The Agony of Asar: A Thesis on Slavery by the Former Slave, Jacobus Elisa Johannes Capitein, 1717-1747

The Agony of Asar is the first dissertation written by an African slave. The author, Jacobus Elisa Johannes Capitein, was brought to Holland by his owner, freed, and educated at the University of Leiden with grants from wealthy burghers. Thereafter he returned to Guinea as a missionary. His analysis presents a sweeping intellectual genealogy of Western thought on the issue of slavery. It begins by discussing the authors of antiquity, using Seneca, Horace, and Justinian to show that slavery ...