Dimensions
157 x 242 x 31mm
From the bestselling author of 'Nathaniel's Nutmeg'.
In the summer of 1716, a Cornish cabin boy named Thomas Pellow and fifty-two of his comrades were captured at sea by the Barbary corsairs. Their captors - Captain Ali Hakem and his network of fanatical Islamic slave traders - had declared war on the whole of Christendom.
France, Spain and Italy had been hit in repeated raids. England's coastal villages had also 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. Poked, prodded and put through their paces, they were sold at auction to the highest bidder.
Pellow and his ship-mates were bought by the tyrannical sultan of Morocco, Moulay Ismail, who bragged that his white slaves enabled him to hold all of Europe to ransom. The sultan was constructing an imperial pleasure palace of such scale and grandeur that it would surpass every other building in the world, built entirely by Christian slave labour.
Thomas Pellow was resourceful, resilient and quick-thinking, and was selected by Moulay Ismail for special treatment. As a personal slave of the sultan, he would witness first-hand the barbaric splendour of the imperial Moroccan court, as well as experience daily terror. For twenty-three years, he would dream of his home, his family and freedom. He was one of the fortunate few who survived to tell his tale.
'White Gold' is an extraordinary and shocking story. Drawn from unpublished letters and manuscripts written by slaves, and by the padres and ambassadors sent to free them, it reveals a disturbing and forgotten chapter of history, told with all the pace and verve of one of our finest historians.
