that made him one of the wealthiest Black Britons of his century.
We ask whether Equiano was really born in Africa, discuss what freedom actually meant for a free Black man in the Atlantic world, and delve into the perils of life on the ocean in the 1700s. Plus: a walking tour of Equiano’s London, and the Black Georgian community he called home.
Topics: Black British History, Olaudah Equiano, Gustavus Vassa, Horatio Nelson, Transatlantic slave trade, Sons of Africa, Seven Years’ War, Northeast Passage, abolitionist movement, 18th-century travel writing.
