Quobna Ottobah Cugoano, whom Henry Louis Gates has dubbed the "invisible man" of the eighteenth century, was born in Africa around 1757 and sold into slavery as a boy. He was brought to England in 1772, just months after the historic Somerset case that abolished slavery in England, and was thereby emancipated.<P>However, as he knew all too well, the slave trade persisted throughout the British Empire and the rest of Europe. Thoughts and Sentiments, the most radical assault published by a writer of African descent on slavery, was his response to the hypocrisy of Enlightenment Europe's attitude toward the evil institution. After a brief account of his early life, Cugoano launches an invective against the evils of slavery. He closes with a plea for the immediate emancipation of all slaves throughout the Empire, and for British efforts to quash the slave trade in other European countries.
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