Cugoano, Condorcet, and Abolition on the Eve of Revolution

Quobna Ottobah Cugoano’s Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil and Wicked Traffic of the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species (1787), the first comprehensive antislavery treatise authored by a black writer in the West, was quickly published in an anonymous French translation, Réflexions sur la traite et l’esclavage des Nègres, Traduite de l’Anglais, d’ Ottobah Cugoano , afriquain, esclave à la Grenade et libre en Angleterre (Paris, 1788). Marshalling several forms of evidence—bibliographical, book-historical, biographical, and textual—this article argues that it seems highly probable that the French politician and abolitionist the Marquis de Condorcet was the principal agent in bringing Cugoano’s jeremiad to the French reading public. Tendering the first scholarly assessment of the publication and reception of this translation, the essay situates the Réflexions in the contexts of Condorcet’s own abolitionist writings and the work of the Société des amis de noirs, which he helped to found.