Ottobah Cugoano was born around 1757 near Ajumako on the Gold Coast, in present-day Ghana, and grew up in the household of the Fante chief Ambro Accasa before being kidnapped at around age thirteen while playing in a field with other children.
Cugoano was sold into slavery and transported to Grenada in the West Indies, where he endured brutal conditions on a sugar plantation before being purchased in 1772 by a merchant who brought him to England, where he was freed and learned to read and write.
In London, Cugoano became a prominent figure among the free African community, befriending fellow former enslaved writers Olaudah Equiano and Ignatius Sancho, and co-founding the Sons of Africa, one of the earliest Black political organisations in Britain.
In 1787, with editorial assistance from Equiano, Cugoano published Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil and Wicked Traffic of the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species, the first English-language abolitionist book by an African author, which went further than any previous abolitionist work by demanding the immediate and total end of slavery and the slave trade.
Copies of Cugoano's book were sent to King George III and other powerful figures, and a revised 1791 edition announced his intention to establish a school for London's Black community; no further record of his life survives after this point.
- Author of the first English-language abolitionist book by an African writer, 1787
- First to publicly demand the total, immediate abolition of slavery in print
- Co-founded the Sons of Africa, one of Britain's earliest Black political organisations
- His work was distributed to King George III and other powerful British figures
- Personal testimony can strengthen political argument. Cugoano combined his own account of enslavement with a sustained intellectual case against slavery.
- Radical demands can outpace the movement around them. Cugoano's call for total, immediate abolition was more uncompromising than most of his contemporaries.