Born in Djougou (in modern Benin) around 1830, Baquaqua was captured in a local war and shipped out through the Dahomian port of Whydah as part of the illegal trans-Atlantic slave trade. Arriving in Brazil, he began life as a slave in Pernambuco and was subsequently sold to a sea captain from Rio de Janeiro. In 1847 he escaped with the help of free black abolitionists while the ship was docked in New York City and spent two years in the free black Republic of Haiti with the American Baptist Free Mission Society. With the support of the mission society, he attended New York Central College in upstate New York from 1850 to 1853 and published his autobiography the following year.
Baquaqua's story is significant for several reasons. First, it gives a detailed account (comprising over half the text) of life and conditions in his home region before his enslavement. This section is written in the third person, probably by his editor Samuel Moore, based on information supplied by Baquaqua. Once Baquaqua is captured, however, the narrative switches to a first-person account. Second, Baquaqua's story is unusual in that his travels took him from Whydah to Brazil, the United States, Canada, and Haiti, thus illustrating the wide reach of the trans-Atlantic slave trade and New World slavery. As Lovejoy writes, Baquaqua was a man of the Black Adantic.
Originally published in 2001, the edited book has now come out in a revised and expanded second edition. A model for the editing of historical texts, the book contains a biographical introduction that is almost as long as the narrative itself, with extensive footnotes, four maps, twenty-seven illustrations, a glossary, a bibliography, and five appendixes containing letters written by Baquaqua and other source material.
Robert Harms
Yale University
New Haven, Connecticut
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