Prospects of Empire: Slavery and Ecology in Eighteenth-Century Atlantic Britain

Atlantic Entanglements

Olaudah Equiano [Gustavus Vassa] (ca. 1745–1797)

The interesting narrative of the life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African

London: the author, 1791

Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library

 

Gustavus Vassa or Olaudah Equiano was an enslaved man who became an abolitionist and merchant and sailed to many places in the Atlantic world. His birthplace is uncertain: he writes that he was born in Essaka, probably in present day Nigeria, but a 1773 ship’s roll cites his birthplace as South Carolina. In Virginia he was purchased by Michael Pascal, an officer in the English navy, and he traveled to England in 1754. Pascal sold Equiano to a Quaker, who took him to the West Indies, where he acquired enough money through trading to purchase his freedom. Eventually, Equiano returned to London, submitted a petition against the slave trade to Queen Charlotte, and published his Interesting Narrative in 1791. The 1793 reprint displayed here was published the same year as Bryan Edwards’s History, also featured in this case. In this passage, Equiano creates a vivid account of his first impressions of a slave ship.

 

William Blake (1757–1827) after Thomas Stothard (1755–1834)

The Voyage of the Sable Venus, from Angola to the West Indies, ca. 1797

Etching

Private Collection

 

Isaac Teale (d. 1764)

“The Sable Venus; an Ode,” 1765

In Bryan Edwards (1743–1800), History, Civil and Commercial, of the British Colonies in the West Indies

Dublin: L. White, 1793, vol. 2

Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscripts Library, Yale University

 

 Thomas Stothard’s Voyage of the Sable Venus, an allegorical representation of the slave trade, appeared alongside Bryan Edwards’s poem “The Sable Venus,” published in his 1793 History. Both pieces produce an eroticized and romanticized rendering of the forced transport and enslavement of more than 12 million persons from the African continent. Born in England, Edwards inherited several estates in Jamaica, upon which at least 1,500 enslaved persons labored. As a politician, he opposed movements to abolish the slave trade and to restrict the trade of goods between the British West Indies and the United States.

Isaac Cruikshank (1764–1811)

The Abolition of the Slave Trade. Or the Inhumanity of Dealers in human flesh exemplified in the Cruel treatment of a Young Negro Girl of 15 for her Virjen Modesty

Etching with hand coloring

Published 10 April 1792 by S.W. Fores

 

This print depicts Captain John Kimber’s ordered whipping of an enslaved woman aboard the Recovery, a Bristol slaver bound for Grenada, in 1791. The woman died, and abolitionist William Wilberforce brought Kimber to court for her murder. Kimber was acquitted, but the event became a rallying point for abolitionists in Britain. In this copy’s caption, “the Cruel” has replaced “Captain Kimber’s,” which suggests that the scene by no means reflects an isolated event. The print purports to engender the viewer’s sympathy for the attack, but it also eroticizes the scene, and Captain Kimber’s sword handle evokes an erect penis.

William Elmes (active 1797–1814)

Exporting Cattle not Insurable

Etching with hand coloring

Published after 1813 by Thomas Tegg

 

Traders in goods and enslaved persons made certain that their cargo was insured. Most notoriously, the captain and crew of the slave ship Zong threw overboard 132 enslaved persons in hope of collecting insurance money; the subsequent trials were over insurance, not murder, but it became a rallying point for British abolitionists. This print, made 30 years after the initial trial, presents as humorous the insuring of human bodies and the dubious nature of colonial exports. A rowboat full of drunken, scantily clad “cargo” rocks in unknown waters, barrels of smuggled alcohol in tow. The central woman in the yellow dress has stereotypical black features, and in the British Museum’s copy she is portrayed with dark skin.

William Dent (active 1783–93)

The Poor Blacks Going to Their Settlement, 1787

Etching with hand coloring

Published 12 January 1787 by E. Macklew

 

This complex print combines mockery of various British politicians, transformed into “Poor Blacks” of London with, perhaps, satirical commentary on Lord George Gordon’s protest of convict resettlement at Botany Bay in British colonial Australia. London’s black poor faced severe poverty even though many of them had fought alongside the British during the Revolutionary War, on promise of being granted land in Nova Scotia. Sympathizers proposed the creation of a settlement for them in Sierra Leone, a project initially supported by Equiano, who eventually became very critical of its white leadership.

George Cruikshank (1792–1878)

From the West Indies

Etching with hand coloring

First published 1824. Reissue published 1 August 1835 by Thomas McLean

 

From the West Indies first appeared in 1824, ten years before the British Parliament’s Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 went into effect in its colonies. This reissue appeared in 1835, during the apprenticeship period in the British West Indies, a colonial project intended to discipline ex-slaves into their “proper” roles as subjects of the British Empire. Sugar had been Britain’s chief colonial export, but abolition collapsed the market. Here, we see anxieties over a different sort of colonial “export”—a motley, multiracial, sickly, and foreboding group of passengers headed for the metropole, the Empire coming home.