Reasons For The Abolition Of The Slave Trade By Olaudah Equiano

When Olaudah Equiano published his narrative in 1789, Britain was already in the early stages of its fight for the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade. Abolition groups were starting to form, and legislation was beginning to be introduced in the House of Commons, but there was still a lack of a fundamental foundation that was needed to push the fight for abolition to the next level. Enter Equiano, who’s harrowing narrative of his life as a slave and his later fight for freedom even after he escaped slavery brought about calls for abolition on many different grounds. Equiano’s most powerful platform was one of religious morality, which was formed from his belief in Methodist Christianity, and that slavery violated the moral life that Christianity …show more content…
Britain was not exactly the pillar of morality with their imperialistic tendencies and their heavy involvement in the slave trade. In one example provided by scholar Eric Williams, “British banking firms in Brazil financed the slave traders and insured their cargoes, thereby earning the goodwill of their hosts.” The people of Britain, including those in the government were either ignorant of the plight of the slaves that were being captured and dragged across the waves, or they chose to ignore it in the face of the earnings they could make through the slave trade. That is one of the many reasons that Oladuah Equiano’s narrative was so important, because it removed the British public’s ignorance by telling his story of his plight of slavery, and the stories of violence that he heard along the way done unto others, as well as done unto …show more content…
After learning about these horrors, he starts to write clear Biblical parallels to illustrate to his British audience that the Biblical stories they learn about in church are far more real in the Atlantic World. One of the stories that Equiano utilizes is the story of Moses in Egypt. Equiano writes, “Surely this traffic cannot be good, which spreads like a pestilence, and taints what it touches! Which violates that first natural right of mankind, equality, independency, and gives one man a dominion over his fellows which God could never intend!” The pestilence refers to the plague that was created by God to pressure the Egyptian Pharaoh into letting the enslaved Jewish people go. This was most likely intentional on Equiano’s part, for in this description he invokes that imagery from the Bible that would cause the audience to take pause, and realize that the lessons rooted in the Bible taught to them were far more real than they may have realized, and that they themselves had been perpetuating through the support of the Atlantic Slave