Olaudah Equiano

like animals and against their own will. They would fit multiple slaves in ships with not a lot of room, without giving them an adequate supply of food and water to live off of. According to the book, The Interesting Narrative of The Life of Olaudah Equiano, they were chained so close that they weren’t able to move around. As these slaves were chained up and little room to move they had to use the restroom on themselves and also eat in the same place causing the slaves to receive diseases due to…

Freedom is a hard word to define because freedom means different things to different people. To some people, freedom is to be completely self-governed; to others it may mean freedom to have control of others. The founding fathers established their interpretation of freedom over 200 years ago in the Constitution. Since then, countless changes have been made in the definition as well as who had rights to these privileges. In my opinion, when a small population has more privileges than others,…

the New World focuses on African-Americans, Native Americans did serve as slaves for a time. Olaudah Equiano, an African-American slave from early colonization era, gives a detailed description of both his own slavery as well as some of the slavery around him, and although he himself was an African-American, his story reveals some of the troubles that Native American slaves might have gone through. Equiano writes that, “many times have I even seen these unfortunate wretches beaten for asking for…

The Intimacies of Four Continents Précis Lowe, Lisa. The Intimacies of Four Continents. Duke University Press, 2015. In The Intimacies of Four Continents, Lowe examines the often obfuscated links between “European liberalism, settler colonialism in the Americas, the transatlantic African slave trade, and the East Indies and China trades in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries,”(Lowe 1) via the archive, autobiographies, literature, and philosophy. Lowe argues that slavery,…

Thoroughly exploring the site, I found that to provide an insightful essay would require reading at least the first and last section from each part. In the section titled, “From Indentured Servitude to Racial Slavery,” to the section, “The Civil War,” in part four, I noticed that the treatment and desire for slaves were solely driven by fortune. It is truly saddening that families were torn apart over materialistic things. Parts two and three were exceptionally inspiring due to certain…

The Evolution of The American Dream The raw idea that became America was founded on some very basic principles, commonly known to be life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. A people, who for so long were oppressed by an incredibly invasive, and destructive monarchy finally said “enough”. The “American Dream” did not start being called the American Dream until 1931, the phrase was coined by an author named James Truslow Adams. However, the concept of the American Dream had been long in…

He was also the son of an African tribe leader. When he was 11 years old, Equiano was seized from his Nigerian village by slave traders. He was then transported as human cargo from West Africa to the Americas. The transatlantic slave trade. He would also refer to the Africans taken as free people and then forced into slavery in…

But, in the end the case went to court, and the court had ruled in favor of Collingwood and the owners. It wasn’t all smiles for Collingwood, a ex-slave named Olaudah Equiano brought the case to the attention of Granville Sharp, one of Britain's leading early abolitionists. Sharp and his colleagues tried to press murder charges against Collingwood and the owners, but to no avail. John Lee had stated, “This is a case…

The Middle Passage was the voyage from Africa to the New World. In this voyage, there were many experiences that the African slaves had that were horrific. In the four stories, there is a lot of information about what these slaves went through on their journey in these ships. As terrible as these stories describe the treatment of the slaves, the information that is provided can not even explain how bad the people were treated. From not enough room to even stand, to being fed almost nothing,…

• Manifest Destiny, a phrase first used in 1845 to promote the annexation of Texas, declared that it was America’s destiny to spread west, all the way to the Pacific Ocean. This term was used by the United States to justify taking Native American land and forcing them to relocate to reservations, thus changing Native American culture and life forever. • The Thirteenth Amendment, adopted in 1865 during the Civil War, abolished slavery throughout the United States. This amendment eventually ended…