At the end of Equiano’s journey to Barbados he too is auctioned and sold, although he recalls that at the time he was relieved that he was not to be eaten by the Europeans he had assumed were cannibals. By the time of Equiano’s arrival Barbados was one of Britain’s main colonies in the Caribbean in which sugar, grown by a slave population of over 130,000 Africans was the main cash crop. On arrival enslaved Africans were then forced to undertake a period of what was usually referred to as ‘seasoning,’ essentially a process of attempting to break the will of slaves so as to fit them for their new life of bondage. Seasoning was itself a brutal process which it was estimated at the time led to the death of one third of all African slaves. By 1800 the death rate amongst slaves in many European colonies was higher than the birth rate and this meant that there was a constant need to export a fresh supply from Africa.

Mary Prince and Equiano also describe their arrival in Britain. Equiano landed at Falmouth as a slave aged just 12 years old in 1757. His recollections are of all the things that amazed him about England; the buildings he saw, his first sight of snow, and the strange customs of the English such as eating without washing their hands. Mary Prince also remarks on the weather in her History, complaining that when she first arrived in England in 1828 the cold made her rheumatism worse. But her main comments on her arrival are that she was forced to continue the arduous task of washing clothes for her owner.

Mary Prince’s History provides many illustrations of her life as a domestic or household slave. It is often thought that these ‘house slaves’ had a less severe experience than those working in the fields. Indeed Malcolm X gave one of his most famous speeches on the alleged differences between house and field slaves. But even Mary Prince’s description of her arrival at her new owner’s home indicates that no such generalisation can be made. House slaves were often in close proximity to their owners day and night, always at their beck and call and likely to be severely punished for the slightest mistake, or merely at the whim of their owner.