October Books 15) The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano

[nwhyte]

This is the autobiography of an 18th-century slave, sold from his home in West Africa as a child to work on the West Indian fleet and around the Anglophone Atlantic shores, before becoming a freeman, missionary and political activist. (I'm using the Sierra Leone flag for this entry's userpic because Equiano spent some time there as part of the

Comments

[tree_and_leaf]

It sounds fascinating.

I looked "human rights" up in the OED, which demonstrates that Equiano wasn't the first person to use it, and that Wiki is even more wrong than you thought:

1629 W. Crosse tr. Sallust Warre of Iugurth ix, in Wks. 315 Those former times delight you more then these, in which‥all diuine and human rights [L. divina et humana omnia] were in the power of some fewe.
1690 N. Tate Pastoral Dialogue 14 Where Rome bears sway, bid Laws Divine farewell, And Human Rights t'assert, is to Rebel.
1758 Prisoner 6 Of human rights ammerc'd, and human aid.
1791 T. Paine Rights of Man 110 The representatives of the people of France‥considering that ignorance, neglect, or contempt of human rights, are the sole causes of public misfortunes‥have resolved to set forth‥these natural, imprescriptible, and unalienable rights. [Some later uses omitted]/

I'm not sure from context if Cross is using it in quite the same sense as Equiano, but Tate seems to be.

[nwhyte]

I think Crosse is not quite there. I find another translation of the passage which is: perhaps these times please you less than those when kingdoms, provinces, laws, rights, the administration of justice, war and peace, and indeed every thing civil and religious, was in the hands of an oligarchy
and it's fairly clear to me that these are rights of the governing classes, not of humanity as a whole.

I'm not sure about Tate either. The whole poem is an attack on the claims of Catholicism, and 'human rights' are advocated in opposition to the church hierarchy (though as allies of divine will). Interested to hear what you think.

Can't find the 1758 version. The Paine quote given is actually his translation from the French, though he uses it twice elsewhere in the Rights of Man.

[altariel]

The parish church in Chesterton has a plaque outside to the memory of his little girl, who sadly died aged 4:
http://www.standrews-chesterton.org/church-history/olaudah-equiano/

"Garrow's Law" ep 2.1

[ext_256845]

Readers may well also have encountered Equiano being dramatised, under his alternate name of Gustavus Vassa, as the principal supporting character in the opening episode of the second series of "Garrow's Law" last year.

The story loosely followed some of the legal events after the so-called "Zong Affair" of 1781 (or "Zong Massacre" as it's now more honestly called).