#who is olaudah equiano

[lwh-writing]

Okay, so my college classes started again today and I ended the day with the first lecture of my military history class. Now, I don't usually like military history because it very much is the Dude Bro type of history that I don't jive with. However, I am taking this class because:

Even if it is Dude Bro History, I love history in all forms and want to learn more about it

I'm an engineering student with too many fucking calculus, physics, and electronic classes and my mind needs to think about something other than STEM before it breaks

I fucking LOVE my professor. I had him last semester for a European history class and he was the best. He was very much against what he calls "asshole history." Aka, the type of history that focuses on one, usually white, Christian man who "shaped the course of history" until it shuffled onto the next one. He never mentioned Henry VII or Shakespeare except in passing, but he was the first person to teach me about Alessandra Strozzi, Baruch Spinoza, and Olaudah Equiano. So once I saw he was teaching another class this semester, I was like "Okay, but only because it's you, Awesome Professor."

Anyway, today was the first lecture of Military History taught by Awesome Professor. As should have probably been expected, the class makeup was 80% Dude Bros who need to cover their liberal studies credit. We get in, go over the syllabus, do an icebreaker, and Awesome Professor pulls up a PowerPoint slide with the Battle of Thermopylae and the Battle of Gettysburg side by side.

Awesome Professor: "Can anyone tell me the connection between these two battles?"

Some answers are offered. One Dude Bro goes on a soliloquy about war tactics and drools over the 500 Spartans. Awesome Professor corrects him and says that there were way more Greek factions there than Sparta. More answers are offered. A different Dude Bro does a different soliloquy about Robert E. Lee and the Confederate Army. Awesome Professor shoots back about Meade having the superior defensive position. More answers come in. I offer that both the Greeks and the Union soldiers were vastly outnumbered. A few more answers.

Awesome Professor: "Those were all wonderful answers, but unfortunately, you're all wrong. The major connection between these two battles is.... they're the only battles we will ever discuss in this class."

This wonderful, wonderful man then goes on to say that we will NOT be getting into war tactics. We will NOT learn about weaponry. We will NOT be reading quotes from famous generals. We will instead be learning about the cultural impact of war, all sides of every conflict, how militaries and wars affect technology that isn't weapons (preserved foods, medical innovations, etc.), how to recognize war-time, pre-war, and post-war propaganda, and female and nonbinary individuals' experiences during war.

The hundreds of Dude Bros start gaping like fish and sputter about "How can you teach WAR if you don't talk about WAR?". I'm holding back cackles as they slowly realize that they will not be getting spoon-fed the classic Dude Broe history. I genuinely cannot wait to go to my next lecture and count how many people drop the class.

In conclusion: definitely give college history classes a try, even if they aren't your usual first pick. Especially if you know the professor is amazing and knows how to teach about the scope of history rather than shuffling from one asshole to the next.

[delphinidin4]

I just had a brainwave about Mansfield Park. This might be something that Jane Austen fans already know and think is obvious, but I've never heard it discussed, and I think it really clears up a lot of things about this book for me.

So scholars are always talking about how this book intersects with slavery. First of all, the Antigua property that isn't doing so well would have been worked by enslaved people (keeping slaves was still legal in Antigua, though selling them there was not). Also, at one point Fanny asks Sir Thomas a question about the slave trade, though it isn't really elaborated on. I saw this discussed again and again in the (admittedly little) scholarship I read on this book, and it always seemed weird to me that they zeroed in on that detail.

More recently, I read Margaret Doody's book on the names Austen used in her work, and she pointed out that the famous legal case that declared slavery to be illegal in England was called the Mansfield Decision. Any reader at the time, reading that novel, would have that information in the back of their head, and it would have informed how they read the book.

This much I knew. But I always felt like these arguments never really explained what slavery had to do with the love story of Fanny Price: even Doody never seemed to connect this factoid about the title very deeply with the novel's themes (a problem I had with a number of her discussions in that book).

More recently, I saw it pointed out that Fanny Price is treated like a slave by Mrs. Norris, and I thought, "Aha! Finally, an explanation!" But it still didn't feel complete to me.

But I just realized: you can take that metaphor a lot farther. (For this argument, please keep in mind that Austen, though on the side of the abolitionists, was a 19th-century woman who didn't have the same sensibilities about the discussion of race as we do now.)

--Like an enslaved person, Fanny is taken from her home and her family and moved far, far away (she isn't kidnapped, of course, but stick with me).

--The family that she joins considers her to be naturally stupider than they are because she has not had the advantage of their education. This is similar to African slaves, whom white people looked down on and thought intellectually inferior because they didn't have a western education.

--The term "family" at the time included the household servants and slaves, not just the actual family. Fanny, the poor relation, joins the household less like a cousin/niece, and more like a servant or an enslaved person. She is literally relegated to sleep in an attic, like a maid.

--Fanny suffers a great deal emotionally because she misses her family (especially Edward). Austen, as an abolitionist, would likely have read accounts like Olaudah Equiano's autobiography, which often described the intense emotional suffering of enslaved people separated from their homes and families.

--One of the justifications slaveholders gave for slavery was that they were "improving" the lives of the Africans they enslaved, by teaching them Christianity and occasionally, trades or other forms of education. Fanny is ostensibly being brought to Mansfield to give her a good education. And while she does get that education, she really functions much more in the household like a servant to Lady Bertram and Mrs. Norris.

--Fanny IS taught a great deal of morality by Edmund, who is a bit of a prig. It seems hypocritical of him to be constantly "schooling" her in morality when it often seems like Fanny is more naturally ethical than he is. This mirrors the hypocrisy of white slaveholders who deigned to teach their slaves Christianity while acting extremely unchristian themselves.

--Fanny ends up with an inferiority complex because she is constantly torn down by Mrs. Norris and treated as inferior by Maria and Julia. In reality, she's very intelligent, well-read, and ethical in a way that none of them area. This mirrors the way black folks were unfairly treated as inferior by white society.

--The injustice of the Bertrams toward Fanny is so obvious to outsiders that even the morally deficient Crawfords are indignant about it. Mrs. Norris makes a snide remark to Fanny about "who and what she is" (a reference to racism?) and Mary Crawford is indignant on Fanny's behalf and rushes in to comfort her. Henry Crawford--at least, after he falls in love with Fanny--says that the way the family has treated her is disgraceful, and that he is going to show them how they should have been treating her all along. Austen may be pointing to the idea that slavery is SO wrong that it should be obvious to everybody.

I conclude that the book is titled Mansfield Park because Austen wants to point out that while slavery may be illegal in England, poor relations are still often treated like slaves by their families.

That being said, here are some questions this analogy throws up:

--Why is Sir Thomas so much nicer to Fanny after his stay in Antigua, where he would have been witnessing slavery on a daily basis? What does this say about him, both as an uncle and a slaveowner?

--Fanny goes home to Portsmouth, and finds that she doesn't like it and it isn't as neat and orderly as she would like. Is this Austen saying that if enslaved people went back to Africa, they would find that they still felt western society to be superior? How would we square that idea with the point above that westerners are not superior to Africans?

--Why does Fanny end up with Edmund? If he's analogous to the son of a slaveowner and she's analogous to a slave, why is she in love with him in the first place, and why does Austen seem to reify her choice by making them get together in the end? (Remember that even Austen's sister Cassandra felt strongly that Fanny should have ended up with Henry Crawford, not the priggish Edmund.) Is Fanny brainwashed by the Bertrams? How does that relate to the slaveholding analogy?

[fatehbaz]

As early as 1700, Samuel Sewall, the renowned Boston judge and diarist, connected “the two most dominant moral questions of that moment: the rapid rise of the slave trade and the support of global piracy” in many American colonies [...]. In the course of the eighteenth century, [...] [there was a] semantic shift in the [literary] trope of piracy in the Atlantic context, turning its [...] connotations from exploration and adventure to slavery and exploitation. [...] [A] large share of Atlantic seafaring took place in the service of the circum-Atlantic slave trade, serving European empire-building in the Americas. [...] Ships have been cast as important sites of struggle and as symbols of escape in [...] Black Atlantic consciousness, from Olaudah Equiano’s Interesting Narrative (1789) and Richard Hildreth’s The Slave: or Memoir of Archy Moore (1836 [...]) to nineteenth century Atlantic abolitionist literature such as Frederick Douglass’s My Bondage and My Freedom (1855) or Martin Delany’s Blake (1859-1862). [...] Black and white abolitionists across the Atlantic world were imagining a different social order revolving around issues of resistance, liberty, (human) property, and (il)legality [...].

---

Using black pirates as figures of resistance [...], Maxwell Philip’s novel Emmanuel Appadocca (1854) emphasizes the nexus of insatiable material desire and its conditions of production: slavery. [...] [T]he consumption of commodities produced by slave labor itself was delegitimized [...]. Philip, a Trinidadian [and "illegitimate" "colored" child] [...], published Emmanuel Appadocca as a protest against slavery in the United States [following the Fugitive Slave laws of 1850.]. [...] [The novel places] at its center [...] a heroic non-white pirate and intellectual [...] [whose] pirate ship [...] [is] significantly named The Black Schooner [...]. One of the central discourses in [the book] is that of legitimacy, of rights and lawfulness, of both slavery and piracy [...]. About midway into the book, Appadocca gives a [...] speech in which he argues that colonialism itself is a piratical system:

If I am guilty of piracy, you, too [are] [...] guilty of the very same crime. ... [T]he whole of the civilized world turns, exists, and grows enormous on the licensed system of robbing and thieving, which you seem to criminate so much ... The people which a convenient position ... first consolidated, developed, and enriched, ... sends forth its numerous and powerful ships to scour the seas, the penetrate into unknown regions, where discovering new and rich countries, they, in the name of civilization, first open an intercourse with the peaceful and contented inhabitants, next contrive to provoke a quarrel, which always terminates in a war that leaves them the conquerors and possessors of the land. ... [T]he straggling [...] portions of a certain race [...] are chosen. The coasts of the country on which nature has placed them, are immediately lined with ships of acquisitive voyagers, who kidnap and tear them away [...].

In this [...], slavery appears as a direct consequence of the colonial venture encompassing the entire “civilized world,” and “powerful ships” - the narrator refers to the slavers here - are this world’s empire builders. [...] Piracy, for Philip, signifies a just rebellion, a private, legitimate [resistance] against colonial exploiters and economic inequality - he repeatedly invokes their solidarity as misfortunate outcasts [...].

---

All text above by: Alexandra Ganser. “Cultural Constructions of Piracy During the Crisis Over Slavery.” A chapter from Crisis and Legitimacy in the Atlantic American Narratives of Piracy: 1678-1865. Published 2020. [Bold emphasis and some paragraph breaks/contractions added by me.]

[anghraine]

fanny-price-defense-squad replied to this post:

@anghraine who was it???

Oh!! I was so foggy when I posted the "which Austen character mainly contributed to my dissertation" poll that I actually completely forgot it existed. The people actually did vote, if barely, for the right choice—Mary Crawford!

(Darcy was right behind her in the poll but barely mentioned in the dissertation, while Henry Crawford—who only got 1.5% of the vote—also figured pretty significantly.)

Now I'm looking at other results of my own polls over the last year, as well:

The "Why is Elrohir's name in Gondorian rather than Elvish Sindarin" poll result: a strong vote for "actually it's Númenórean Sindarin" (the assumption I've always made myself, but it was interesting to think about other possibilities, since Tolkien never explained it).

The "Pick a fave from my Tolkien faves from each major text" poll result: Faramir narrowly beat out Gandalf with everyone else far behind (the closest was Lúthien).

The "pick a fave from my faves from five fandoms" poll result: Faramir again, closely beating out Luke Skywalker and Fitzwilliam Darcy (Moiraine and Gwen Thackeray never had a chance).

The "best dead guy from my dissertation" poll result: Jonathan Swift just squeaked past Olaudah Equiano!

The two women's wrongs polls: the first poll result was Clytemnestra, the second Azula.

The "what's your headcanon for the unexplained reasons the Stewards were not in the line of succession despite being descendants of Anárion" poll: by a huge margin, actually, the people chose "they were formally removed from the succession in exchange for the powers of the Stewardship."

The "pick your favorite video game/series" poll result: a very unsurprising and easy win for the Mass Effect trilogy (with BG3 the only thing even remotely near).

The "why do those of you who also like fics about ostensibly cis male characters in canon being genderbent to women" poll result: it's interesting to imagine how the character and plot would be affected, slightly beating out the option for "I neither like nor dislike the fics as a genre, I just like the good ones."

The "vote between my top Spotify Wrapped songs" poll results: "Landslide" by Fleetwood Mac slightly beat out Florence + The Machine's "King" and Queen's "Who Wants to Live Forever" (both exactly tied in close second place).

The "what is the best non-canon FemShep pairing" poll result: Shepard/Jack won pretty handily!

The "which of my ~controversial headcanons do you like best" poll result: Elizabeth and Darcy have separate bedrooms and this is good for their marriage.

The "which non-canon Darcy ship is best" poll result: Darcy/Anne Elliot, which mildly surprised me (I like it but am not sure they'd get around to talking to each other), beating out the world conquest pairing of Darcy/Emma.

The "which of my selected Queen songs is the most purely beautiful in your opinion" poll result: "Under Pressure" (with David Bowie), narrowly beating out "The Show Must Go On."

The "what would be the most awesome class/subclass for my Seldarine drow in BG3" poll result: Paladin of Vengeance! (I actually did make her and am just getting back into playing BG3 again after dissertation hell derailed her avenging of injustices.)

The "who played your favorite Marguerite St. Just" poll result: Jane Seymour, easily.

[blackinperiodfilmsadmin]

I had a lot of fun watching Hallmark's Sense & Sensibility. The characters and relationships were just as heart warming as they were in the book and other adaptations. The locations were very beautiful. I especially loved all the portraits in the background of important historical figures (Olaudah Equiano, Dido Elizabeth Belle, and Alessandro de' Medici, Duke of Florence). This was probably the work of historical fiction author Vanessa Riley who served as a historical consultant for Hallmark on the project.

The costumes, hair, and makeup were mostly really pretty. I'm in love with a yellow dress worn by Victoria Ekanoye as Lucy Steele. I want to make it for myself! When I finish this I'll start looking for fabric.

I only wish it could have been longer so the story didn't have to be as fast paced as it was. There are some moments that deserve a bit more time to play out. But its a tv movie so the run time is expected.

It was a great adaptation and I recommend it!

[dailyanarchistposts]

References & Footnote

Abraham, R. C. 1933. The Tiv people. Lagos: Government Printer.

Afigbo, A. E. 1971. ‘The Aro of southeastern Nigeria: a socio-historical analysis of legends of their origins’, African Notes 6: 31–46.

Aglietta, M. and A. Orle´an (eds.) 1995. Souverainete´, le´gitimite´ de la monnaie. Paris: Association d’E´ conomie Financie‘re (Cahiers finance, e´thique, confiance).

Akiga Sai, B. 1939. Akiga’s story; the Tiv tribe as seen by one of its members. Translated and annotated by Rupert East. London: Published for the International African Institute by the Oxford University Press.

Akiga Sai, B. 1954. ‘The “descent” of the Tiv from Ibenda Hill’ (translated by Paul Bohannan), Africa: Journal of the International African Institute 24: 295–310.

Akin, D. and J. Robbins 1998. An introduction to Melanesian currencies: agencies, identity, and social reproduction, in D. Akin and J. Robbins (eds.), Money and modernity: state and local currencies in Melanesia, 1–40. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.

Bohannan, P. 1954. ‘The migration and expansion of the Tiv’, Africa: Journal of the International African Institute 24: 2–16.

Bohannan, P. 1955. ‘Some principles of exchange and investment among the Tiv’, American Anthropologist 57: 60–7.

Bohannan, P. 1958. ‘Extra-processual events in Tiv political institutions’, American Anthropologist 60: 1–12.

Bohannan, P. 1959. ‘The impact of money on an African subsistence economy’, Journal of Economic History 19: 491–503.

Carrier, J. 2010. Handbook of economic anthropology. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.

Curtin, P. D. 1969. The Atlantic slave trade: a census. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press.

Dike, K. O. and F. Ekejiuba 1990. The Aro of south-eastern Nigeria, 1650–1980: a study of socio-economic formation and transformation in Nigeria. Ibadan: University Press.

Dorward, D. C. 1976. ‘Precolonial Tiv trade and cloth currency’, International Journal of African Historical Studies 9: 576–91.

Douglas, M. 1951. ‘A form of polyandry among the Lele of the Kasai’, Africa: Journal of the International African Institute 21: 1–12. (As Mary Tew.)

Douglas, M. 1958. ‘Raffia cloth distribution in the Lele economy’, Africa: Journal of the International African Institute 28: 109–22.

Douglas, M. 1960. ‘Blood-debts and clientship among the Lele’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 90: 1–28.

Douglas, M. 1963. The Lele of the Kasai. London: Oxford University Press.

Douglas, M. 1964. ‘Matriliny and pawnship in Central Africa’, Africa: Journal of the International African Institute 34: 301–13.

Douglas, M. 1966. Purity and danger: an analysis of concepts of pollution and taboo. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

Douglas, M. 1982. In the active voice. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Downes, R. M. 1977. Tiv religion. Ibadan: Ibadan University Press.

Ekejiuba, F. I. 1972. ‘The Aro trade system in the nineteenth century’, Ikenga 1(1): 11–26, 1(2): 10–21. Eltis, D., S. D. Behrent, D. Richardson and H. S. Klein 2000. The transatlantic slave trade: a database. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Equiano, O. 1789. The interesting narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano: or, Gustavus Vassa, the African. New York: Modern Library Edition, 2004.

Graeber, D. 2001. Toward an anthropological theory of value: the false coin of our own dreams. New York: Palgrave.

Grierson, P. 1977. The origins of money. London: Athlone Press.

Guyer, J. I. 2004. Marginal gains: monetary transactions in Atlantic Africa. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Harris, R. 1972. ‘The history of trade at Ikom, Eastern Nigeria’, Africa: Journal of the International African Institute 42: 122–39.

Herbert, E. W. 2003. Red gold of Africa: copper in precolonial history and culture. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press.

Ingham, G. 2004. The nature of money. Cambridge: Polity Press. Isichei, E. 1976. A history of the Igbo people. London: Basingstoke. Jones, G. I. 1939. ‘Who are the Aro?’, Nigerian Field 8: 100–3.

Jones, G. I. 1958. ‘Native and trade currencies in southern Nigeria during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries’, Africa: Journal of the International African Institute 28: 43–56.

Latham, A. J. H. 1971. ‘Currency, credit and capitalism on the Cross River in the pre-colonial era’, Journal of African History 12: 599–605.

Latham, A. J. H. 1973. Old Calabar 1600–1891: the impact of the international economy upon a traditional society. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Laum, B. 1924. Heiliges Geld: Eine historische Untersuchung ueber den sakralen Ursprung des Geldes. Tu¨ bingen: J. C. B. Mohr.

Le´vi-Strauss, C. 1949. Les structures e´le´mentaires de la parente´. Paris: EHESS.

Lovejoy, P. F. and D. Richardson 1999. ‘Trust, pawnship, and Atlantic history: the institutional foundations of the Old Calabar slave trade’, American Historical Review 104: 333–55.

Lovejoy, P. F. and D. Richardson 2001. ‘The business of slaving: pawnship in Western Africa, c. 1600–1810’, Journal of African History 42: 67–84.

Malamoud, C. (ed.) 1988. Lien de vie, noeud mortel. Les repre´sentations de la dette en Chine, au Japon et dans le monde indien. Paris: EHESS.

Northrup, D. 1978. Trade without rulers: pre-colonial economic development in south-eastern Nigeria. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Nwauwa, A. O. 1991. ‘Integrating Arochukwu into the regional chronological structure’, History in Africa 18: 297–310.

Ottenberg, S. 1958. ‘Ibo oracles and intergroup relations’, Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 14: 295–317.

Ottenberg, S. and P. Ottenberg 1962. Afikpo markets: 1900–1960, in P. Bohannan and G. Dalton (eds.), Markets in Africa, 118–69. Chicago, IL: Northwestern University Press.

Partridge, C. 1905. Cross River natives: being some notes on the primitive pagans of Obubura Hill District, Southern Nigeria. London: Hutchinson & Co.

Price, J. M. 1980. Capital and credit in British overseas trade: the view from the Chesapeake, 1700–1776. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Price, J. M. 1989. ‘What did merchants do? Reflections on British overseas trade, 1660–1790’, The Journal of Economic History 49: 267–84.

Price, J. M. 1991. Credit in the slave trade and plantation economies, in B. L. Solow (ed.), Slavery and the rise of the Atlantic system, 313–17. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Rospabe´, P. 1995. La Dette de Vie: aux origines de la monnaie sauvage. Paris: Editions la De´couverte/MAUSS.

Rubin, G. 1975. The traffic in women: notes on the ‘political economy’ of sex, in R. Reiter (ed.), Toward an anthropology of women. New York: Monthly Review Press.

Servet, J.-M. 1981. ‘Primitive order and archaic trade. Part I’, Economy and Society 10: 423–50. Servet, J.-M. 1982. ‘Primitive order and archaic trade. Part II’, Economy and Society 11: 22–59. Sheridan, R. B. 1958. ‘The commercial and financial organization of the British slave trade, 1750–1807’, The Economic History Review, New Series 11: 249–63.

Smith, A. 1776. An inquiry into the nature and causes of the wealth of nations. Oxford: Clarendon Press (1976 edition).

Tambo, D. C. 1976. ‘The Sokoto Caliphate slave trade in the nineteenth century’, International Journal of African Historical Studies 9: 187–217.

The´ret, B. 1995. L’E´ tat, la finance et le social. Souverainete´ nationale et construction europe´enne (direction de publication). Paris: E´ ditions la De´couverte.

Walker, J. B. 1875. ‘Notes on the politics, religion, and commerce of Old Calabar’, The Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 6: 119–24.

Wilson, M. H. 1951. ‘Witch beliefs and social structure’, The American Journal of Sociology 56: 307–31.

[1] Some village wives were literally princesses, since chiefs’ daughters invariably chose to marry age sets in this way. The daughters of chiefs were allowed to have sex with anyone they wanted, regardless of age-set, and also had the right to refuse sex, which ordinary village wives did not. Princesses of this sort were rare: there were only three chiefs in all Lele territory. Douglas estimates that the number of Lele women who became village wives on the other hand was about 10% (1951).

[filipeanut]

Admission to many museums in the UK are free, so once and a while we drop in to get to see local art. Here are some photos of art with themes of colonization, injustice, and issues of our time at Tate Liverpool.

This photo is of a Palestinian woman in what’s left of her home during the Sabra Camp massacre in 1982. It is by Don McCullin, a British photographer who covered the Lebanese Civil War during his visits in 1976 and 1982. Palestinian refugees fled to Lebanon after the establishment of Israel in 1948 in what was once a part of Palestine. The war in Lebanon led to massacres of Muslim neighborhoods including Palestinians in the Sabra refugee camp.

The late Zarina Hashmi was an Indian-American artist born in India, whose family was displaced by the 1947 partition of India after British colonial rule. While her sister Rani moved to Pakistan, Zarina eventually traveled the world, staying in touch with her sister everywhere she went. “Letters from Home” use these letters from Rani as a basis for the art, as they are written in Urdu and printed along with depictions of blue prints and maps of the places Zarina had lived through the years.

Kader Attia was born in France to Algerian parents, and later grew up in Algeria. Believe it or not, this artwork is made out of food. Specifically, couscous, a staple in Algeria as well as the rest of North Africa. Near the exhibit is a photo of Swiss-French architect Le Corbusier, who applied modernist architecture during the French colonial period in Algeria near the mid 1900s. In this artwork Attia seems to shape buildings in the modernist style, depicting the ancient hilltop city of Ghardaia in Algeria. The buildings are molded in couscous, and cracks and crumbling areas in the buildings could be seen as weathering from both the city’s old age and French colonization.

Torkwase Dyson handcrafted these huge, black structures and placed them in a large dark space on the first floor of Tate Liverpool. Dyson’s abstract works “grapple with the ways in which space is perceived, imagined and negotiated particularly by black and brown bodies.” This installation, “Liquid a Place,” definitely displays this, with these huge statues of what seam like heavy slabs of the darkest marble. They definitely convey the weight of colonization for me, and the artist description of them echoing “the curve of a ship’s hull” got me the most. Tate Liverpool sits in what was once one of Europe’s busiest ports serving the Transatlantic Slave Trade.

Lubaina Himid was one of the pioneers of the UK’s Black Art movement in the 1980s. “Carrot Piece” shows a white figure hovering a carrot over a Black woman carrying her own plentiful batch of food and items. The white figure is on a unicycle and wears light make up, conveying ridiculousness or crude entertainment, as if a clown. These are cut-out wooden paintings that are life-sized and was made for, as Himid wrote in her description, “…the moment when you slowly realise that you have learned something quite useful about yourself which proves to be a whole lot better than anything ever offered to you for free.”

Kerry James Marshall is known for his colorful paintings depicting Black people in dark shades. He counters “Western pictorial tradition” and brings forward Black figures in it. This work shows a Black figure wearing a British royal guard uniform, holding a sandwich board advertising a fish and chips restaurant named after a freedman, prominent writer, and British slavery abolitionist Olaudah Equiano. The irony of this art, is that it does not show a place in England. It is a scene in Arizona, where a “London Bridge” was made to attract American tourism.

[lboogie1906]

Olaudah Equiano (c. 1745 – March 31, 1797) whose father was an Ibo chief, was born in Southern Nigeria. At the age of 11 years, he was captured by African slave traders and sold into bondage in the New World. He was given the name Gustavus Vassa and was forced to serve several masters. While a slave, he traveled between four continents.

He mastered reading, writing, and arithmetic, and purchased his freedom. He presented one of the first petitions to the British Parliament calling for the abolition of slavery.

He became the first person of African ancestry to hold a post in the British Government when he was appointed to the post of Commissary for Stores to the Expedition for Freed Slaves. This abolitionist-supported venture would create the West African nation of Sierra Leone. He soon began to witness fraud and corruption among those responsible for providing supplies for the expedition. His unwillingness to accommodate this malfeasance led to his dismissal.

He continued to work with leading British abolitionists including William Wilberforce and Thomas Clarkson who urged Parliament to abolish the Slave Trade. He interjected his history into the struggle when in 1789 he wrote and published his autobiography titled The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano or Gustavus Vassa the African, Written by Himself. His narrative soon became the first “best seller” written by a Black Briton. He embarked on a lecture tour of England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland to promote his book. He advanced several religious and economic arguments for the abolition of slavery.

He married an Englishwoman, Susanna Cullen (1792) and the couple had two daughters. He died ten years before the slave trade was abolished and 36 years before Parliament outlawed slavery throughout the British Empire. #africanhistory365 #africanexcellence

[reasoningdaily]

African leaders in Sierra Leone played a key role in ending the transatlantic slave trade

Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone on the west African coast, was named for the freed slaves who were returned to Africa by British members of the movement to end slavery. Founded in 1787 by a group of 400 black Britons from London, the colony ultimately became a refuge for nearly 100,000 people resettled by the British Anti-Slavery Naval Squadron.

As a historian focusing on the impact of abolitionism, I have studied this history and the founding of modern Sierra Leone.

There is a misconception that Britain was the first to abolish the slave trade. It wasn’t the first, but its decision to abolish the trade was backed up by the power of its navy. Sierra Leone’s role in the story shows, however, to enforce that abolition, the British navy had to rely on the support of African states and polities that had already turned against the slave trade.

Africans played an overlooked role in ending the transatlantic slave trade. Sierra Leone’s rich history is testament to that.

The founding of Sierra Leone

The Atlantic Slave Trade began around the 1520s, but the area around Sierra Leone was not a major contributor to the trade before the middle of the 1700s. From 1763 onwards, the number of enslaved people shipped annually from the Sierra Leone coast by British, Portuguese and French traders rarely fell below 1,000 and was often closer to 4,000. Even then, the number of captives was roughly half the number being transported from the Gold Coast (Ghana), a quarter of the number being transported from the Bight of Benin, and a tenth of the number transported from the Angolan coast.

And yet from 1808, it was Sierra Leone – rather than one of the other sites of slave trading – that became the site of British anti-slavery operations. This was because by then, Sierra Leone was the site of an established and growing colony made up of members of the black British diaspora, many formerly enslaved. And the success of that colony was possible in part because of the interest and engagement of the Temne, the Susu, and other African people based in and around the Sierra Leone peninsula.

In 1787, the first group of black Britons arrived on the peninsula as part of a project in self-government and with the support of the London-based abolitionist leaders Granville Sharp and Olaudah Equiano. The first settlement faced hardships and lacked support among the Temne, whose land they were renting.

The settlement grows

In 1791, another group arrived in the colony and sought out a new treaty of settlement. This group chose to immigrate to Sierra Leone from inhospitable Nova Scotia (Canada), where they had been settled by the British government as “black loyalists” after fleeing from slavery during the American Revolution (1776-1783). A new organisation, the Sierra Leone Company, took over the management of the colony from London. Their records show that by the early 1790s, the Temne saw the arrival of these colonists as an opportunity.

King Naimbana, for instance, who negotiated the treaty between the Sierra Leone Company and the Temne, sent his son to London for education. And in their negotiations, company officials noted that the people they were engaging with were keen for opportunities to trade for imported goods without reverting to selling other people.

African role in ending slavery

As I found in my research, it was African demand that was shaping the success of the colony and its mission to shift the coast’s commerce away from the slave trade. Records held at the Huntington Library in California show that local buyers paid a higher price for the “SLC” mark – a price paid in goods and currency, rather than in enslaved captives. One British representative wrote a letter in 1793 to the Sierra Leone Company to complain that “it has become practice with slave traders to bring out guns for trade marked SLC for which they get a rapid sale and a double price in the Rio Nunez” to the north of the colony. He also worried that this was happening with “SLC” cloths.

Although he was unsure of their enthusiasm for the abolition of the slave trade, the British official commented that “their mouths were full of proposals to trade with us and plant cotton and coffee”. And a Susu leader’s deputy launched a verbal attack against the slave traders, telling them:

It is you slave traders who cause all our palavers. It is you who set the people in this country one against another. And what do you bring us for this? We have cloth of our own if you were gone tomorrow we should not be naked. If you were gone we should want but little guns and powder.

This support of the Susu and Temne around Sierra Leone for the colony, its trade, and its African diaspora population meant that the colony seemed like a natural fit for the British when they were looking for a way of enforcing their Slave Trade Act in 1807 to end the Atlantic slave trade. The British based an anti-slave trade naval patrol in the colony, as well as a court for processing captured slave ships.

The Sierra Leone Company was happy to hand over control to the British government, but it was the people on the ground whose successful trading relationships had built a growing city with markets, accommodation, infrastructure and, most importantly, a sense of security for the thousands of resettled enslaved people who would soon see its population soar.

Conclusion

There is a misconception that Britain was the first to abolish the slave trade and that it brought enlightened anti-slavery ideas to Africa. This misconception was used to justify the spread of colonial rule in the 19th century. But the history of Sierra Leone shows that, in order to enforce their abolition decrees, the British had to rely on African states and polities that had already turned against the slave trade.

[annemariewrites]

List of all the books I’ve read

just wanted to keep a list of what I’ve read throughout my life (that I can remember)

Fiction:

“Where the Red Fern Grows,” Wilson Rawls

“The Outsiders,” S. E. Hinton

“The Weirdo,” Theodore Taylor

“The Devil’s Arithmetic,” Jane Yolen

“Julie of the Wolves series,” Jean Craighead George

“Soft Rain,” Cornelia Cornelissen

“Island of the Blue Dolphins,” Scott O’Dell

“The Twilight series,” Stephanie Mayer

“To Kill a Mockingbird,” Harper Lee

“Gamer Girl,” Mari Mancusi

“Redwall / Mossflower / Mattimeo / Mariel of Redwall,” Brian Jacques

“1984,” and  “Animal Farm,” George Orwell

“Killing Mr. Griffin,” Lois Duncan

“Huckleberry Finn,” Mark Twain

“Rainbow’s End,” Irene Hannon

“Cold Mountain,” Charles Frazier

“Between Shades of Gray,” Ruta Sepetys

“Great Short Works of Edgar Allan Poe,” Edgar Allan Poe

“Lord of the Flies,” William Golding

“The Great Gatsby,” F Scott Fitzgerald

“The Harry Potter series,” JK Rowling

“The Fault in Our Stars,” “Looking for Alaska,” and “Paper Towns,” John Green

“Thirteen Reasons Why,” Jay Asher

“The Hunger Games series,” Suzanne Collins

“The Perks of Being a Wallflower,” Stephen Chbosky

“Fifty Shades of Grey,” EL James

“Speak,” and “Wintergirls,” Laurie Halse Anderson

“The Handmaid’s Tale,” Margaret Atwood

“Mama Day,” Gloria Naylor

“Jane Eyre,” Charlotte Bronte

“Wide Sargasso Sea,” Jean Rhys

“The Haunting of Hill House,” Shirley Jackson

“The Chosen,” Chaim Potok

“Leaves of Grass,” Walt Whitman

“Till We Have Faces,” CS Lewis

“One Foot in Eden,” Ron Rash

“Jim the Boy,” Tony Earley

“The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox,” Maggie O’Farrell

“A Land More Kind Than Home,” Wiley Cash

“A Parchment of Leaves,” Silas House

“Beowulf,” Seamus Heaney

“The Silence of the Lambs / Red Dragon / Hannibal / Hannibal Rinsing,” Thomas Harris

“Cry the Beloved Country,” Alan Paton

“Moby Dick,” Herman Melville

“The Hobbit / The Lord of the Rings trilogy / The Silmarillion,” JRR Tolkien

“Beren and Luthien,” JRR Tolkien, edited by Christopher Tolkien

“Children of Blood and Bone / Children of Virtue and Vengeance,” Tomi Adeyemi

“Soundless,” Richelle Mead

“The Girl with the Louding Voice,” Abi Dare

“A Song of Ice and Fire series / Fire and Blood,” GRR Martin

“A Separate Peace,” John Knowles

“The Bluest Eye,” and “Beloved,” Toni Morrison

“Brave New World,” Aldous Huxley

“The Giver / Gathering Blue / Messenger / Son,” Lois Lowry

“The Ivory Carver trilogy,” Sue Harrison

“The Grapes of Wrath,” and “Of Mice and Men,” John Steinbeck

“The God of Small Things,” Arundhati Roy

“Fahrenheit 451,” Ray Bradbury

“The Night Circus,” Erin Morgenstern

“Sunflower Dog,” Kevin Winchester

‘A Tree Grows in Brooklyn,” Betty Smith

“The Catcher in the Rye,” JD Salinger

“The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian,” Sherman Alexie

“Bridge to Terabithia,” Katherine Paterson

“The Good Girl,” Mary Kubica 

“The Last Unicorn,” Peter S Beagle

“Slaughterhouse Five,” Kurt Vonnegut Jr

“The Joy Luck Club,” Amy Tan

“The Sworn Virgin,” Kristopher Dukes

“The Color Purple,” Alice Walker

“Their Eyes Were Watching God,” Zora Neale Hurston

“The Light Between Oceans,” ML Stedman

“Yellowface,” RF Kuang

“A Flicker in the Dark,” Stacy Willingham

“One Piece Novel: Ace’s Story,” Sho Hinata

“Black Beauty,” Anna Seawell

“The Weight of Blood,” Tiffany D. Jackson

“Mulberry and Peach: Two Women of China,” Hualing Nieh, Sau-ling Wong

“The Weight of Blood,” Laura McHugh

“Everybody’s Got to Eat,” Kevin Winchester

“That Was Then, This is Now,” S. E. Hinton

“Rumble Fish,” S. E. Hinton

Non-fiction:

“Anne Frank: Diary of a Young Girl,” Anne Frank

“Night,” Elie Wiesel

“Invisible Sisters,” Jessica Handler

“I Am Malala: The Story of the Girl Who Stood Up for Education and was Shot by the Taliban,” Malala Yousafzai

“The Interesting Narrative,” Olaudah Equiano

“The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks,” Rebecca Skloot

“Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl,” Harriet Jacobs

“The Princess Diarist,” Carrie Fisher

“Adulting: How to Become a Grown Up in 468 Easy(ish) Steps,” Kelly Williams Brown

“How to Win Friends and Influence People,” Dale Carnegie

“Carrie Fisher: a Life on the Edge,” Sheila Weller

“Make ‘Em Laugh,” Debbie Reynolds and Dorian Hannaway

“How to be an Anti-Racist,” Ibram X Kendi

“Maus,” Art Spiegelman

“I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” Maya Angelou

“Wise Gals: the Spies Who Built the CIA and Changed the Future of Espionage,” Nathalia Holt

“Persepolis,” and “Persepolis II,” Marjane Satrapi

“How to Write a Novel,” Manuel Komroff

“The Nazi Genocide of the Roma,” Anton Weiss-Wendt

“Children of the Flames: Dr. Josef Mengele and the Untold Story of the Twins of Auschwitz,” Lucette Matalon Lagnado and Sheila Cohn Dekel

“Two Watches,” Anita Tarlton

“The Ages of the Justice League: Essays on America’s Greatest Superheroes in Changing Times,” edited by Joseph J. Darowski

“Shockaholic,” Carrie Fisher

“Breaking Loose Together: the Regulator Rebellion in Pr-Revolutionary North Carolina,” Marjoleine Kars

[lightdancer1]

Olaudah Equiano's work is a classic in explaining the course of inhuman events with a human face:

Olaudah Equiano is the man who wrote the memoir that is the template for giving a human face to an inhuman reality. His work forms a part of an entire genre and aspect of early Black history that was capturing and describing the reality of events in an effort to fight them, and to bring them down. To write these works and to distribute them was both a political and a revolutionary act, as slavery, like most atrocities, hid itself behind a veil of secrecy and selective access to information and truth.

These realities, and the truths behind them, should be kept in mind in looking at these early sources and narratives of Black history. From the beginning Black history has always had its revolutionary and deconstructionist aspects, which is why tyrants and aspiring tyrants hate it and try to suppress it.

[onenakedfarmer]

OLAUDAH EQUIANO [GUSTAVUS VASSA] The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African (1789)

It is difficult for those who publish their own memoirs to escape the imputation of vanity; nor is this the only disadvantage under which they labor: it is also their misfortune, that what is uncommon is rarely, if ever believed, and what is obvious we are apt to turn from with disgust.

People generally think those memoirs only worthy to be read or remembered which abound in great or striking events, those in short which in a high degree excite either admiration or pity: all others they consign to contempt and oblivion.

[powerixnews]

Unsung Heroes of History Stories of Courage and Impact #history #Unsung...

Delve into the stories of some lesser-known individuals who have made significant contributions throughout history. In this video, we explore the lives of Hypatia, Nzinga Mbande, Olaudah Equiano, Mary Shelley, and Alan Turing. From the fearless queen of Angola to the brilliant mathematician who cracked the Enigma code, these unsung heroes showcase courage and impact. #UnsungHeroes #History #Courage #Inspiration #Innovation #Leadership #Philosophy #Mathematics #Slavery #AntiSlavery #ScienceFiction #ComputerScience

  UnsungHeroes ,History ,Courage ,Inspiration ,Innovation ,Leadership ,Philosophy ,Mathematics ,Slavery ,AntiSlavery ,ScienceFiction ,ComputerScience

[anghraine]

I should be working on my dissertation, and have been, but I thought it'd be fun (for me :P) to loop you all in somehow. Therefore I bring you a very silly poll!

*best means whatever it means to you; feel free to propagandize

**yes, I deliberately excluded Shakespeare (from the poll, not the dissertation, lol)

[chba3creativeprocesses]

3rd October - Black History Month Tour

Glasgow Cathedral is the oldest church in Glasgow and the largest place of worship in Scotland.

Some Scottish families involved in the transatlantic slave trade are buried in Glasgow Cathedral.

Richard Oswald from the Oswald family was a prominent figure in the slave trade, responsible for bringing around 13,000 people into slavery.

The Buchanan family, involved in the tobacco trade, is also buried in the cathedral.

Many influential figures in Glasgow at the time had ties to the slave trade and gained social status from it.

The Stirling Maxwell family, who owned Pollok House, were involved in the slave trade and have a stained glass window in the cathedral.

The Tontine Rooms were gathering places for wealthy people involved in industries tied to slave labor.

Cecelia Douglas from the Buchanan family inherited a massive sum of money from the Tontine Society, which was based on slave labor.

The British government had a slavery compensation scheme, and cities like Glasgow were overcompensated.

Glasgow University played a role in the slave trade, recruiting workers and having people in managerial positions on plantations.

Racial discrimination and harassment were present on campus.

David Hume, a famous philosopher, believed black Africans were genetically inferior to white people.

James McEwan Smith, the first African American to receive a doctorate, studied medicine at Glasgow University.

The Ramshorn Kirk was a burial ground for enslavers and tobacco merchants.

John Glassford, the wealthiest tobacco lord in Glasgow, had an enslaved child erased from a family portrait.

Robert Burns, the poet, worked on a plantation as a bookkeeper and was offered the job three times.

The slave trade was abolished in Glasgow, and black campaigners like Frederick Douglas and Olaudah Equiano spoke out against it.

Black people have contributed to the history and culture of Glasgow for hundreds of years.

[modernerrors]

Skimming Briefly Through Some Historical Points, to Remind us that the Racial Condemnation we are Subject to Now, is Out-Of-Kilter.

Beliefs

People in Britain, probably more than any other country, have seen many races and cultures come to live here. Tolerant people are generally civil to others, so that, many were accepting of these different ones coming and settling. Partly because of colonialism, there was a readiness to open the country to these foreigners, from many different places. Jews and Africans had already come to Britain throughout the 1800s and earlier. Jews had come to UK in the 11th century, but during those medieval centuries, there was much unrest and upheaval. They came, at a later date, they got expelled, and so did other forms of religious cultures and peoples. There was continual hostility between Roman Catholics and Protestants, right up until the 20th century, fed by fear of reprisal from leaders in Court circles. Race was not so much the problem as forms of Christianity. Yet, Judaism, Catholicism and Protestantism all had their basis in the twelve tribes of Israel, and the Messiah, of Whom we read in the New Testament.

Non-nationals

Describing words … cannot use certain ones today …were just that – adjectives. They may or may not have had emotions behind them, they were just useful adjectives of the time. Victorian novels unashamedly use the sensible words ‘Jews’, Negroes … and many others that I don’t dare put here, because political correctness took over where Victorian etiquette left off. NB [Apparently Africans first came to Britain in the Roman army in 2nd and 3rd centuries]

People are Tribal

Humankind has been tribal since Biblical times. People in many countries, even in these modern times, stare attentively at people who do not look or behave like they do. Having lived in the Middle East and the Far East, I can testify to that. Offence can be taken ,,, or not. That response is usually within us all depending on upbringing, and if one grows up in a family where there is nurturing and confidence to see friendship, in the world, then offence will not be a problem to those fortunate ones. Words will not take that optimistic confidence away from such people.

Like Attracts Like

Employment, schooling, socialising … all these things are subject to our tribal instincts. We continue to see how communities are drawn together by their ‘alikeness’. For one instance, take food – the food that settlers are culturally used to, will remain their diet, and generally they do not try different foods. That is why we have Chinese, Indian, African … etc, all with their own shops and produce. These differing shopping cultures have changed the look of many high streets. Nevertheless … Live and Let Live.

An Alternative View Point

Racism or other types of activism are not the main problem, or even the motivation. Rebellion, violence and an upbringing that has formed hate, resentment and intolerance, will show itself whenever challenged and any reason will be used by such people, just so that they can let loose what has been encouraged in the home.

The Contrite English

Too many of us, are gullible to the modern interpretationof history, too ready to accept the condemnation of our history as well as our modern-day lives. Yet consciences had to grow into the empathy that we now encourage, and life was not as it is now. The growing and developing of conscience may seem unrealistic, because every small thing, especially cute animals, makes us feel soft and emotional. Yet the hard living of earlier times had not produced softened conscience. Reading Elizabeth Gaskell and Charles Dickens [and the life of John Newton] can help us understand how awareness of hardship began to affect treatment towards others. The whole world has gone on the same journey, and thinking in particular of African tribes that sold their own people into slavery, [read Olaudah Equiano] also need to change their mindset. Contrition is a Biblical trait, but on the other hand – accepting guilt that is not real, is dis-empowering.

Having said all this, we have a Creator God Who puts all things right, at the end.