A talk by Dr Jonathan Wright on Olaudah Equiano's 1791 visit to Belfast and Ulster's connections with the eighteenth-century Atlantic World.
Dr Jonathan Wright is at Clifton House on Monday 26 October, talking about Africans and the Atlantic world in eighteenth-century Ulster. The talk starts at 1:00pm and runs for an hour.
Wright takes his starting point from Olaudah Equiano's visit to Belfast in October 1791. Equiano was in the city promoting his autobiography, The interesting narrative of the life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavius Vassa, The African. It was the same month the Society of United Irishmen was established, and while he was here, he attended a meeting of the Belfast Charitable Society, which had been founded in 1752 and backed by the prominent merchant Waddell Cunningham. Wright uses that one visit to look at Ulster's wider connections with the eighteenth-century Atlantic world and to piece together the fragmentary stories of other Africans known to have come to Ulster at the time.
Wright is a historian of the long eighteenth century and a lecturer in British and Irish history at Maynooth University. The talk is staged at Clifton House, a Georgian landmark whose gardens and rooms bring the city's philanthropic past to life, and is presented in association with the Mary Ann McCracken Foundation.
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It's on Monday 26 October, 1:00pm to 2:00pm, at Clifton House, 2 North Queen Street, Belfast BT1 5ES. Tickets are £6.
