ably well, and never needed any fresh supplies of negroes; and there are many other estates, especially in Barbados, which, from such judicious treatment, need no fresh stock of negroes at any time. I have the honor of knowing a most worthy and humane gentleman, who is a native of Barbados, and has estates there. He allows them two hours of refreshment at mid-day, and many other indulgencies and comforts, particularly in their lodging; and, besides this, he raises more provisions on his estate than they can destroy; so that by these attentions he saves the lives of his negroes, and keeps them healthy, and as happy as the condition of slavery can admit.
When Olaudah Equiano published his autobiography in England in 1789, he achieved instant celebrity. Several thousand copies were sold, the subscribers including the Prince of Wales, the Duke of York and the Duke of Cumberland. The book went through nine editions between 1789 and 1794, and pirated versions appeared in Holland, New York, Russia and Germany. He was a best-selling author, and became the wealthiest black man in the English-speaking world. He was so well off that he dabbled in moneylending to English people. His daughter inherited £950 and a silver watch from his estate....
A major reason for Equiano's popularity is that his autobiography contains a detailed account of his birth and childhood in Nigeria, with rare descriptions of the culture of 18th-century Igbo society. His narrative of the Atlantic crossing in a slave ship is as unique as it is moving. The early chapters are much anthologised since they offer a first-hand record of an African kidnapped at the age of ten, taken to the coast, sold to European merchants and despatched to the Americas.
Equiano writes passionately and vividly of his separation from his mother and sister, of his initial horror at seeing Europeans (they behaved so brutishly and were so alien to behold - "white men with horrible looks, red faces and long hair" - that he feared they were cannibals bent on eating the cargo of slaves), of the astonishment of seeing a ship for the first time and, on the transatlantic journey, of the strange and exotic sight of flying fish and other sea creatures. In the midst of dreadful suffering the child-Equiano asserts the magical beauty of life. A sympathetic white sailor lets him look through a quadrant. "The clouds appeared to me to be land, which disappeared as they past along. This heightened my wonder and I was now more persuaded than ever that I was in another world, and that everything about me was magic."
Fascinating and bestselling material, but how truthful? Vincent Carretta's biography seems to have torpedoed the slave ship and shattered trust in Equiano's veracity. Through years of patient and tenacious research in neglected archives, Carretta has discovered not one but two documents indicating that Equiano was born in Carolina - the first, a baptism record from February 9 1759, in St Margaret's Church, Westminster, stating that he was a "Black, born in Carolina, 12 years old"; the second, a muster list on a ship in which Equiano served in 1773, on which his birthplace is declared to be "South Carolina". In other words, Equiano may never have set foot in Africa, never mind boarded a slave ship, and the narrative of his early life may be pure fiction.
Needless to say, many scholars of African-American studies are furious with Carretta for seeming to suggest that Equiano is a trickster. One of them suggested he should have buried the evidence, for as one journalist in the Chronicle of Higher Education put it: "Carretta's conclusions threaten a pillar of scholarship on slave narratives and the African diaspora. Questioning Equiano's origins calls into doubt some fundamental assumptions made in departments of African-American Studies." Many Nigerians too are up in arms, Equiano being their star writer and witness. The fact that Carretta is white has increased the level of hostility to his book.
So how are we to reassess Equiano? Carretta himself suggests that his possible birth in Carolina ra