 Review of Muslim history Giles Milton: White Gold: The Extraordinary Story of Thomas Pellow and Islam's One Million White Slaves Pointlessness and cruelty of Islam, December 1, 2010One-volume guide to north African war which is still little-known This is mostly an 18th century story; it ends in 1816. The very last endnote quotes that at least a million European Christians were enslaved from 1530-1780, in NW Africa—from Tunis then west to Algiers, Tangier (just south west of Gibraltar) and down to Salé. It's a coastal area bounded by mountains. Giles Milton's story is based on the memoirs in English of Thomas Pellow from Cornwall, who was captured at sea aged 11. At least, the blurb say so, but the endnotes reveal a lot of detailed research, mostly English or French books, some translated from Arabic. Moulay Ismail, the dominant character, died in old age (as with Henry VII, his death was kept secret for some time—in his case about two months). He spent more than forty years in architectural construction with daily inspections, with the Koran carried before him (p156] at Meknes. The palaces were largely built from lime and 'earth' and pebble mixture—'lime' meaning genuine calcium oxide—supplemented by marble etc robbed from the remains of a Roman town. Meknes is inland and fortifiable. There's no convincing illustration of its impressiveness—the illustrations are mostly engravings and aquatints, plus a few photos. When he wasn't watching slaves in their construction work, he killed large numbers of people, and fathered large numbers of others. Milton describes some of the executions—such as sawing a man in half. I don't think Milton makes any attempt to estimate the total deaths, or even to describe the overall system; maybe they just grabbed what food they could, and lived in what hovels and tents they could arrange. As in the USA, there was some sort of slave breeding programme; p129 says a deliberate breeding of mulattos. There are character studies such as (p152) his 'first wife' Lala Zidana 'black, of a monstrous height and bulk'—who caused, with a made-up story, the sultan's next favourite 'wife' to be strangled. And quite a few emissaries sent to deal with Moulay Ismail with rather uniform lack of success—one stamped his foot and damned him to God, others were pliable and smooth, others rather insulting. There are accounts of the locals being polite, genteel, and civilised which contrast oddly with the accounts of executions. One technique of Moulay Ismail was simply to be unpredictable. Pellew's account may I think be unreliable—he seems to have had suspiciously exceptional luck. He 'turned Turk' under torture, learned Arabic, was found attractive and clever by Moulay Ismail; he even shot at a heavy door to keep the latter out when he'd been ordered to keep everyone out. The many misfortunes sound too great, to me. But who knows; whites/ Europeans often had useful skills: crafts, carpentry, casting cannon, using cannon. There are signs Milton has 'gone native'—he says nothing about white treachery which allowed Europe to be invaded—Vienna isn't even indexed. In 1648 first transaction of 'The Alcoran of Mahomet' was printed: there was a 'clash with the censors' who agreed eventually to publication in 1649. '.. it provided the raw material for countless bilious sermons and diatribes against the Islamic world.' Milton describes someone called Humphrey Prideaux who wrote 'The True Nature of Imposture' was a 'runaway success' being reprinted up to 1723. {Milton describes him as an 'anti-Islamic bigot' but says nothing about the actual content of the book]. It's surprising how little impact the Islamic world made, at least in Britain: Brewer's collection of vast numbers of almost obsolete expressions in 'Phrase and Fable' has very little on Islam. Whites were also often ransomed—the figures put into modern money sound incredible—so they were valued for that. The 'black guard'—like the Ottomans, Moroccans had a policy of taking young people and bringing them up as bodyguards, and executioners. There was a Jewish element too. There's some material on the Reconquista, and expulsion of about a million Muslims from Spain. There are striking contrasts with Europe: e.g. Henry VIII (some time before) had trouble finding one heir; Moulay Ismail had 1,200 children and on his death, huge battles over succession. The reason for the rise of corsairs isn't very clear to me; maybe it was just the general rise of shipping and piracy as Europeans discovered the world was round and navigable and sometimes profitable. After I'd read this, I realised I already had a book by the same author, on Elizabeth I and exploration. It has a similar pattern of rather superficial realism with derring-do. The author *might* be an historian sick of overarching theories of history and progress, writing in a rather novelistic style about issues which in retrospect have something for today. And clearly truth about Islam is a serious issue now. Note added November 2013: I saw extracts of a BBC programme in which David Dimbleby, a professional BBC liar and hack and piece of excreta of long standing, mentioned the siege of Algiers, stating, twice, that only men and boys were kidnapped. Of course this is a lie - it's BBC policy at the present time, and of course has been for years, under their Jewish and other control to omit paedophilia and rape characteristic of Jews and Muslims. |