Empire: World History - 61. The Black Abolitionist

Episode Date: June 29, 2023

Olaudah Equiano: slave, free man, captive, abolitionist, public figure, entrepreneur, successful author, family man. His life is one of the most extraordinary tales of ups and down, with more happening to him in one lifetime than happens in ten average ones. Listen as William and Anita discuss it. Sign up to The Knowledge here: www.theknowledge.com/empire/ LRB Empire offer: lrb.me/empire This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/empirepod. Twitter: @Empirepoduk Goalhangerpodcasts.com Producer: Callum Hill Exec Producer: Jack Davenport + Neil Fearn Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you want access to bonus episodes reading lists for every series of Empire, a chat community. Discounts for all the books mentioned in the week's podcast, add free listening and a weekly newsletter, sign up to Empire Club at www.mparpoduk.com. And welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnden. And me, William, this is part two of an extraordinary life, right? A really extraordinary life. And that's recorded in such detail and such sort of realism. You really feel you know this man.

And yet he's telling a story which, while incredibly common and many lineaments of it, taking place over 12 million lives, this is a sort of uniquely sharp-focused look at one of those. Exactly that. I mean, in his own words, which is what makes it so very immediate and so very human. And as he says, as you've just pointed out, you know, I believe there are a few events in my life which have not happened to many. And that figure of 12 million really resonates with that. This is just one story, one experience of the health. And it's funny how in history this happens so often that you get a whole world which is silent,

particularly if you're talking about people who are not in the top tier, who are not literate, who do not leave historical records. And then something happens to record one of those things, rather like a sort of Pompeii moment when suddenly a whole world is frozen in Aspec or frozen in Laver, in the case of Pompeii. so preserving a world that otherwise would be completely lost. And I feel this is a kind of very much an 18th century transatlantic slave trade version of that.

And yet in another way, Equiano is a kind of unique character because he's so much himself. His own voice comes across so clearly. And it's a very particular voice, that mixture of piety, wisdom, charm. Charm, and also, you know, the kind of rhetorical devices that are familiar to those who read their Bibles. And that's going to become quite important in this,

Much more in this bit of the story. Yeah. So, I mean, let's just remind you what you've missed or if you heard the podcast that went out on Tuesday. Just a quick refresher. This is a young boy who was taken from his village, separated from his little sister, all that he knew, ripped apart from her, thrown onto, after being held at a port for three months, just looking at this ship that is going to be his great nightmare across the middle passage, chucked up and. down in the air to make sure that he was himself seaworthy. It's that particular image, I think, particularly resonates with you. Don't you think?

Landed on that two or three times. Well, it's just a tiny arms and legs flailing in the sky, you know, just to see whether, you know, it's waiting a human life. And then, but what he does on this voyage is he learns. He learns very quickly on a series of voyages, makes friends with a young boy. He's only a couple of years older than him, a white boy called Richard, who actually who's own family owns slaves. But with the friendship of Richard, the tenacity of Richard, who sees the humanity in him, as Equiano says, he sort of looks at me in eyes where I see myself

reflected as a man, although he's a child. You know, he learns to read a little bit. He learns to navigate a little bit. He learns after, you know, losing the terror of being cannibalized by these people who he thinks demons, you know, with their long, straight hair, with their pale, pale skins with nothing, the languages that he doesn't understand, when he suddenly comes to the realization that they're not going to eat him, they're not going to kill him. And in fact, in certain pockets of this terrible experience, there is still some humanity that informs his own humanity. This is the point. And this is where this story is so different, for example, to what Vincent Brown was telling us in Takke's revolt, in that there it's very black and white. You know,

there's Thistlewood, who is this, this, there's some demonic satanic figure who's devising hideous new tortures for the slaves and raping everybody he comes across. And you have Taki and his fellow slaves who are heroically brave. And in that sense, it's a very simple casting. What's interesting about the Equiano story is that he encounters all sorts of fuzzy boundaries. And you're right. He has this character who is friendly to him, you know, two boys making friends on a ship, something you can completely understand.

And yet the boy's father are enslaved. When we last left you, so Equiano had been bought, he'd been sold to a man called Pascal. Pascal had delivered him to a cousin who had had him baptized. But then he becomes involved in the seven years war. And for, you know, 13-year-olds, generally speaking, you know, they read books about warfare and they're terribly excited about the daring to. He's living it. He's talking about French galleons coming up on the horizon. He's talking about cannons thundering, the smell of it, the sound of it, the feel of it, the reverberation. of it. But he does firmly believe that after he has served so well during these battles with distinction in the seven years one, and he talks a lot about the praise that he gets from

other captains for being so brave that he is being accepted and he will be free. However, where we left you at the end of the last episode, once the seven years war were over, he sold again to a man called Captain James Doran and that's where we left

you last. And this is for him clearly completely incomprehensible because he thinks he's part of the family he's been invited home the aunts have looked after him and suddenly he's back on the market like how could pascal do this to him there was a promise that had been made particularly i think once they've forged you know they've been in in those ships together in a war and so they were you know very much sort of he thought himself as a comrade and anyone who've seen those wonderful uh that wonderful russell crowfield master and command or read the Patrick O'Brien novels, which they're based on, knows that word of the camaraderie of those ships, despite the brutality and everything, to then be just put on the

market. I'll tell you, it's a really interesting, and before we continue on with this story, it is, it runs so contrary to so many of the relationships I've come across recently through journalism. So with the fall of Afghanistan, the people who were fighting the hardest to get their old translators out or their old fixers out, Afghans out, were British military personnel. And I took calls from members of British tough, tough old nuts, right, very senior brass who were in tears crying because they had made promises to people who had been left behind. So for Pascal to do this, I mean, just imagine that. Anyway, look, so let me start, let me start with his own words of this feeling of betrayal after having so much service, so much to offer. He says this. He says, thus at the moment I expected my toils to end was I plunged, as I supposed, in a new slavery, in comparison of which all my service hitherto had been perfect freedom. So being in a war, being fired at, shot at, almost killed. That to him equates to being free. And now again, again, he's sold to a new owner.

And not only is he sold to a new person, he's back in the West Indies. He's back in the Caribbean, which he spent his life escaping from. It's like this terrible. snakes and ladders. Well, we should say how this happens. Yeah. So this is, this is the new owner, takes him back to the West Indies. And then he's, he's bought by a new master. So he is so commodified at this point. He's bought by a man named Robert King, who's a well-connected merchant. He is actually very importantly a Quaker. A Quaker's a really important. Now tell us why Quakers stand apart, William, why do Quakers stand apart when it comes to slavery? Well, the Quakers seem to connect the, what's to us today to be this blindly obvious thing that Christianity you'd have imagined would not be pro-slavery. It's amazing, though, how many Catholics and Protestants did not see that. And it was the

Quakers who are the first group, religious group, I think I'm right in saying, who really stand up against the slave trade and make the connection that's so blindingly obvious to anyone today that this is something that is absolutely abhorrent to the basic matter of Christianity. These are fellow human beings. Right. And even at this point that Robert King, the Quaker, purchases this human being, his human 18-year-old boy, Equiano, there is this protein abolitionism that's growing within the Quaker movement. They are absolutely the first. But somehow, he swallows his principles, so many men of an inverted comma's principle do at this time, and he buys this boy. But Equiano does say

King treats him well. He enrolls him in education. He wants him to be a clerk. He sees in He's unusual because he has letters. He's all learned all this stuff from Richard Baker and others. He knows things. He knows science, rudimentary science. So he decides this is the making. This is the clay I can mould to be a very good clerk for me. King obviously is a much more decent man.

And again, this is the shades of feeling and the different types of life of slave could lead that comes out in the Equiano book that you don't get in other accounts. It's not that there's just this one horrific plantation slavery. There are gradations here. And Aquali writes very warmly about King and the jobs that he gives him and the opportunities that he presents him. But also there is a sort of psychodrama aspect to this because some slave owners believe the only way of holding on to their slaves

was through sheer terror and the end of a whip. There is another that says, okay, you know what, if I treat mine well, but they always have the fear that I could sell them on They know they could go somewhere worse. And that's sort of the king mode of operating his slaves. He does, though, take Equiano back to the West Indies. And this is the first time. Remember, this is the first time he's been taken from Africa.

This is the first time he will see what plantation slavery is like. So, you know, we've talked about this a little bit, haven't we, William, just remind everybody the Vincent Brown episode, if they haven't heard it. It's a difficult listen, isn't it? I mean, we should really warn. If you're going to go back and listen to it, it's not easy. Worse than that, it's a horrific listen. It's stuff that we felt we had to lay out very clearly and openly,

but it's not something I would recommend anybody who's had a hard day's work and wants a nice light relaxation. It's a very grim tale. Yeah, and Equiano will spare you none of this. So, you know, he devotes it in his narrative, his interesting narrative, a whole chapter of his book, talking about the absolute horror of what he saw. And I think it's really interesting.

what he says actually, and he gives, I think, he gives people the benefit of the doubt. He's actually a very, he's a very sweet man, because this is the part of the problem is that these plantations, a lot of them, are owned by absentee landlords. And you've spoken about this before. Members of Parliament have plantations, William, the aristocracy have plantations. They're not going to spend much time in the sweaty West Indies, but they have people who do. So they don't understand what, or they don't care, or they're blind to deliberately, but they leave their management of their estates to what he calls these human butchers. And he sort of seems to

suggest that a true British gentleman would not do this. And I think it's really interesting. You've said this before, that the murder in Britain about slavery is part of the reason that it is allowed to continue in this way, William, because people are not getting these narratives. They're not hearing what's done. They're not hearing them. Yeah, they don't know this stuff. And they can, they can avoid thinking about it. It's in another room. It's somewhere else. So what's interesting, I think, about Equiano is that he not only travels around freely

trading for King, but in the same way that the East India Company allowed people to do deals on their own accounts as well as doing the company's business, King allows Equiano to become a trader and a merchant on his own account. And he begins to make money, which again, is very different from our view of slavery. We don't imagine a slave system where slaves, have the capacity to enrich themselves. Well, I mean, I see, I always read that as he, rather than allowed it, he ignored the fact that Equiano is making some money on the side or he tolerated it.

Maybe that again is like the East Indy Company model. It's like, you know, if you want to keep him sweet, let them do it. So, you know, little bits here and there. Equiano starts to, you know, if he does a big trade, he keeps a little bit back and he does a private deal on the side. He makes contacts for his work, his trading for Big King, but he does a little side deal or a little, you know, a little hustle here and there. And he starts making some money and putting it away. And this is crucial for him. This is absolutely good. This is his ticket to freedom. He realizes that.

Yeah. I mean, I think it's delightful some of the things that he does. So he'll pick up, I like this. Have you seen this little detail? He picks up tumblers in one little area and he'll take them to another port and say, you know, do you want to buy, I'm imagining these tumblers of these copperware things or, you know, brassware cups and saucers. But then he moves on to the much more loophers. lucrative hustle of gin and fruit, and there's money in those things. I never thought gin was drunk in the Western Disney. I always imagine this is very much the rum drinking world, but this is 18th century London taste, presumably, yeah. Expats like their gin.

I mean, you know, Hogarth knew a thing or two about these things. It is the days before tonic. You just drink gin neat. Oh gosh, someone has done a PhD on this. Did they drink? When did they start drinking chips? That's a brilliant, because gin, well, the tonic is quinine-based, isn't it? So, Quinine, so that's India, is it?

To Cooleyn is Quinnian, and it comes from India, and it's the 19th century, I think. What were they, you know, please write to us. And originally it's a health thing to stop malaria. And it's effective. Quinine still uses an anti-malarial. Yeah, do let us know when Tonic was introduced. Anyway, so he's making money, he's speculating, because all the time, he's sort of putting a little bit of money in his pocket, thinking, one day I'm going to buy my freedom.

one day, this is going to get me the hell out of here. And he does show loyalty to King. It doesn't actually take very long. I mean, he's 18 when he starts working for King. Yeah. And it's what, 1766 after three years in King's service. And he's now amassed 47 pounds, which you can add many noughts to. Yeah.

I mean, the thing is, I mean, he does have, what I think is really interesting when he's working for King. He talks about in his book, there are multiple times when he could have run away. And he doesn't. So he's offered help to escape. So when he's in Guadeloupe, he meets some French sailors. And they say, look, come with us. Come with us. We'll help you out. We'll get you out of here. And he says, no, I'm staying. I'm sure somewhere in his mind, too, though, he must be weighing it up. Because, again, something that's very clear in this is that if you are a freed slave in the Caribbean, there is a huge danger that you're going to be re-enslave by some brute who just takes you and shackles you. that you're always living on your wits, never quite know when that moment may come when some

guy just sort of comes for you and such was the brutality of the time. In the courts of the West Indies, a slave or a black man's witness was not accepted as valid at this point. So if you were seized and re-enslaved, you know, the fact that you said, no, I was, I was freed, almost certainly will not count in your favour. Yeah, I just, one other tickly fact, before we get on to him actually in 1766, as you said, you know, this important figure of £47 he's got. But just before that, he meets a fortune teller. And this fortune teller says, if he survives two instances of great peril, Equiano will not be a slave for much longer.

And I don't know whether this is the power of suggestion, but he gets really sick almost immediately, like really, really unwell. He survives that. And then he nearly gets beaten to death by a barbaric drunk. And that really was very, very serious bed-band. There's nothing psycho, you know, somatic about this. He's bedbound for three weeks, but he survives it. And now he is convinced he is going to be free.

That little episode, again, is a measure of the brutality of that world that you could just be walking along doing your trading business. And some drunk just puts you into bed for three weeks. With impunity, because no one's, you know, no one's going to punish him, particularly if he's a different colour, if he's white. No one's going to, you are entitled to beat your slaves. That's okay. So anyway, look, what happens after he's survived?

these two. He's got £47 in his pocket, William. He's got a nice friendship with the captain who has been working with because he's always very helpful to the captains he works for. What happens after that? So the captain vouches for his honesty and that he's amassed this money legally and says that he should be able to have his freedom. And so he talks about, you know, actually going to approach King and saying, look, I've got this money, Mr Quaker. And he puts it this way, I who had been a slave in the morning, trembling at the will of another, was become my own master and completely free. Because after a bit of hesitation, King says, you know what, if you can pay me, I will set you free. And we see, even that's, you know, service, loyalty, everything else,

but you pay me, I will set you free. So he's 21 years old and Equiano is free. And he's amassed 47 pounds and King takes 40 of them as his fee for, for freeing him. Which is, I think, what was paid for him. It's a bit despicable, no? So, yeah, he talks about how it makes him feel, William. And as you can imagine, how would you feel? And of course, the first thing he wants to do is go back to England.

And despite the fact that his old master Pascal has sold him, he wants to go back to Pascal's family, which again is the sort of tragic bit of this story. I mean, because Pascal's family were kind to him. You know, these were the Guarans who were very sweet to him and, you know, baptised him. He works, even though he's free actually, before he goes back to Pascal, he still works for King's ships a little bit longer, but as a free man and he's getting a proper wage. But it is a weird situation. And now, now that he's a free man, he doesn't feel loyal to King at all where he did maybe before because he had to. Can you remember in our Mary Beard episode, the Roman story? This again was the norm in the Roman time where people would often free their slaves, but they would continue working for them as.

staff rather than as slaves. And so it's that kind of model. While he's working on King's ship as a free man, there's a slave, he's confronted by another slave who insults him and hits him. This is another slave. And Equiano completely loses it, because now he's not a slave. He's better than that. And I think he writes without the usual sense of introspection that normally he has about

things. But he just, he loses it and he fights back. And the slave's master comes to the boat and demands to know that, he should be flogged. Even though Equiano is a free man, he should be flogged in the street for hurting his property. You know, being a free man, you know, it should have been okay. But his companions say, listen, you're not okay. You've got to hide from this man because he's got the authorities and they don't care if you're free or not because you are a black man. And if he gets his hands on you, it doesn't matter that you're a free black man. You will be flogged on the streets. And that, again,

teaches him something about, you know, the value of freedom. It is precious and it is fragile. And as you've said before, you can be taken away by anybody who wants to kidnap you and sell you again. As a reader, I think this moment is very interesting because it's such an honest description. You know, he doesn't gloss himself over. He doesn't pretend he didn't fight this guy. And there's this, again, this difference of status. The other guy is a slave. He is not. But the slave owner is the one with the power and it's only because he's hurt his property. Yeah. He's basically dinged his car and he wants recompense.

And the recompense, usually, could be financial or could be anything else. But in this case, he wants the black man flogged. Anyway, he's still working. I think this is all the souring of the king relationship that happens. He's seen a mulatto on the ship. He talks about this. Now, Malato is a person of mixed heritage. You know, normally the child of a white overseer or a white plantation owner who often rapes the women in his charge.

But this mulatto is carried away from the vessel and sold into slavery. And this again and again he's reminded. And in his words, you know, how he lives on the edge of captivity. He says again and again, they live in constant alarm for their liberty. The West Indies is a terrible place for a black man. And he decides he's getting the hell out of there. He's not staying there anymore. So he moves back to London.

Shall we have a break and find out what happens when he gets to London? Welcome back. So, William, young Equiano has had enough with the West. Indies, he's taking the voyage back. But he finds he can't board a ship, even though he's free, he's bought his freedom. He can't board a ship without advertising himself and getting a white man to vouchsafe for him. It is degrading for him. He talks about how degrading it is that, you know, he has worked, he has scrimped, he has saved, he's bought his freedom, but he still cannot exist unless there is a white man leading him up the gangplank or leading him to the

wages office. King wishes him well and says, and this is really very peculiar. but interesting. He says, I do not doubt that you'll prosper. And he also says he doesn't doubt that soon he'll have slaves of his own, because that is the mark of prosperity in England at that time. I do think that's bizarre. I think that is what is of the time. I think that is what is the reality of the time. But to say to a black man, you're going to own slaves of your own and that'll make you a success. Only, I'm not saying this is a good thing to say, but I'm saying this is the world that they're living in. And yes, as we know, black men did own slaves. Yeah. I just don't, I'm just thinking of Francis Barber, who we've also talked about in this series, just imagining him saying,

you know, I'm going to own slaves. I mean, it's just to me, if you've experienced it. I think it's bizarre to us, but I don't think it would have been bizarre at the time. I agree with you that it's a very sort of chilling and clashing statement for our sensibilities. But I think this, I think this is woven into every aspect of life at the time. And I don't think it would have been surprising. All right. Okay. I just, I think, you know, looking into the eyes of a man is, been a slave and saying your lone slaves. I didn't know how people didn't catch fire. It's just bonkers. To me, there's some like, hum, there must be some corpuscular level where you know that is a really crappy thing to say. Anyway, he doesn't mean it in a crappy way.

This is the, I mean, just think of the episode with Vince Brown when who are the people who are defeating tacky. It's not the white militias. It's the mulattoes. Yeah, you're right. Yes, because they have a deal. Yeah. Then there are these, there are these hierarchies. So anyway, he's in London, William, and he goes to see his old family the Garens. What happens? And they're pleased to see him. And again, this is so bizarre because we know that Pascal the cousin sold him into slavery. And yet the Gherens are thrilled to see him, welcome him into their house like a lost son.

They get him an apprenticeship. They get him lodging at her hairdressers. He starts night school in arithmetic, further education. And the detail I particularly like, he learns a French horn. I do like that. Isn't that great? It's a really difficult instrument to play. Have you ever tried to play the French horn? I used to play it.

I'm grade four of the French horn. I'll have you know. Is that true? And the trumpet, it is true. How good are you? I'm learning things. I was no good. I was never any good at it, but I worked quite hard at it.

Despite having absolutely no talent for it, I did. I played in an orchestra. Can I just say I'm utterly charmed? And how many other secrets do you have that I do not? So with the French horn, right? I can still play a bit of Mozart's Hall Gerto. Really? I mean, did you do.

Dada, da, da, da, da. You can do that. that, yeah. That's your next party trick, mate. You're not coming around here without a French horn again. Listen, but isn't it true, you have to sort of stick your... So, sorry, you're not interested in this. Just spool forward 20 seconds, but I'm just fascinated.

The French horn is the most bizarre thing, because don't you have to stick your arm in it to make it change... You stick your hand or cup your hand on the edge of the horn. But if you want to mute it, you shove it in, yeah, and you get that kind of muted sound. I mean, not mute in the sense of a Zoom call where it goes completely silent. like so many of our recordings. It's not like that. Mute in the sense of that, that sort of

that very particular sound. I've never been doing French horn invitations. No, no, can you bring it next time? I mean, listen, Alistairnsa Campbell does the bloody bagpipes

all the time. I'm not going to play the French hornet since I was 16. Think of the ratings, mate. I think you're being very selfish. But my friend Ian Dousset used to play.

Sorry, we're going to get back to a minute, but I just think this is, it is genuinely the weirdest instrument. Not very, Not very fun. Ian Darset used to play.

I remember when he used to plunge his arm into it, and I used to always, in my head, fantasize, that he would pull out a piccolo because it was having a baby. On that, on that, that's a bizarre note, backs of slavery in 18th century London. I just want to see a little insight into how my brain works. So, Anita, what I'd love you to do is to paint a little portrait of 18th century London. What was the position of a former slave, a freed slave,

in London. This is not Victorian London. This is not the huge megalopolis at the center of the British Empire. This is 1700. We can sometimes forget how small Britain was in 1700. I was just reading one of Linda Coley's books. And she has this extraordinary statistic that at 1700, the British army was smaller than the army of the King of Sardinia.

Wow. Wow. Wow. And we always do this thing in our heads of reflecting Victoria. powerful world conquering Britain back onto small, fragile 18th century Britain, particularly 1700. Britain hasn't got the money coming in from India yet on a large scale. It's only just getting the transatlantic slave trade going.

And it's quite a small, quite a poor place. Gosh. Well, you're right. But it's a place in flux. Yeah, it's just in that moment of transition. Just about to, you know, like popcorn is just about to go off in a. pan, it's like that. So, I mean, I think you can, you can legitimately describe it as the first burgeoning European metropolis, because in 1700, the population is about half a million. This is just

to give you an idea. By 1800, it was over one million. Very teeny tiny black population. Maybe a few thousand concentrated in areas like Shadwell and Wapping, sort of around those port areas. What's bizarre to us, this very unclear status of slavery in Britain. Some people believe that slavery is illegal in Britain, then a law is published, clarifying that technically it's not. So this black population, most of whom are freed, but some of whom are not, are living in this sort of legal ambiguity. Yeah. It is also London is filthy. I can't stress this enough at this time. It is a stinky, stinky place. If you read any of the literature at the time, you will know, open sewers, we're talking horses and carriages, so horse manure everywhere. There is not, you know,

This is a city untroubled by the public toilet. What date is Gin Ali and Hogarth? That's 1780s? That sounds about right. So this is pre-Gin-Ali, but heading into that world. So if you don't know Hogarth, he does this wonderful thing. It's about the terrible fate that befalls people who drink gin, and they're just mountains of dissolute, drunk people, women with their breasts exposed,

but their children tumbling to the ground because they have a bottle of gin in their hands. But, you know, this is a rotting place. There's food, rotting animal. sweat, urine. This is where he is free. But even if this is a stinking rotten place, it is still a place of freedom. You know, every breath that he takes as his own breath, even though there is this ambiguity. And he starts to think, you know what, I can make myself a new. This is, I am a new man now. He's still, you know, 21, 22. He's got the whole life ahead of him. So he decides, with Londonness's backdrop, I am going to be a gentleman. And this takes him bizarrely,

back to the sea of his slavery, William. Tell us a little bit about that. What does he do? Well, he becomes a merchant adventure and he goes to all sorts of places. He visits Smyrna, which we had in our Ottoman series, where we had the destruction of Smyrna,

but in his period, this is an extremely wealthy Ottoman port. Yeah, lined with pomegranate trees. Very beautiful, yeah, yeah, yeah. And he says that the grapes and the fruits he had there were the richest and largest he ever tasted. So you just see this guy, 21, he's travelling the world.

So it's starting for him probably to go to Samirans, it would be for any of us to go on our year off or whatever in our gap here. So you have this guy, 21, setting himself up now as a merchant, traveling the Mediterranean, having a good time. This is a very, very different world to the one he's been used to. Last time he's in the Mediterranean, he was a slave in the middle of the seven years war. And now he's a free man traveling on his own account, trading. Trading, buying fruit to sell.

I mean, some things never do change, though, William. And even though he is, you know, a legitimate merchant, it is, it is hard as hell to get people to pay him. They, they just don't pay him on time. So then we've got this very sort of life-affirming trip to the Arctic. And I think this is one of the things that makes his story so very, very popular. Because it really does read like a, you know, like those, you know, those bits of Mary Shelley when he's going back over the snowplains to meet the monster. It reads a lot like that, you know, with his landscaping and the way he feels. feels and what it does.

The more I read his book, the more you become convinced that he has read a lot of 18th century novels, because the whole way that he paces things, the narrative that he tells, even the early parts of the book, particularly the ups and downs, these great sort of moments of hope and then the hope is dashed. But this is, you know, this is from a different end of 18th century literature. This, as you say, is, you know, the world of adventure stories and travel books. And I think Equiano has read a lot of this. He's become a very literate man.

Yeah, and some of his descriptions are gorgeous. He talks about going to Greenland, where he's really horrified and slightly perturbed that the sun never sets. He sees, you know, very high, curious mountains of ice, which are icebergs. He talks about large whales passing by. He's kind of living his best life until the ship starts to get stuck in a shackletonian way in the ice. The ice starts sort of building up around his ship. and they are stuck. It's very well told.

It's a very well-teld story. So they pick the boat up and they move it across the ice. They drag it. They do. He talks about the sea, sort of turning into like a pond around him. It shrinks. Only the water is only so wide. And so that's what they do.

He is, because of this narrative, the first black man to record a voyage to the Arctic. Extraordinary. I mean, there's so many firsts in his life. And then we begin to get more of a sense of his growing commitment to Christianity. This is all part of a world that he has taken on in London and he is looking for his Christian faith. He's already baptized. But there's also along with that a sort of a sort of spiritual struggle and he's often dejected, convinced to his own sin and there's that whole sort of

religious tussle which again is very much of its time, I think. I love the fact he starts interviewing religions because he wants to find God. He's lost contact. So he talks to Quakers. He's that They don't really rock his world. Roman Catholics, no, that's not doing it for him. Chats to Jewish people. Could even, you know, be Jewish, but no, that's not also appealing to him. So he ends up going to the house on an elderly man and talking to him about Christianity. And in due course, he is invited to, in his words, a love feast.

So this, I think, is what in the letter to state, Paul, is called Agape. And again, this is part of this sort of 18th century new forms of Christianity. Methodism is happening in the north and all sorts of strange. new versions of Christianity growing in the incubator of London with people mixing ideas. And he's there an outsider looking in, wondering which version he will take on. It speaks to him, really does. And he also starts identifying himself now as being British. He needs this, you know, if you're going to, if you're going to make a man, then you need a foundation. And his two foundations are British and Christian. And he says, I early accustomed myself

for looking for the hand of God and the minutest occurrence and to learn from it a lesson of morality and religion. And in this light, every circumstance I've related, was to me of importance. So everything then reconfirms. From this point on, he has the message, and it is the message of Christianity. And yet, despite this Christianity, he considers himself entering the plantation business. Again, you know what you said about King saying that you may own slaves yourself, Equiano does consider this for a moment in his life. I know. It's just, I mean, it's just, awful. And so, yes, I mean, it proves you right. But it also, to me, and makes me wonder about this, this mysticism of prophecy, you know, that he was going to get sick twice and he was going to get better. And then King tells him, you will own, you know, he believes that people foresee things in his life. Anyway, he does have this madcap idea that he's going to run a slave plantation in Jamaica. He's going to be in charge of it. It is actually really appalling that, but he's honest about it. That, again, you know, that's honest about it. He is honest about it. I think that's one of the reasons that this, this narrative is so strong, is that he doesn't hide the things that reflect badly on it.

Although when he's writing this, he's an abolitionist who's made his name going around the country speaking about the inhumanity of slavery, he does not edit out as it could have been very easy for him to do the fact that he did go back to Jamaica and consider this business. Then, as if to remind him, as if you are a religious person, the good hand of the Lord, remind you that this is not how you treat people. On his way back from Jamaica, something happens, William, something extremely. extraordinary happens to him. There's this moment when he's effectively recaptured and threatened with enslavement yet again in this continual sort of boomerang that he does with fate. And of course

he's a freeman. He obviously resists this. And in the end, he talks his way out. Gift of the gab. And he convinces the captain of his credentials and his contacts and he's freed. Although when the person who's captured him finds out that he has in inverted commas escaped, even though the captain is the one who set him free, he goes to shoot him with a musket. And it is just by intervention that that doesn't kill him there and then. You know, he's convinced the captain that he's not a slave, but he could still die the death of an escaped slave.

He's 30 years old at this point. I have to say it's bonkers to me. I mean, I'm more surprised that he went back to the Caribbean with the risks that that involved than that he got involved potentially in the slave trade. because he makes a very clear picture of London being a better place, obviously, for a black man than the West Indies that is the most precarious and dangerous place possible to be black. But where else is he going to make money?

Smyrna. I mean, there's lots of other, I mean, the British Empire is a wide-ranging thing at this point. He has been trading in the Mediterranean. There's no need for him to go back to the West Indies. But that is where money is made. And you're right. I'm sure that is the motive. He realizes that he cannot be fully free unless he's rich.

So he runs the risk of re-inslavement and all the horrors of the Caribbean. There is another really horrible episode that sort of takes place. He talks about his stumbling around as well. So he returns to London and then he's not going to make the same mistake again. And there is this really interesting chapter, which I hope to go into more detail in when we do a later podcast. But he becomes involved. There are a lot of black soldiers who fought on the side of the British in the civil war. and they have been dumped in the middle of London.

They think they're going to be free. They think they're going to be set up for life, but they actually are left sort of starving and hungry on the key side. And he becomes involved in this. It is actually quite a racist venture to ship them off to Sierra Leone, and it is a disastrous venture. He becomes the man, the poster boy for doing this. So he talks to these former black soldiers and he says,

look, you're going to go back, we're going to lay on a ship. They are held in like camps for months before this ship takes off. So many of them die in the camps because these are riven with terrible diseases. The ships are riven with terrible diseases. The population is utterly decimated before they get to Sierra Leone. And it teaches them a lesson that these plans that don't come from a good heart do not work. And so he repudiates them entirely. So after this, when Equiano comes back to London again, he's now.

settles much more permanently. And this is the point that we find him committing himself and taking on the cause of abolition. Totally. And we spoke in the Royal African Company episodes as how there was very little resistance to the slave trade. Equiana becomes the resistance. And so this is in the 1770s. And it's important to say what's going on in the 1770s that really puts fuel in his fire, that he becomes this fire brand pamphleteer. He writes articles and newspapers, he starts speaking from pulpits about how degrading awful and unchristian slavery. So in 1772, you've got the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Mansfield, ruling that slavery was not legal in England. It's a very, very important date. This is a crucial moment, isn't it? This is the first

time that you actually have a senior court in Britain ruling that this ambiguity that existed, is it legal, is it not? He says within England, it is not legal. 1772, crucial date. Yeah, okay, 1781, the Zong Massacre takes place, where a captain throws 130 slaves overboard because the ship was low on drinking water and then tries to claim their lives on insurance. And typically for this story, that's the moment that this is exposed, not when it happens, but when he tries to claim the insurance on it. 1783, an anti-slavery movement begins among the British public, starts to get an outcry that, you know, slavery must end through the British Empire. And then in 1787, the Committee for the Abolition of the Slave Trade is formed, and William Wilberforce, who are going to home in on very closely in other episodes, this politician, this philanthropist, begins his parliamentary campaign from a very religious perspective.

So again, this is something that Equiano can embrace. And Equiano becomes the key voice in this abolition movement. He does. I mean, he really is, and he has such high contacts. By now, you know, people want to. be his friend, they want to be seen by him. He has subscribers to the book. You remember we said in the first instance when he first wrote his book, he kept the copyright. But subscribers, who are the people who support these publications, were very senior people within the royal family and also

aristocracy. He's the one who says to the king, he writes a petition for ending slavery, and these are the words. He presents it himself to Queen Anne and says, I supplicate your majesty's compassion for millions who groan under the lash of tyranny in the West Indies, he says, but is not not the slave trade entirely at war with the heart of man. He is the, I mean, he's not the only black person in the British abolitionist movement, but he is the man in the abolitionist movement. Anita, do you have any sense of what changed between that moment, five, six years earlier, in the 1770s when he's thinking of going back to Jamaica, running a plantation, and the early 1780s when he's now become this abolitionist? That is a mystery to me in this account.

Well, I think one of the things, and we know we very lightly touched on it, but it's this way of he's trying to be the good son to Great Britain. They ask him to help with this repatriation. And they sell it, you know, free town. It's going to be a place for freed slaves and free black people. Actually, the motivation is there are too many poor black people cluttering up the streets of London. And he becomes involved in this.

And then he sees what happens where this cohort of people whose faces he knows, whose eyes he can look into, die in hideous ways, and the whole thing is a lie. And I think that really, for me, anyway, I think that's, I think that breaks him. That's a coherent motive, isn't it? I mean, that makes human sense to. Yeah. But I mean, just, I mean, the Sons of Africa, talk a little bit about the Sons of Africa.

And then we're coming to the end of this extraordinary story. Because if you have heard of Equiano's name, you know how important he was and his narrative was to the abolitionist cause. But tell us about the Sons of Africa. And the Sons of Africa is this very kind of modern movement. It's the first black lobbying group in Britain. And they push the interests of the black community in public. in Parliament, and they perhaps surprisingly come immediately to the forefront of the abolition movement. They are the poster boys. But they're also, they have agency that they're running their

own show. They are coordinating. They're organized. They have a movement. And Equiano is right there in the middle of it. And it is against this backdrop of his greatly amplifying voice, where he's getting friends in high places, where he's able to hand a petition to Queen Anne. And also, you know, the other thing I think that's going hand in hand with this is the spread of a British press, a British press that needs stuff and interesting stories to fill its pages, and he is an interesting story. I was very surprised when I was researching my East India Company books how liberal the British press could be at this time. They oppose the atrocities of empire consistently, or many of the papers do, and there are many headlines in 18th century newspapers that read like a Guardian headline today.

And there are times when you're dealing with this period when it feels utterly. foreign, you know, the way, for example, in the early 18th century that no one is talking about the morality of the slave trade. And you wonder, you know, whether you're dealing with people that are remotely like ourselves. And then you have these other moments in the abolition movement when the press, you know, backs it very volubly and speaks in very modern terms about how all people are equal, how different races have just different skin colors, and using very much the language we might use today. You're absolutely right. It does feel contemporaries. It's against that kind of changing environment, and I think the free press has so much to do with this change, that he brings out

his book. And the book, I mean, we're talking about the book release in 1789. Some people can get their hands on the book before it's published. And remember, he holds on to the copyrights that all of the money forever in perpetuity will go to him, very clever businessman. But his subscriptions include the Prince of Wales, an aristocracy, members of parliament, leading members of the church. And so that in itself is this virtuous circle. They want to be identified with him. and others then when they see that these are the subscribers want to buy his book. And the book, the whole reason of the book, is the abolitionist cause. It starts with this letter.

The chief design of this book is to excite in your august assemblies a sense of compassion for the miseries which the slave trade has entailed of my unfortunate countryman. Satnam Sangera in his empire land talks about changing sensibilities today and says how, in our generation, we suddenly realized that zoos were not great. places, that things that previous generation is perfectly happy to see animals in cages wandering back and forth. And suddenly, there's a slight invisible change in the sensibility. And suddenly everyone realizes these could be very cruel and horrible places. And this happens in London in the 1780s. Suddenly the penny drops, having not dropped at all in the early part of the century,

suddenly everyone realizes that this appalling trade, this horrific trade, is something that is unacceptable and must be stopped. And you'd suddenly find the planted. on the back foot and their interest, fighting public opinion, which is increasingly voluble, often with religious language. You have people saying, I've always thought it was terrible. I never agreed with this. I was the one who, so, you know, look, this is what happens. We should just have a couple of moments for the end of his life, okay.

He goes on to marry a white woman, because Susanna Cullen, and they have two daughters. They only stay married for about four years before Susanna dies, which is a very sad thing. But, you know, he leaves to his daughters a healthy estate. He has fortunes from his book sales. And his book tours. Again, it's a very modern life. You and I know that world. He had the largest crowds that we've managed on some of our book tours.

Absolutely. So anyway, look, that is the story of an extraordinary. And even though this is a book that was written in the 1700s, published in the 1700s, it stands up today. Just as an adventure story, it's amazing. No question. As a literary work. And I know many of you go straight to your bookshop and buy books we've been talking about on this podcast. Get Equiano's autobiography because it immediately brings you to this world with all its great.

Shades are great, all its complexities and its horrors. And it's moments of triumph. This whole story, the abolition movement is a very wonderful story. It is. Rather like suddenly, you know, the end of apartheid or something. Suddenly something evil is ended. and there's this brief moment of optimism. Well, I mean, look, we could go on.

The reason we're not going to go on is because I can see Olive, your wife, in the background, is going to yank you off with one of those shepherds' crooks. You've got a flight to catch. I'm off on a book tour. I'm off to talk to talk. You need to get a little wriggle on, my friend. We really could talk about this more.

And if you've got questions, we're going to do a Q&A episode, and I'm sure, you know, it's such an extraordinary long story and a wonderful textured life. Ask us, we'd love to talk about this again. Anyway, till the next time, It is goodbye from me Anita Arnan.

And me, William Duremberpull.