Originally published in 1789, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, The African, played a large role in "[altering] public opinion" towards the debate over abolition in Britain. Equiano was viewed as "an authority" in relation to the slave trade. His claims of being born in Eboe (now southern Nigeria) and being captured and traded as a child gave him definite credibility. However, several people questioned his credibility in the 1790s in order to challenge rising abolitionist sentiments. There were rumours that Equiano was actually born in the West Indies, but these claims were thrown away for being "politically motivated."[10]
Paul Edwards edited The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African, in 1967 and sparked further debate about the validity of the story's origins.
In 1999, Vincent Carretta published findings of two records that questioned Equiano's birthplace in Africa.[11] Carretta found Equiano's baptismal record dated 9 February 1759 from St Margaret's Church in Westminster, London, where Equiano was recorded as "Gustavus Vassa, a Black born in Carolina, 12 years old", and a naval muster roll from 1773 where Equiano likewise identified his birthplace as "South Carolina".[12] These documents were enough for Carretta to believe that Equiano's claims about his early life were "probably fictitious".[13] Aside from contradicting Equiano's account directly, these records suggested that, even if Equiano were born in Africa, he would have been at most seven or eight years old when he was sold into slavery (given that he must have been purchased by Michael Henry Pascal in Virginia no later than December 1754). This made Carretta doubt the reliability of Equiano's first-hand descriptions of his home "country" and "countrymen".[14] Carretta believes his findings indicate Equiano had borrowed his account of Africa from others, and said the timing of the publication was not an accident.[15] Carretta noted "the revelation that Gustavus Vassa was a native-born Igbo originally named Olaudah Equiano appears to have evolved during 1788 in response to the needs of the abolitionist movement."[16]
Carretta explains that Equiano presumably knew what parts of his story could be corroborated by others, and, more importantly if he was combining fiction with fact, what parts could not easily be contradicted.[15]
"Equiano's fellow abolitionists were calling for precisely the kind of account of Africa and the Middle Passage that he supplied. Because only a native African would have experienced the Middle Passage, the abolitionist movement needed an African, not an African-American, voice. Equiano's autobiography corroborated and even explicitly drew upon earlier reports of Africa and the Middle Passage by some white observers, and challenged those of others."
Paul E. Lovejoy disputes Carretta's claim that Vassa was born in South Carolina because of Vassa's knowledge of the Igbo society. Lovejoy refers to Equiano as Vassa because he never used his African name until he wrote his narrative.[17] Lovejoy believes Vassa's description of his country and his people is sufficient confirmation that he was born where he said he was, and based on when boys received the ichi scarification, that he was about 11 when he was kidnapped, as he claims, which suggests a birth date of about 1742, not 1745 or 1747.[18] Lovejoy's thoughts on the baptismal record are that Vassa couldn't have made up his origins because he would have been too young. Lovejoy goes on to say:[18]
"If Carretta is correct about Vassa's age at the time of baptism, accepting the documentary evidence, then he was too young to have created a complex fraud about origins. The fraud must have been perpetrated later, but when? Certainly the baptismal record cannot be used as proof that he committed fraud, only that his godparents might have."
Lovejoy also believes Equiano's godparents, the Guerins and Pascals, wanted the public to think that Vassa was a creole instead of being a fully Black man born in Africa. He claims that this was because the perceived higher status of Creoles in West Indian society and Equiano's mastery of English.[19]
In 2007, Carretta wrote a response to Lovejoy's claims about Equiano's Godparents saying: "Lovejoy can offer no evidence for such a desire or perception."[15] Carretta went on to say: "Equiano's age on the 1759 baptismal record to be off by a year or two before puberty is plausible. But to have it off by five years, as Lovejoy contends, would place Equiano well into puberty at the age of 17, when he would have been far more likely to have had a say in, and later remembered, what was recorded. And his godparents and witnesses should have noticed the difference between a child and an adolescent."[20]
