Theorists of Democracy

It isn't extraordinary, if on this occasion he yields for the temptation with as modest firmness, and accepts the cost of his fellow creature's liberty, was as modest reluctance as the enlightened merchant" (Equiano 40).

Basically, every tribe or village group was a mini-warring nation prepared to erupt in battle at the slightest provocation from other districts or states. From the trade of slaves as well as the presence of merchants, Equiano's persons were in a position to invest in objects of war they did not manufacture themselves, like gunpowder and guns, "These [markets] are sometimes visited by stout mahogany-colored men inside the south-west of us: we call them Oye-Eboe, which word indicates the red men living at a distance. They typically bring us fire-arms, gun-powder, hats, beads, and dried fish" (Equiano 38). In such an environment as this, Equiano's persons exist inside a virtual theatre of war, in which their arms accompany them on all of their daily tasks, like working the fields. No matter what gender, what age, or what condition of health, all of Equiano's people are prepared for military conflict from a young age. However, the arms they use and also the necessity of warring had been introduced to them from external peoples, "We have fire-arms, bows and arrows, broad two-edged swords and javelins; we have shields also which cover a man from head to foot. All are taught the use of these weapons; even our women are warriors" (Equiano 40).

evelations in this book that there was a major difference between being a slave in west Africa and getting a single aboard British slave ships. In Tinmah, the most beautiful nation in Africa experienced by Equiano, he is really a slave but is treated having a certain measure of respect and humanity. For instance, he is sold to a merchant who is buddies using a wealthy widow who has an only son. The son is really a young man close in age to Equiano and the treatment of him by the widow is of this sort of a nature that during his time there he forgets his enslaved condition, "The following day I was washed and perfumed, and once meal time came, I was led into the presence of my mistress, and ate and drank just before her with her son?I could scarcely aid expressing my surprise that the young gentleman need to suffer me, who was bound, to take in with him who was free; and not merely so, but that he would not at any time either consume or drink till I had taken first, since I was the eldest, which was agreeable to our custom" (Equiano 52).

In conclusion, the testimony given by Equiano in this book has expanded my conscious awareness of what the Atlantic slave trade and West Africa had been all about from the eighteenth century. By and large, slaves had been regarded to be the home of other human beings as much as the women in Equiano's village had been regarded as the property of their fathers and then husbands.

 

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