Professor Questions Accuracy of Famed Slave Narrative [interesting read]

The Lakeland Ledger ^ | September 23, 2005 | STEPHEN MANNING

[ChildOfThe60s]

COLLEGE PARK, Md.

Olaudah Equiano wrote with vivid detail of life as human cargo -- the foul smells aboard the slave ship that brought him from West Africa to the New World in the 18th century, the anguished cries of women, the despair of those headed to a life of bondage.

The best-selling autobiography he later published is now a key text for scholars studying slavery and its roots in Africa, one of the few first-person accounts by a slave of the brutal cross-Atlantic trip known as the Middle Passage.

But part of Equiano's tale may be more fiction than fact.

A forthcoming biography of Equiano by English professor Vincent Carretta of the University of Maryland, College Park, contends that Equiano was actually born in South Carolina and could never have made the trip he describes. Carretta uses baptismal and naval records he unearthed to prove his point.

By challenging the authenticity of a major voice in the history of African slavery and one of the most widely taught slave narratives, Carretta's work, titled "Equiano, The African: Biography of a Self-Made Man," has stirred a furor among some historians and literary scholars.

"I think devastating is not underestimating some people's reaction to this notion," said Philip Morgan, a Princeton University history professor who has written about 18th-century slavery.

Carretta's book, published by University of Georgia Press, will be released Oct. 24...................

[Wombat101]

Yet another attempt to create a history for a people who had little concept of the term until the coming of white men, and who now use it exclusively in the name of divide-and-conquer politics and sucking at the public teat.

It's all part of a package that is intended to promote guilt in place of fact, anger in place of logic, excuses in place of responsibilities. "Black historians" learned the communist lesson very well: propaganda eventually pays dividends.

So, if we have to ignore African complicity in the slave trade in order to advance the agenda of making whitey scared and guilty, so be it. If we have to invent festivals, holidays and 'culture' on the spot (i.e. Kwanzaa, Nation of Islam, rap music, 'ghetto' culture, etc), then so be it.

The truth is that if I were an African-American I'd get down on my knees and thank whatever I held holy that my slower, dumber ancestors were captured and sold into slavery by their faster, smarter enemies. It gave me the opportunity to grow up and prosper in the greatest country on the planet.

[Travis McGee]

You want to read something fascinating and forgotten, check this out.

Book Description (Amazon)

This is a study that digs deeply into this "other" slavery, the bondage of Europeans by north-African Muslims that flourished during the same centuries as the heyday of the trans-Atlantic trade from sub-Saharan Africa to the Americas. Here are explored--perhaps for the first time--the actual extent of Barbary Coast slavery, the dynamic relationship between master and slave, and the effects of this slaving on Italy, one of the slave takers' primary targets and victims.

About the Author: Robert C. Davis is in the Department of History, Ohio State University, Columbus. (Published 2004)

[Travis McGee]

Bump to my last.

[Jacvin]

I've seen this book discussed on FR.

maybe I'll give it a read.

[ThanhPhero]

Zulus were never in or about Nigeria.

[edcoil]

Saw it thanks.

[edcoil]

It is $54.00 on Amazon.com - pretty good reviews.

[ThanhPhero]

... to be slaves to blacks.

Arabs. Berbers.Sharp noses and blue eyes. Or is it that Wogs starts at Calais?

[Poincare]

The majority of the slaves taken in this part of Africa were placed into bondage by rival tribes.

A fairly large percentage were made slave by their OWN tribes as part of a strange eugenics idea. (One source: "The Red Queen" by Matt Ridley.)

[Verginius Rufus]

...Tom Joad never existed.

I think you're right. I just checked the Social Security Death Index, and there's no "Joad, Tom" or "Joad, Thomas" in the database. Of course, he could still be alive, enjoying a comfortable retirement, and voting Republican somewhere in southern California.

[Sthitch]

That is true, but either way, it makes a lie out of the idea that Europeans were in the bush throwing nets over the natives to cast them into slavery. If that were the only way that slaves could have been captured the slave trade would have died out very quickly since the diseases of the jungle, and the back country would have quickly taken a large toll on the Europeans.

[Verginius Rufus]

The Portuguese began to capture people they encountered on the coast of Africa about 1441 and carry them back to Portugal, or to various Atlantic islands, to work as slaves. By the time of Columbus' first voyage, that had been going on for more than half a century. The Spanish and Portuguese were familiar with slavery since it still existed in the Mediterranean world--Muslims enslaved black Africans and white non-Muslim Europeans (and continued to do so until the 18th or 19th century...or even later).

Since the Indians in the Caribbean area inconveniently died in large numbers when the Spaniards tried to enslave them, it was natural that the Spaniards looked elsewhere for a source of slaves.

[savedbygrace]

Carretta uses baptismal and naval records he unearthed to prove his point.

Adam Potkay, an English professor at the College of William and Mary who has written about Equiano's narrative, said Carretta's archival work is "good evidence" of an American birth. While it is possible that part of Equiano's story is not true, Potkay says that doesn't reduce the text's value.

Further proof that liberals cannot be reasoned with. Professor Carretta did the research and has factual proof, but liberals aren't persuaded. Professor Potkay should have his title changed from Professor to Hack.

[Poincare]

it makes a lie out of the idea that Europeans were in the bush throwing nets over the natives

Absolutely!

People dare not speak of black on black oppression, or "brown on black" racism. We know of course of black slave owners in our own South, especially Louisiana. In a way the complainers at the Superdome (and the MSM) were right when they blamed "racism", only it was not white oppression as we can see by simply looking at all the light skinned blacks in charge of NOLA. (There was a TV series called "Frank's Place" set in NO that looked at brown on black oppression -for lack of a better word- and the show was cancelled despite good ratings.)

[Verginius Rufus]

There was an article on Caretta's book in the Sept. 9 issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education, by Jennifer Howard. That's a weekly newspaper for college administrators and for people seeking college teaching or administrative positions.

[ChildOfThe60s]

That is not implausible. Some slaves were able to get education.

[ChiefJayStrongbow]

After seeing Jim Brown's stellar performance in the movie by the same name, I decided I must be part Mandingo.

[MEGoody]

That is not implausible. Some slaves were able to get education.

Possible, but unlikely.

[sine_nomine]

I know a fair number of Black university students. They do not like quotas or a lot of that other nonsense. They want to succeed by being good at what they do. These are mature full-time working adults. I think reality teaches a lot.

Someone said, "I don't want to overthrow the ruling class. I want to join it."

[camle]

the ones I know are typical college kids. keyword: typical.