America, England and the British Empire in the 18th Century African Slave Narratives – JOURNAL OF THE INSTITUTE FOR AFRICAN STUDIES

Author:

Gleb Aleksandrov

Abstract:

In the 18th century England several slave narratives were published and became quite popular. The best known – and the best researched – among them was Olaudah Equiano’s “The Interesting Narrative…”, one of the key works of the early abolitionist movement. Equiano’s (and other former slaves’) critique of slavery and their place in contemporary society is examined extensively in existing studies. But the British world was not limited to the colonies where the entire economic order was based on slave labour. These colonies existed in a wider context of the British Empire, with its own internal diversity of culture and everyday life. This article examines the way in which the slave narratives’ authors – Olaudah Equiano, Ukawsaw Gronniosaw and Ayuba Suleiman Diallo – perceived and described the Empire, its institutions, its cultural practices and the relations between its constituent parts, particularly between England and colonial America and West India.

Keywords:

Africans, Trans-Atlantic slave trade, 18th century, the British Empire, imperial culture

DOI:

10.31132/2412-5717-2020-51-2-51-65

References:

1. Acholonu C. The Home of Olaudah Equiano – A Linguistic and Anthropological Search. The Journal of Commonwealth Literature. 1987. Vol. 22. No. 1, pp. 5–16. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/ 002198948702200102.
2. Armitage D. The Ideological Origins of the British Empire. Cambridge, New York. Cambridge University Press. 2000. 259 p. ISBN 978-0521789783.
3. Bach R.A. Colonial Transformations: The Cultural Production of the New Atlantic World, 1580–1640. New York. Palgrave Macmillan. 2000. 290 p. ISBN 978-0-312-23099-9.
4. Blinova E.V. Avtobiografiya O. Ekviano kak istoricheskij istochnik (Autobiography of O. Equiano as a primary source). Istochnikovedenie istorii Afriki i Diaspory: sbornik materialov po itogam Vserossijskoj konferencii s mezhdunarodnym uchastiem. Jaroslavl. Jaroslavskij gosudarstvennyj universitet P.G. Demidova. 2016, p. 7–18.
5. Bluett T. Some Memoirs of the Life of Job, the Son of Solomon, the High Priest of Boonda in Africa. London. Richard Ford. 1734. 63 p.
6. Bondarenko D.M. Ottenki Chernogo (The Shades of Black). M. Izdatelskij dom «JASK». 2016. 232 p. ISBN 978-5-94457-248-7.

7. Boulukos G. Olaudah Equiano and the Eightheenth-Century Debate on Africa. Eighteenth-Century Studies. 2007. Vol. 40. No. 2, pp. 241–255. DOI: 10.1353/ecs.2007.0002.
8. Bozeman T. Interstices, Hybridity, and Identity: Olaudah Equiano and the Discourse of the African Slave Trade. Studies in the Literary Imagination. 2003. Vol. 36. No. 2, pp. 61–70.
9. Calloway C.G. White People, Indians and Highlanders: Tribal Peoples and Colonial Encounters in Scotland and America. Oxford, New York. Oxford University Press. 2008. 384 p. ISBN 9780195340129. DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195340129.001.0001.
10. Carreta V. Equiano, the African: Biography of a Self-Made Man. Athens, Georgia. University of Georgia Press. 2005. 464 p. ISBN 978-0820325712.
11. Collins J. Passage to Slavery, Passage to Freedom: Olaudah Equiano and the Sea. The Midwest Quarterly. 2006. Vol. 47. No.3, pp. 209–223.
12. Ekiano O. Zhizn Olaudaha Ekiano, ili Gustava Vazy Afrikanskogo, rodivshegosja v 1745 godu, im samim napisannaja (The Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, Born in The Year of 1745, Written By Himself). M. Tip. Selivanovskogo i tovarishha, 1794, ch. 1. 311 p., ch. 2. 246 p.
13. Elrod E.R. Moses and the Egyptian: Religious Authority in Olaudah Equiano’s Interesting Narrative. African American Review. 2001. Vol.35, No. 3, pp. 409–425. DOI: 10.2307/2903311.
14. Etkind A. Vnutrennjaja kolonizacija. Imperskij opyt Rossii (Internal Colonization: Russia’s Imperial Experience). M. Novoe Literaturnoe Obozrenie. 2013. 448 p. ISBN 978-5-4448-0090-4.
15. Equiano O. The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African. London. 1794. 360 p.
16. Field E. “Excepting Himself”: Olaudah Equiano, Native Americans, and the Civilizing Mission. MELUS. 2009. Vol. 34. No. 4, pp.15-38. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/mel.0.0055
17. Gilroy P. The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness. London. Verso. 1993. 274 p. ISBN 978-0860916758.
18. Heng G. The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages. New York. Cambridge University Press. 2018. 504 p. ISBN 9781108422789.
19. Hinds E.J.W. The Spirit of Trade: Olaudah Equiano’s Conversion, Legalism and the Merchant’s Life. African American Review. 1998. Vol. 32. No. 4, pp. 635-647. DOI: 10.2307/2901242.
20. Kelleter F. Ethnic Self-Dramatization and Technologies of Travel in The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African, Written by Himself (1789). Early American Literature. 2004. Vol. 39. No. 1, pp. 67-84. DOI: 10.1353/eal.2004.0012.
21. Meyer M. Black Versions of Englishness: Daniel Defoe, Olaudah Equiano, and Mary Prince. Proceedings of the conference of the German Association of University Teachers of English. Vol. 23. Tübingen: Niemeyer. 2002, pp. 317-328.
22. Moore F. Travels into the Inland Parts of Africa. London. Edward Cave. 1738. 305 p.
23. Price R. One Big Thing: Britain, Its Empire and Their Imperial Culture. Journal of British Stu-dies. 2006. Vol. 45. No. 3, pp. 602–627. DOI: 10.1086/503593.
24. Smith M.-A. From Tribal Spirituality to Christianity: Olaudah Equiano’s Afro English View of Christians in Eighteenth-Century Western Culture. Journal of Ultimate Reality and Meaning. 2001. Vol. 24. No. 3, September 2001, pp. 163–180. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3138/uram.24.3.163.
25. The life and Conversion of James Albert Ukawsaw Gronniosaw, an African Prince. Giving an Account of the Religion, Customs, Manners etc. of the Natives of Zaara, in Africa, as Related by Himself. Clonmel. Thomas Lord. 1786. 50 p.
26. Udler I.M. Tradicionnye Amerikanskie Cennosti v “povestvovanijah” i publicistike byvshih rabov (Traditional American Values in The “Narratives” And The Publicism of The Former Slaves). Vestnik Juzhno-Uralskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta. Serija: Lingvistika. 2005. No. 11(51), pp. 94–97.
27. Udler I.M. Uvlekatelnoe povestvovanie o zhizni Olauda Ekviano, ili Gustava Vazy, Afrikanca, Napisannoe im samim, kak vershina zhanra “nevolnichego povestvovanija” v afro-amerikanskoj proze XVIII veka (The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African, Written by Himself as The Pinnacle of The “Slave Narrative” Genre in The African-American Prose of The XVIIIth Century). Vestnik Cheljabinskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta. 2008. No. 3, pp. 128–136.

Full Article