Philosopher
Ottobah Cugoano
fl. 1772–1791
Fante-born abolitionist, enslaved in the West Indies and freed in England, whose book on the evil of slavery argued that every Briton who tolerates slavery shares its guilt.
Ottobah Cugoano was born in Ajumako, in today’s Ghana, to a Fante family with good connections. Kidnapped at thirteen, he was taken to Grenada and enslaved on a sugar plantation, and in 1772 reached England, becoming free shortly after the Mansfield decision and was baptised. Little else is known of his life.
As an activist he was among the founders of the Sons of Africa, a group of Black British abolitionists. His book appeared in 1787 and, addressed to a different audience, in a second edition in 1791, after which he disappears from the record. Recent interest in Africana philosophy has brought renewed attention to what it says about freedom, responsibility and punishment.
Key ideas
- Slavery is robbery
- Slave-traders and planters are robbers and pirates, ‘stealers of men’. What they steal is liberty: to take away people’s natural liberty and force them into service is itself an injury and a theft.
- No natural slaves
- Against the claim that nature made Africans fit only for slavery, Cugoano argued that nothing in nature, reason or Scripture justifies enslaving Black people any more than anyone else.
Key works
- Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil of Slavery, 1787
Sources
- Antonia LoLordo, Ottobah Cugoano, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy