This short story, originally published in 1829, only a few years after the British and American abolition of the Atlantic slave trade, gives a startling contemporary account of the continuing clandestine trade of the time, whether entirely fictional or based on true events. It’s an interesting read, a violent, gruesome story, but not one to return to.
This public domain edition has some quality issues but seems complete.
The author’s tone attempts a matter-of-fact neutrality, on the one hand arguing the equality and equivalence of all men, but on the other being dismissive of Africans as naive and easily led. This is plot relevant, however, as the titular protagonist, an African warrior and slave trader who falls foul of his white customers, dominates the other African slaves through manipulating their superstitions.
The protagonist is a villain through and through, as immoral a slaver as the captain of the ship he ends up on, a brutal and violent bully, who not only captured and sold to the Europeans the other slaves on the ship, but coerces them into a futile rebellion which only results in a tormenting death stranded in the middle of the ocean on a ship none can sail as the crew was massacred. Only the protagonist survives so that his tale becomes known, but it is not told in his words. Rather, the story is presented as a fait divers, in almost journalistic fashion.
The protagonist is certainly no idealised hero, victim, or caricature, but comes across as a larger than life but very real figure of the time and place. Slavery being a stark and emotional subject, it is interesting to read a dispassionate contemporary tale that unflinchingly relates the horrors and the atrocities committed by all parties involved in the trade, African and European, without projecting a modern view and sensibilities on the events of the past.
Reading about the controversial (at the time) film adaptation on Wikipedia is also quite interesting.