The contribution of the literary work of Gustavus Vassa [Olaudah Equiano] to the english abolitionist campaign (1787 - 1807)

Abstract

Gustavus Vassa was an enslaved African man who, after buying his freedom, lived in England in the late 18th century. He published an autobiography in 1789, aiming to raise awareness in its readers of the sorrows that slavery meant and the necessity of eradicating it. Many scholars who have researched the life and work of Vassa have concluded that his autobiography was used as a political instrument in the abolitionist campaign led by the Committee for the Abolition of the Slave Trade. This article is based on these characterizations in order to determine how Gustavus Vassa, despite the fact that he was African, a former slave and had been only living in England for a short period of time, managed to introduce his autobiography to the British Parliament and turn it into a literary carrier of the abolitionist message. This question was answered by researching the strategies and conditions that allowed the diffusion of the book during the delimited period: 1780, the decade when Vassa began to take part in the abolitionist campaign until 1807, when the act to abolish the slave trade was passed.