Untitled - Memorial University of Newfoundland

plantations and the co ffee plantations in Brazil; otherswere used as do mestic slaves in
England. 8 Slave labour sustained the industry and increased Britain ' s wealth .
In Three Blade Wriren in Eighreetuh Q nrury England , Francis Adams and
Barry Sanden record the biograph y and writings of three:slaves and their resistance to
slavery . One of these slaves. Ottabah Cugoano , who was born in 1757, was kidnapped
as a child and sold into slavery . 9 He wasgiven the English name, John Stewart,
taken to the West Indies and eventually brought to England. Having learn ed English,
he wri tes a book condemnin g slavery entitled Thoug1u:s and Sennmous on rite Evil and
WicUd Traffic of eM Slavtry and Commerce of eM Humanspecies ( 1787) . He
constructs his political and philosophical arguments in the writing style of the
eighteenth cen tury. Since be hadheard slave traders j ustify their business by making
referen ces to the bible. be also referred to God 's love and other appropriate biblical
passages that denounced slavery . In other words, he uses his master 's tool in his
attempt to dismantle his master's house .
Cugoano writes about the degrading and sub-human fashion in which
Europeans treated and spokeabout blacks. He demonstrates that the behaviour of the
Engli sh slave traders was worse than that of the slaves whom they regard as beasts:
None but men of the most brutish and depra ved nature, led on by the
invidious influence of infernal wickedness. could have made their
settlements in the different parts of the world discovered by them , and
have treated the various Indian nations, in the manner that the barbarous
inh uman Europeans have done ; and their establishing and canying on
that most dishooest.. unjust and diabolical traffic: of buying and selling,
and of enslavin g men, is such a monstrous, audacious and unparalleled