Cugoano on Responsibility and Oppression

Abstract

This article contributes to the growing literature on the West African Quobna Ottobah Cugoano by reconstructing his concept of responsibility from Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil and Wicked Traffic of the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species, first published in London in July 1787. In this text, Cugoano drew the thesis that every individual in the British empire was responsible for the oppression of Africans. Objections to the plausibility of his claim are raised. By contextualizing the argument in eighteenth-century abolitionist thought, I clarify that his thesis is not grounded in causation but in judgment. I develop a passive judgment principle that animates his argument: to judge oppression qua oppression without intervening is to be complicit in it. He applies this principle to different instances, particularly the case of slavery's legal toleration in the British empire.