White Gold: The Extraordinary Story of Thomas Pellow and Islam’s One Million White Slaves

last updated 8 January 2015

In 1715, an 11-year-old English lad named Thomas Pellow signed aboard the merchant vessel Francis as a cabin boy. Filled with salted fish for trading, the Francis was bound from Cornwall, England, to Genoa, Italy. It never returned: On the homeward voyage, it was hijacked by the Barbary pirates of North Africa. The crew were enslaved; scores were tortured and killed. Pellow ended up a prisoner of Morocco's notoriously cruel Sultan Moulay Ismail, who put him to backbreaking work building his elaborate palace. But Pellow managed to survive by becoming one of the sultan's most trusted confidants. He even converted to Islam and married a Muslim woman. Ultimately, Pellow made a daring escape and returned home after 23 years.

Giles Milton's subtitle is no exaggeration, said Sandip Roy in the San Francisco Chronicle. White Gold is a 'œfascinating' yarn, conveyed by a 'œgifted storyteller.' But it's not just about Pellow; it's also a history of the million or so captured Europeans who, like him, were bought and sold in the bazaars of North Africa in the 17th and 18th centuries. Thanks to their 'œremarkably impotent' monarchs, most died in captivity. Given the 'œhorrors of the modern jihad' in the Middle East, said Simon Winchester in The Boston Globe, this book should be read 'œwith great care and attention' by anyone interested in knowing more about 'œwhat British prime minister Tony Blair has called the 'degraded aspect of Islam.''

Actually, it's Milton's book that is degraded, said Reza Aslan in The Washington Post. Because he frequently 'œregurgitates' Pellow's own overbaked memoirs, he often falls prey to the worst clichÃ©s about Muslim barbarism. Moulay Ismail comes across 'œas comically evil,' like something out of the Arabian Nights or similar 'œdeliciously scandalous 'Orientalist' fantasies' that were such a hit with the British upper-class reading public. 'œIndeed, by conflating these tales with history, Milton occasionally proves himself as gullible as the 18th-century audiences for whom stories like Pellow's were originally written.' He would have done better to have subjected 'œthese fantastic narratives' to critical scrutiny, rather than treating them 'œas gospel.'