Olaudah Equiano

1.Consider Equiano's Narrative as a critique of European immorality and greed. Discuss how Equiano addresses these issues. Explain how immorality and greed are related. Explore the role of slavery and abolition in his critique.

Olaudah Equiano is a significant personality in abolition history. According to Peter Fryer, he was the 'first political foremost of Britain's very dark community'. Kidnapped at the age of 11, he endured the 'Middle Passage' and reached in Barbados. He was subsequent transported to Virginia where he was acquired by a British naval lieutenant called Michael Pascal, who renamed him Gustavus Vassa. Equiano subsequent acquired his flexibility in 1766 for £40; he furthermore went on to compose a 'bestseller' in 1789 about his know-how and his approaching to belief in Jesus Christ. (Equiano pp.20-22)

Slavery as a socio-economic organisation was not a European invention. Indeed, slavery, servitude and exploitation have been part of the human status from time immemorial. The perform of enslaving one's young individual animal lived before the birth of Christ and before the formation of the territory states of Europe. Slavery lived in very vintage Assyria, Babylon, Egypt, India and China. Greek and Roman societies flourished and evolved as a outcome of slave labour. Aristotle supported slavery on the surrounds of environment and expediency, 'reason and fact'. He argued: 'For that some should direct and other ones be directed is a thing not only essential, but expedient; from the hour of their birth, some are assessed out for subjection, other ones for rule.' In St Augustine, we get neither the contention from environment neither the contention from expediency for the reality of slavery. Rather, what we are offered with is the outlook that slavery is a penalty for sin ('the wastelands of sin'). However, Augustine is convinced that if environment (i.e., 'the status in which God conceived man') is to be invoked, the biblical viewpoint tends in the direction of flexibility, for in this 'order of nature' no man 'is the slave either of man or of sin'. Whether one adopts the Aristotelian or the Augustinian viewpoint, several rationalisations and justifications have been utilised for slavery in both very vintage and up to date times. Interestingly sufficient, there will habitually be those who would contend the pro-slavery case by quotation to what can be called the developmental argument. (Paul pp.10-20)

25 March 2007 brands the bicentenary of the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act. As ...