This is an excellently written account of the history of the white slave trade. The account is supported by the unpublished letters and manuscripts of slaves and the various ambassadors sent to free them. After enduring long periods of torture Pellow converted to Islam and became the personal slave of the sultan for over two decades-including a stint as a soldier in the sultan's army-before finally making a dramatic escape and return to Cornwall. Pellow's purchaser happened to be the tyrannical sultan of Morroco, Moulay Ismail, a man committed to building a vast imperial pleasure palace of unsurpassable splendour built entirely by Christian slave labour. His latest literary adventure, White Gold, is the story of Thomas Pellow, a Cornish cabin boy who was captured at sea by a group of fanatical Islamic slave traders-the Barbary corsairs, taken in chains to the great slave markets of Algiers, Tunis and Salè in Morocco and sold to the highest bidder. Writer and journalist Giles Milton specializes in the history of travel and exploration.
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