Summary Of Thomas Paine And Olaudah Equiano

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Thomas Paine and Olaudah Equiano dispute the belief that Britain is more civilized than the countries it has colonized. Paine, as an upper class white man, is able to protest the power structure of Britain by proclaiming that the British government led by the aristocracy law of primogeniture is unethical and unnatural in his essay The Rights of Man that questions the nobility and the competence of the aristocracy who rule the empire of Britain. He argues that governments built on military conquests and aristocracy are based on despotism and cannot establish a fair and effective government for the people. Equiano, on the other hand, must disguise his voice as a freed African slave who has shown through his writing that he is equivalently or exceedingly capable of communicating and behaving as any white man in the upper and middle classes of Britain.