This is an account of the slave trade by a native African, former slave. Olaudah Equiano recounts his kidnapping at the age of ten in Africa, his service as the slave of an officer in the British Navy and his years of labour on slave ships until he was able to purchase his freedom in 1766. As a free man on a Central American plantation, he supervised slaves. Increasingly disgusted by their treatment, he returned to England in 1771. In England he worked for the resettlement of blacks in Sierra Leone, married an English woman and became a leading and respected figure in the anti-slave movement. This narrative is an autobiography and a treatise on religion, politics and economics.