For my final paper I am thinking about writing my essay on The interesting narrative of olaudah Equiano. The block quote which stood out to me and the one I will build on is:

“A case in point. — It cost the Aborigines of Britain little or nothing in clothing, &c. The difference between their forefathers and the present generation, in point of consumption, is literally infinite. The supposition is most obvious. It will be equally immense in Africa. — The same cause viz. civilization, will ever have the same effect. It is trading upon safe grounds. A commercial intercourse with Africa opens an inexhaustible source of wealth to the manufacturing of Great Britain,6 and to all which the slave-trade is an objection.” (Equiano, 262)

I found it interesting and meaningful because when reading this block quote during class the idea of Equiano in a way sounding like a colonizer came up and I found that interesting because when thinking about the overall reading and the entire journey of Equiano. From him being a slave to being freeman to him then choosing to continuously make more money and start rising in rank when it comes to status and to clearly seeing him adopt this logic or language of a colonizer. Then I thought of writing my argumentative final paper on what if Equiano is telling us based of his narrative and the amount of time he was almost put back into slavery that if the British are thinking of abolition slavery and in order for slavery to stay abolition Britain can work with Africa and economically benefit from it when africa becomes civilized. In a sense the idea of if you don’t want to be colonized, think like a colonizer or to stay free one must become like their enemy.