By and large, history is generally reserved for the victors when it comes to chronicling the past. However, in The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Oluadah Equiano, we are presented with African and European slave trade from the perspective of a slave. While Oluadah was kidnapped as a young boy and subjected to all manner of horrors as a slave, his accounts of Africa and the slave trade as revealed in this work provide many valuable insights regarding the nature of Africans, Europeans, and slave trading in general. If we look at Equiano’s account of his native land, we see the concept of Colombian biological exchange in operation. What is most shocking is that the slave trade was virtually a black-on-black experience, where black traders from neighboring districts or states would obtain prisoners either through trade with local chiefs or outright kidnapping. Thus, various intra-African wars erupt periodically with the sole point of battle being the acquisition of slaves or other booty. However, Equiano suggests that this behavior might have been incited by the European goods brought into his region from the Oye-Eboe merchants, “Perhaps they were incited to this by those traders who brought the European goods I mentioned, amongst us. Such a mode of obtaining slaves in Africa is common; and I believer more are procured this way, and by kidnapping, than any other. When a trader wants slaves, he applies to a chief for them, and tempts him with his wares. It is not extraordinary, if on this occasion he yields to the temptation with as little firmness, and accepts the price of his fellow creature’s liberty, was as little reluctance as the enlightened merchant” (Equiano 40).
Basically, each tribe or village group was a mini-warring state prepared to erupt in battle at the slightest provocation from other districts or states. Through the trade of slaves and the presence of merchants, Equia
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