Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil of Slavery

Description

A freed slave’s daring assertion of the evils of slavery

Born in present-day Ghana, Quobna Ottobah Cugoano was kidnapped at the age of thirteen and sold into slavery by his fellow Africans in 1770; he worked in the brutal plantation chain gangs of the West Indies before being freed in England. His Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil of Slavery is the most direct criticism of slavery by a writer of African descent. Cugoano refutes pro-slavery arguments of the day, including slavery’s supposed divine sanction; the belief that Africans gladly sold their own families into slavery; that Africans were especially suited to its rigors; and that West Indian slaves led better lives than European serfs. Exploiting his dual identity as both an African and a British citizen, Cugoano daringly asserted that all those under slavery’s yoke had a moral obligation to rebel, while at the same time he appealed to white England’s better self.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.Edited with an Introduction and Notes by Vincent Carretta

Introduction by Vincent Carretta
Acknowledgments
A Note on the Text
Illustrations
Suggestions for Further Reading

Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil and Wicked Traffic of the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species, Humbly Submitted to The Inhabitants of Great-Britain, by Ottobah Cugoano, a Native of Africa.
London: 1787

Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil of Slavery; or, the Nature of Servitude as Admitted by the Law of God, Compared to the Modern Slavery of the Africans in the West-Indies; In an Answer to the Advocates for Slavery and Oppression. Addressed to the Sons of Africa, by a Native.
London: 1791

Explanatory Notes to the 1787 Publication
Explanatory Notes to the 1791 Publication
Appendix: Correspondence of Quobna Ottobah Cugoano

“Vincent Carretta singlehandedly has transformed our understanding of the origins of the Anglo-African literary tradition. He has breathed new life into texts long thought dead” —Henry Louis Gates, Jr.Quobna Ottobah Cugoano was born in present-day Ghana. Kidnapped at the age of thirteen and sold into slavery by his fellow Africans in 1770, he worked in the brutal plantation chain gangs of the West Indies before being freed in England.

Vincent Carretta is professor of English at the University of Maryland, College Park. He is the editor of the Penguin Classics editions of the Complete Writings of Phillis Wheatley, Letters of the Late Ignatius Sancho, an African, and Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil of Slavery by Ottobah Cugoano.US

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