11th July 1766 was an important day in the life of Olaudah Equiano. In the morning he went to see his ‘owner’, Robert King, on the island of Montserrat. Equiano was feeling nervous, as he put it, he had ‘many fears in my heart.’ The reason for his trepidation was that he was approaching King with a view to buying his freedom. Through hard work and much enterprise, Equiano had saved the £40 that King had told him would be the price of freedom.
If there was such a thing as a ‘good’ slave owner then King was probably such a man, he had treated Equiano well and placed him in positions of trust. But Equiano was used to being cheated by white men and King hesitated, Equiano had been extremely useful to him and he was reluctant to part with such a valuable asset. King complained that Equiano had ‘got the money much faster [than expected] and said he would not have made me the promise he did if he had thought I should have got money so soon.’ Fortunately another white man present, who knew Equiano well, Captain Farmer, spoke up for him and persuaded King to honour his agreement. The sum of £40 was handed over and Equiano went directly to the Register Office on the island to get the legal document freeing him drawn up. It’s worth mentioning that £40 in 1766 is equivalent to almost £7,000 today.
Equiano’s manumission day was celebrated at the Black Cultural Archives with poetry by Nat Nye and a talk from Hakim Adi, Professor of the History of Africa and the African Diaspora at the University of Chichester.
In addition to talking about Equiano’s manumission, Hakim spoke passionately about why history matters and to deplore its decline as a subject of choice among students.
Here is an example (unrelated to Equiano) of Hakim talking about migration. ‘Britain’ he says ‘is a country of migrants’. He makes a point I have made many times, that the Angles and Saxons (whose values are so often held up by so called ‘nationalists’) were migrants.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJGb8hTnndM
As luck would have it, the day after the event at the BCA I started reading ‘Untold Histories: Black people in England and Wales during the period of the British slave trade c160 – 1807’ by Kathleen Chater. She included a quote from historian, John Tosh, in her introduction ‘history is a political battleground. The sanction of the past is sought by those committed to upholding authority and by those intent on subverting it.’ If historians can be said to take sides in that battle of ideas then there is no doubt that Hakim Adi would be among the subversives. His talk was stimulating, challenging and, yes, a little subversive (and all the better for that). I came away wondering why this wasn’t how history was taught to me at school and with a strong desire to enroll on a history course at the University of Chichester!