In his assessment, Vincent Carretta almost states that Vassa was born in South
Carolina – almost, because once again, he does not actually say it. In my opinion
Vassa’s claim to an African birth should be accepted, but Carretta argues that the evidence
‘does not lead to that conclusion’. Does that mean Carretta believes he was born
in South Carolina? Apparently not, for he still considers ‘the evidence for and against
his assertion of an African birth is ultimately inconclusive’. The evidence is more conclusive
for this historian than for Carretta, and as a literary critic, this scholar has gone
a lot further than Carretta seems to think in assessing the text and the context.
Although Carretta rejects the idea that Vassa might have been born in Africa, he
refuses to be pinned down on a Carolina birth. Is there another alternative? Carretta’s
interpretation is not historical reconstruction but a nod towards ‘it doesn’t matter’,
when it does. Vassa was born somewhere, and the historian has to make an assessment
while some literary critics may not think this is essential.
Carretta argues that ‘Equiano indisputably suppressed the records of a South
Carolina origin when he decided to publish the reconstruction of his life’. In his Interesting
Narrative, Vassa did not mention his baptism record, which he may or may not
have known about, nor did he explain why he enlisted on the Arctic Expedition of 1773
with a declared Carolina birth, although he does provide considerable detail about
both his baptism and the Arctic. The claim to a South Carolina birth apparently
served a purpose at one time in his life but was in fact not correct and therefore
not worth mentioning in the autobiography. There is no proof that Vassa tried to
hide these documents, let alone suppress them, other than in Carretta’s imagination.
Carretta explains the motive for Vassa’s alleged fabrication of evidence as an abolitionist
plot. According to Carretta, ‘The abolitionist movement required precisely the
kind of account of Africa and the Middle Passage that he [Vassa] supplied.’ For this
reason, Carretta asks if ‘Equiano suppress[ed] accurate records of a South Carolina
birth and invent[ed] an African birth because of obvious abolitionist and financial
Slavery and Abolition
Vol. 28, No. 1, April 2007, pp. 121–125
Correspondence to: Paul E. Lovejoy, Department of History, Your University, 4700 Keele Street. Toronto, Ontario,
Canada, M3J 1P3. Email: plovejoy@yorku.ca
ISSN 0144-
In this article Lovejoy heavily criticizes the evidence presented by Carretta and speaks out on interpretations given by historians such as Alexander Byrd, S.E. Ogude and Catherine Acholonu. Lovejoy confidently argues that Equiano's Autobiography was not to manipulate the public through fabrication, he simply reported what he remembered.Moreover he asserts that Equiano was concerned with vindication of his behavior in the Sierre Leone fiasco and his autobiography a means of public redemption which he secured through his prominent subscribers. Given the argument by Lovejoy, do you agree?
Vincent Carretta note that ''It is difficult to think of any historical account of the middle passage that does not quote(Equino's) eye witness description of it's horrors as primary evidence'' Carretta maintains that Equino is still extremely valuable to historians because of his constructed identity as an ''Atlantic creole''. Vincent was invited top address the question whether- despite the posssibilty that he fabricated his personal and African idemtities, the man best known today as Olaudah eQUIANO REMAINS CENTRAL FIGURE IN THE RECFONSTRUCTION OF aTLANTIC HISTORY. Carretta claims that recently discovered documents documents concetrning the baptism of Gustavus Vassa and his subsequent employment in the British navy'' cast doubt'' on the early life of the person usually recognized as Olaudah Equiano.
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