Answering Equiano: An Enslaver’s Sketch of Igboland in an Age of Abolition

Abstract: The second half of the eighteenth century witnessed a rise in interest about Africa that coincided with Great Britain’s national debate over the transatlantic slave trade. The most famous work to emerge from this historical moment was Gustavus Vassa or Olaudah Equiano’s The Interesting Narrative (1789), the first narrative of slavery known to have been written by a former enslaved person. This work situated the era’s prevailing antislavery narrative about the African continent in the life story of a real person and directed the public’s attention toward Igboland (in today’s southeastern Nigeria). Although scholars have long known about the work’s immediate popularity in Britain, a conspiracy of silence among enslavers has obscured its contemporary reception in the Caribbean colonies. This article closes that gap by introducing a previously unknown manuscript source: an unpublished ethnographic “sketch” of Igboland written by a Scottish migrant to Jamaica named Andrew Reddie in 1796. Reddie’s sketch suggests that Equiano’s narrative was well-known to enslavers in the colonies after its publication, and both texts reflect a broader “Igbo moment” in the Atlantic world, defined by the Igbo’s rise to demographic predominance in the transatlantic slave trade and an emerging tradition of writing about Igboland. The text of Reddie’s sketch is reproduced in full as an appendix.