It is easy to argue that slavery was inhumane. Putting a monetary value on a human life and belittling a human so much as to call them someone else’s property is unbelievable. For many people, it’s easy to look back at the institution of slavery and see the injustice of the practice, but for people of the time, seeing the injustice wasn’t that easy because it was such a widely accepted practice. When closely analyzing Olaudah Equiano’s The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, this narrative draws upon the conclusion that yes, there was slavery in Africa, but slavery in America was a much more cruel practice. Even if Africa practiced slavery, there was no valid reason to use Africans as slaves in America, the only logical explanation was that European people saw themselves as a superior race and were extremely cruel human beings.
The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano was an auto-biography published in 1789 as he settled in England as a freed man as the spread of abolition consumed America. While an autobiography from a captured slave may seem as not credible, he wrote it at a time in his life where he could look at these terrible things and make peace with them since he gained his freedom. Something to be cautious about is that he could have been overly positive about his experiences because of the fortunes that he encountered throughout his journey. It is important to remember that many slaves had it far worse than he did. He begins telling his life journey from when he lived in Africa to his capture and his time as a captured slave. He openly tells the reader (presumably someone supporting the abolitionist movement) that Africa indeed too sold slaves. Equiano wrote, “Sometimes indeed we sold slaves to them [stought mahogany-coloured men from the south west], but they were only prisoners of war, or such among us as had been convicted of kidnapping or adultery, and some other crimes, which we esteemed heinous” (Equiano, p. 701).
This point, however shows clearly that Africans only deemed those who committed heinous crimes such as kidnapping or adultery deserved a life of slavery. When contrasting this with his final line in this piece, “We were conducted immediately to the merchant’s yard, we were all pent up together like so many sheep in a fold, without regard to sex or age” (Equiano, p. 703). Here is the largest difference between slavery in Africa and slavery in the Americas. Slaves captured from Africa were people from all walks of life, some were royalty and some were common men- it didn’t matter to slave catchers- all people that were African Americans were suitable for slavery. A notable point made in this piece is, “I had never seen among any people such instances of brutal cruelty; and this not only shewn towards us blacks but also to some of the whites themselves” (Equiano, p. 702). Here, Equiano expresses his discontent with the European treatment of other races and even of their own race. This begs the question if European people were just brutal people all around.
This autobiography not only negated the belief that Africans lived in societies in which they had no organization of hierarchy or civilization, but also emphasized although Africans may have not have had the same luxuries that Europeans had, they had their own ways of luxuries. It was also commonly believed that Africans spoke no civilized languages or had any civilized practices. Equiano talked about the customs that surrounded him in Africa and made sure to point out that they weren’t much, if any different from those of the Europeans. They had ceremonies, ate food, blessed their food, and even bathed. Just because the Europeans may not have understood the African culture, didn’t mean that the African culture itself was beneath European culture.
