Equiano, Olaudah (c. 1745–1797)

African antislavery campaigner and writer. He travelled widely as a free man. His autobiography, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African (1789), is one of the earliest significant works by an African written in English.

Equiano was born near the River Niger in what is now Nigeria. He was captured at the age of 11 and sold to slavers, who transported him to the West Indies. He learned English and bought his freedom at the age of 21. He subsequently sailed to the Mediterranean and the Arctic, before being appointed commissary of stores for freed slaves returning to Sierra Leone. He was an active campaigner against slavery.

In his book, Equiano describes the Ibo society in which he was born, his enslavement, and the horrors of being shipped to the West Indies. He was slave to an English naval officer, saw action at sea, and received some schooling in England and informally on board ship. Sold to a Quaker ship-owner in the West Indies, he was able to do some small-scale trading of his own, and eventually bought his freedom for £40 in 1766.

As a free man Equiano worked briefly as a slave overseer in Central America, as a sailor, and as a hairdresser, and settled eventually in England, marrying a woman from Cambridgeshire. In 1787 the charity providing food for unemployed former slaves in London endorsed a plan to send them to a new colony in Sierra Leone in Africa, and Equiano was appointed to look after supplies. He found corruption among the organizers, and complained that the colonists were being held aboard ship in unhealthy conditions long before the expedition was ready to start, after which he was asked to stand down. In the early 1790s he went on a tour of England, Scotland, and Ireland, speaking against the slave trade. He printed a number of editions of his autobiography while on tour, and booksellers in the USA and Europe also printed editions. Equiano was in touch with other abolitionists, including Granville Sharp, and influenced attitudes to slavery through his book and by helping to bring scandals like the murder of slaves on the slave ship Zong in 1781 to public attention.