Colonialism 14

I was soon put down under the decks, and there I received such a salutation in my nostrils as I had never experienced in my life: so that, with the loathsomeness of the stench, and crying together, I became so sick and low that I was not able to eat (…) I now wished for the last friend, death, to relieve me; but soon, to my grief, two of the white men offered me eatables; and, on my refusing to eat, one of them held me fast by the hands, and laid me across I think the windlass, and tied my feet, while the other flogged me severely.

 

 

Olaudah Equiano (1789): The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African.

Olaudah Equiano or Gustavus Vassa (1745-1797), according to his autobiography, was captured by European slave traders with his sister in present-day Nigeria and taken to the Americas. After several changes of ownership, he learned to read, write and trade, and was thus able to buy his freedom with the money he had earned. In his autobiography, he described slavery’s cruelty, and became an activist in the anti-slavery movement.

The transatlantic slave trade and the plantation economy which existed from the late 15th to the mid 19th centuries are understood as preconditions for economic boom in Europe and poverty in Africa. The Guyanese Marxist historian Walter Rodney wrote: "Western Europe was developed by Africa, just as Africa was underdeveloped by Western Europe" (Rodney 1972/2012:75). More than 12 million Africans were transported to the Americas (Ronald Segal 1995: 4 and David Eltis & David Richards: 2010), and a fifth of the enslaved died during the crossing. In the Americas, they were forced to work on sugar, tobacco and cotton plantations, amongst other things. Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker describe how enslaved Africans, European proletarians, Caribbean and North American Native Americans together formed a hybrid culture of resistance against the violence of unfolding capitalism (2008: 190ff.).

*Walter Rodney (1975/2012): How Europe underdeveloped Afrika. Cape Town: Pambazuka Press. *Peter Linebaugh & Marcus Rediker (2000): The Many-Headed Hydra. The Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic. London: Verso. *Webseite Slave Voyages

1789