Chapters 2 & 4

In Chapter 2 of Bury the Chains, the life of Equiano, a former slave was told. The author used his journal entries to show the different aspects of life. It started in his homeland of Essaka, a "country were nature is prodigal of her favours", moved on to the horrible march to the shore when he was captured by the European slave traders, then following the "wretched situation" every slave endured over the Atlantic Ocean. After he got there he was saved from the sugar can plantations and went on to personally work for a wealthy Navy officer. This is where he got his education and experience. Over his lifetime he travelled to many different countries, as a slave and also as a free man. He was able to gain his freedom by earning money trading goods from island to island. Even towards the end of his life he had still not escaped fully from the whites idea of "black people being slaves", they still tried to enslave him years after he had been a free man. In Chapter 4 Hochschild moves on to talk about how the sugar cane industry became so popular. It made specific note of James Stephen a young Englishman who was put through law school with his family fortune. Coincidentally this was made trading slaves. He was outraged and surprised when he saw what they did to slaves in the West Indies and "what he had seen in that Barbados courtroom was to determine the course of James Stephen's life", as an abolitionist. This chapter also described Codrington, the slave estate in the Barbados. They kept very detailed records of how many slaves lived there, worked, died, got sick, were executed, crops sold, and profit made. 

One thing that struck me in Chapter 2 was that Equiano was a slave trader himself during a period of his life. Every character that is mentioned in the book is a hypocrite. He justified it as being the norm for the time and this is what I find to be incredible. It is the opposite parallel as John Newton, he was a slave now a slave trader. I think that he is one of many who were smart enough to realize they had to play along and agree with slavery and make friends with the whites in order to survive, but this is heinous and perpetuates slavery. I think about this and tie it to our conversation in class the other day, there is still slavery going on in this day and age but people will not stop wearing clothes made in sweatshops. It is a way of life; survival. 

In Chapter 4 when I read that it took James Stephan more than two decades, (20 years!), to stand up against British slavery I was angered. Not only did he realize once he got to Barbados how terrible slavery was he even said that it was horrifying to learn that his life was shaped with slave trade money. If he was so horrified what did this take him so long to fight against? Because of self interest? I feel that most people today work out of self interest even at the expense and time of others.