White gold : the extraordinary story of Thomas Pellow and Islam's one million white slaves / Giles Milton.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Milton, Giles.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Pellow, Thomas, 1704-.

Pellow, Thomas.

Slavery--Morocco--History.

Slavery.

Relations.

History.

Morocco--Relations--Great Britain.

Morocco.

Great Britain--Relations--Morocco.

Great Britain.

Morocco--History--1516-1830.

Physical Description:

xii, 316 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations, maps ; 24 cm

Edition:

First American edition.

Place of Publication:

New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005.

Summary:

White Gold is the remarkable true story of white European slaves in eighteenth-century Algiers, Tunis, and Morocco, told in inimitable style by one of our finest popular historians.

In the summer of 1716, a Cornish cabin boy named Thomas Pellow and fifty-one of his comrades were captured at sea by Barbary corsairs. Their captors-Ali Hakem and his network of Islamic slave traders-had declared war on the whole of Christendom. France, Spain, England, and Italy had suffered a series of devastating attacks. Thousands of Europeans had been snatched from their homes and taken in chains to the great slave markets of Algiers, Tunis, and Sale in Morocco, where they were sold at auction to the highest bidder.

Pellow and his shipmates were bought by the tyrannical sultan of Morocco, Moulay Ismail, who was constructing an imperial palace of such scale and grandeur that it would surpass every other building in the world, a palace built entirely by Christian slave labor. Resourceful, resilient, and quick-thinking, Pellow was selected by Moulay Ismail for special treatment, and was one of the fortunate few who survived to tell his tale. As a personal slave of the sultan, he was to witness firsthand the splendor of the imperial court as well as the daily terror of the slaves. For twenty-three years, Thomas Pellow would be a stranger in this land, dreaming of his distant homeland, his family, his friends-and his freedom.

An extraordinary and shocking story, drawn from unpublished letters and manuscripts written by slaves and by the padres and ambassadors sent to free them, White Gold is a riveting and revealing account of a disturbing and long-forgotten chapter of history.

Contents:

Map of Morocco xiii

Map of the Mediterranean xv

1 A New and Deadly Foe 11

2 Sultan of Slaves 32

3 Seized at Sea 53

4 Pellow's Torments 75

5 Into the Slave Pen 93

6 Guarding the Concubines 111

7 Rebels in the High Atlas 132

8 Turning Turk 158

9 At the Court of Moulay Ismail 173

10 Escape or Death 197

11 Blood Rivals 217

12 Long Route Home 242.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [281]-299) and index.

ISBN:

0374289352

OCLC:

56941892