Question

Neither John Harrower nor Olaudah Equiano were typical of the people who came to America in the late 1700s. Nevertheless, their writings can teach us much about the economic system and social patterns of British America." Use this as the opening sentence of an essay. Discuss what each text reveals about the economy, about class, gender, and racial/ethnic hierarchies, about religion and cultural life on British ships and in British colonies.

Answer 1

Answer: Neither John Harrower nor Olaudah Equiano were typical of the people who came to America in the late 1700s. Nevertheless, their writings can teach us much about the economic system and social patterns of British America.

Explanation:

John Harrower was a Scottish merchant who, unable to find a profitable job in Scotland or England, went to the American colonies to work as an indentured servant. He served as a tutor in Virginia, and he kept a diary of his journey into an eighteenth-century plantation.

Already in was the ship, due to his literacy, he was treated differently than the other indentured servants traveling to Virginia, and when already in the plantation, he´s status was that of slaves of African origin, and he slowly started to assimilate into the colonist mentality.

Olaudah Equiano´s recollection allows us to differentiate the treatment slaves got in different places.

Although he was kidnapped and separated from his sister, he claims that while in Africa, slavery wasn´t as bad as it would be under the British, and it´s actually when he's sold to the English slave traders at the coast that the rather empathetic practice ended.