Olaudah Equiano (c. 1745 – 31 March 1797), also known as Gustavus Vassa, was one of the most prominent Africans involved in the British movement of the abolition for the slave trade. His autobiography depicted the horrors of slavery and helped influence British lawmakers to abolish the slave trade through the Slave Trade Act of 1807. Despite his enslavement as a young man, he purchased his freedom and worked as a seaman, merchant and explorer in ...
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Olaudah Equiano (c. 1745 – 31 March 1797), also known as Gustavus Vassa, was one of the most prominent Africans involved in the British movement of the abolition for the slave trade. His autobiography depicted the horrors of slavery and helped influence British lawmakers to abolish the slave trade through the Slave Trade Act of 1807. Despite his enslavement as a young man, he purchased his freedom and worked as a seaman, merchant and explorer in South America, the Caribbean, the Arctic, the American colonies and the United Kingdom.
By his own account, Olaudah Equiano began his early life in the region of "Assaka" (in his spelling) near the River Niger. He was believed to be an Igbo. At the age of eleven, he was kidnapped with a younger sister by kinsmen and forced into domestic slavery in another native village. The region had a chieftain hierarchy tied to slavery. Until then Equiano had never seen a European white man. Equiano lived with five brothers and a sister, and was part of a...
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