Black Methodologies: Ottobah Cugoano, the (Anti)Racial, and British Futurity

¹ Wabash College.

Abstract

This essay investigates Quobna Ottobah Cugoano’s interest in developing an anti-racial vision of Black civic participation in a post-slavery British future. Cugoano constructs his vision by examining the role of literacy, Christianity, and paid wage labor as three facilitators of Black social integration into English society beyond the slave trade. By developing an analysis of Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil and Wicked Traffic of the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species (1787) that examines how Cugoano envisions Black citizenship in Britain, I argue that he reimagines how Black people can serve as transformational agents in helping to redefine the contours of liberty and freedom in England. By doing so, I demonstrate that Cugoano’s anti-racial vision of Britain involves reckoning with the radical potential of Black autonomy as a necessary element for reconstituting Britain and fully realizing the nation’s conception of freedom.