Introduction
“The Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African, Written by Himself” is the first narrative written by a witness of the African slave trade, thus it has a great historical value.
Many of the Africans, whom the white people had as slaves, were stolen from their families and were cruelly treated during the transportation. Lack of information about their further destiny made them full of fear. At that time, the West was far more developed than Africa. Most of the slaves had never seen the ships before they got on them by force. The new reality, strange-looking white people, speaking a different language, and whose behavior was brutal and merciless, provoked dreadful thoughts in Olaudah’s head. He believed that everything was mystical and that the white people possessed some kind of magic force.
Main body
During the transportation the slaves were chained, they were tortured with hunger and flogging, they had to suffer multiple illnesses and injuries. Looking at all these miseries of the African slaves, Olaudah thought about death as a relief. Olaudah observed that the white people were cruel not only to the slaves but also to the other white people on the ship. Nevertheless, cruelty towards black people was much stronger. There was a time when the cargo was transferred to the ship’s deck, and all the slaves were put in a small area under the deck. It was very hot and crowded. Many people suffocated and died. The place was filled with bad smells which made people sick. Many slaves died and were thrown into the sea.
The ship landed at Barbados, where the slaves were sold to merchants. Many relatives and friends were separated; this separation caused tortures of a different kind.
In the USA many acts regulating the slaves’ behavior were adopted. For example, when an English servant ran away with the black slaves, he then replaced the absent slaves and he had to do all their work. Many acts regulated the work of women and their children. The children born in America could become free only with their mother. The children’s condition depended on the mother’s condition. The marriages between black and white people were forbidden, the fine for interracial marriages was imposed. Even the whipping of slaves was regulated by law.
Conclusion
As the planter William Byrd wrote in his journal, the whippings of the slaves were as ordinary as playing billiard, reading Greek, or drinking chocolate for breakfast. Byrd’s notes make it clear that the slaves’ punishments were a part of planters’ daily life at the beginning of the 18th century.