2004, Hodder & Stoughton, London, 316 pages
I would like to thank S.S. Sam for this excellent book.
Giles Milton is an excellent researcher and superb writer who has crafted a history of the Moroccan enslavement of British subjects around the first person narrative account of Thomas Pellow, a Cornish cabin boy who was captured at sea at age 11 and finally escaped Islamic enslavement at age 33. Before going on to draw parallels and lessons from this book, there is one hugely detracting set of insertions that occupy a mere four pages of the text. Although Milton presents much evidence to the contrary, he stops three times in the text [or, perhaps this is an editorial inclusion] to blame white, English racism [once even implying Pellow was a racist for preferring a white wife and asserting that a preference by white men for white women is an unnaturally imposed prejudice] for the worst type of slavery ever engaged in by man, suggesting that the entire Atlantic slave trade was meant to furnish North America with black slaves when it was merely a bit player—dealing primarily in white slaves instead—and jettisoning his own multitude of examples that conversely suggest that the cruelest slave-drivers were black, the cruelest slave owners Islamic and the most cruelly used slaves were European Christians. As a journalist, Milton has surely been conditioned to view African American slavery as a unique aberration, just as most of his kind view the Holocaust as the only genocide. Also, as a modern Brit, he can scarcely be expected to suspect that the most savage practitioners of white slavery were actually Englishmen of his own class.
Despite this reservation that the reader will have to put White Gold in perspective as the author lacked that capacity himself, I do suggest White Gold as an enjoyable and enlightening read. Keep in mind that the apparent inconsistency of the English will to redeem slaves had to do primarily with ethnic and kingly pride—or a lack thereof—and the value of the mostly working class captives. During the reigns of Elizabeth and King James I vast English naval resources were left idle as the Barbary and even Turkish fleets scoured the west countries for white slaves. The monarchs were glad to be rid of this rabble in a country facing a population boom and uncertain economic times. Indeed, English politics were so narrow and petty, and so entirely devoid of concern for any matter outside of the elite, that over 50 warships of Grenville’s fleet were kept out of the battle against the Spanish Armada just to deny him glory! And we are to believe that in that hour Britain faced extinction! During other periods—such as the reign of Charles II—concerns for English being held by the Sultan of Morocco were motivated partially by kingly pride, partially by a sense of religious solidarity and partially by the fact that English servants were now in demand in North America and represented a valuable resource. The English king received a fifth of the price for every English person sold into slavery. He could scarcely have been thrilled that the Sultan of Morocco was raiding his owns slave pen.
Below are some facts that emerge from the text, in which the fabulously insane and ruthless Moulay Ismail plays the supreme tyrant and managed to enslave every single person in a large kingdom through the use of a divisive slave system:
Vast numbers, amounting to millions, of black slaves were used as bodyguards, soldiers, slave-drivers and breeders.
Large numbers of European captives were used as skilled laborers to maintain arsenals and build fortresses and palaces. These slaves were beaten continuously, on a daily basis, by the brutal black slave drivers, most dying in chains
A small number of mixed-race “half-castes” were specially bred by the sultan in his great slave pens to form an alienated class of administrators renowned for their ruthlessness. The sultan would conduct large scale marriage ceremonies among his slaves saying “that with that” as he would match up slaves.
Some few thousands of European renegades served as slave soldiers, having willingly or via torture been converted to Islam. Such converts were then taken off the lists of redeemable captives by their home nation. These soldiers provided a special force, similar to the French Foreign legion, used for putting down indigenous tribal revolts and storming citadels during civil wars, while the main black army was used primarily to crush opposing claimants to the throne and to besiege the coastal fortresses held by the Spanish, Portuguese and English.
Almost no Christian mariners resisted the Barbary pirates, who attacked in great numbers but with inferior weapons and in inferior ships. The European Christian impulse to submit to Islamic African enslavement seemed incredibly strong.
Many Christian slaves and renegades betrayed those of their kind who attempted to escape Morocco and even entered into the slave trade themselves, owning and selling their own Christian slaves.
There is zero evidence of infanticide. Indeed, evidence points to a high valuation of slave children, of actual breeding programs.
Small numbers of real Christian renegades, such as a Dutch captain who raided England for fair-skinned slave-girls to pleasure the Sultan, served as crucial military advisors. The sultan’s executioner was a butcher from London!
Slave mortality far exceeded birth rates, despite extensive breeding farms, necessitating constant resupply of equatorial Africans and European mariners. Warfare was constant and summary executions at the sultan’s whim were on a Stalinist scale. The extreme brutality among adults, not abuse, neglect or outright killing of children, was at the root of the need for slaves, which contradicts Stefan Molyneux’s assertion of Islamic slave infanticide in The Truth About Slavery documentary.
The indigenous Jews were divided into unarmed tribal entities which huddled in villages and enclaves and hid in the woods—more willing than Christians to assist Christians in need—and super rich bankers who helped manage the tyrannical regime and had their hands deep in the slave trade. The sultan’s numerous children have been counted by means of the 1,200 taxes he levied on the Jews of Morocco to celebrate each of their births.
The numerous sultans profiled ranged from pious to debouched, but all reveled in personally executing their advisors, loping off heads and spraying blood and gore all about on the least pretext. When killing family members they used a third party executioner. These men were only exceeded in their brutality by the black slave-drivers and black-guard and soldiers who were fiendishly sadistic beyond even the French of San Domingo or the English of Virginia. The entire portrait of a nation based on utter cruelty is very Roman. Despite this, the fiendish brutes who ruled this slave nation looked down upon the English people and His Britannic Majesty as drunken swine. The Moroccan ambassador to London in 1681, was half Arabic-Berber and half English, son of a slave girl, who despite being wildly popular with the London gentry, greeted them with, “God roast your father.” In pure masculine terms, only the most aggressive English seadogs matched up to any of the Morocco chiefs or pirates.
A strict hive structure was maintained along racial lines, as if taken directly from a Robert E. Howard novel:
1. A predominantly Caucasian, mixed-race elite rule
2. Specially bred and educated mixed-race orphans, parented by the state, run the government
3. A captive class of wealthy Jews take care of finance
4. Heavily indoctrinated black slaves guard the elite
5. White outcasts from enemy nations advise on military matters
6. White slaves converted to Islam and therefore outcast by their home nation, serve as special military forces, doctors and engineers
7. A massive army of fanatical black slave soldiers keep the sultan in power and provide a flex labor force
8. A thousands-strong force of black slave-drivers [seemingly equal in numbers to the white slaves they oversee] drive, torture and kill the slaves under their care with a gleeful lack of mercy, necessitating a constant resupply of white slaves.
9. Over 10,000 fierce pirates prowled the seas attacking and capturing any ships they could overtake and board, replenishing the skilled labor force
10. Massive caravans are sent south across the Sahara to raid Equatorial Africa for slaves, losing as many as a third of their stock on the long march back across the Sahara, to replenish the military and unskilled labor force.
11. A sprawling urban underclass costs the elite nothing and provides modest revenue in terms of convict labor.
12. A scattering of tribal groups in outlying desert and mountain areas are taxed heavily and occasionally wiped out and sold into slavery.
13. Pockets of rural and urban Jews eke out an unprotected living and are heavily taxed and given specific assignments by the sultan, such as, “Provide wine for my English slaves so they will work harder.”
14. Approximately 25,000 European slaves form a permanent skilled labor force.
15. A small minority of European merchants and ambassadors and catholic priests are permitted to exist on the coastal margins in return for heavy taxation and favors
Note that there were many aspects to how this society was crudely structured to use one ethnicity against another that are now mirrored in much more subtle social tones in our own postmodern slave nation. Indeed, the current proliferation of criminal laws and the fact that American prisons are essentially run by vicious colored gangs, makes the prospect of defying the U.S. government nearly as horrible as defying the sultan’s wish that you give up your beliefs and embrace his, or live and die in perpetual agony inflicted by a people raised with an unreasoning hatred of you as their moral keystone.
White Gold offers many lessons on our past, present and future and is a great read. As a war story alone this book stands out, with details of military campaigns in the Atlas Mountains and the Sahara that are a marvel.
America in Chains
Sounds like a cool read. Thanks. I also recommend “The Barbary Slaves” by Stephen Clissold (1995). It gives a good overview of the slavery practiced in the North African corsair states.
#15: FYI a Catholic order was even founded in the 12th Century for the purpose of ransoming Christian captives taken by Muslims. It was called “The Order of the Most Holy Trinity for the Redemption of the Captives” or the “Trinitarians” or “Redemptionists” for short. In England during this period families and church groups regularly conducted fund raising to ransom people held captive by the Muslim pirates. As James observes His/Her Majesty’s government didn’t care much about ordinary people held prisoner in the Muslim lands and wouldn’t pay any ransom for them. By the way, the U.S. State Department has recently issued a warning that 21st Century Muslim corsair states have recently become incentivized to start taking vulnerable American travelers captive again: “The State Department issued an updated travel warning on Monday for Americans, especially Iranian-Americans, on the risks of travel to Iran, even after the U.S. signed a nuclear deal and made a $400 million cash payment to the country that was contingent on the release of four American prisoners.” foxnews.com/politics/2016/08/22/state-department-issues-updated-travel-warning-for-iran.html
FYI: the Barbary Pirates started roughly in 1487 when the Turkish privateer Kemal Reis was made admiral (Amir al bahr - Lord of the Sea) in the Ottoman Navy and began raiding throughout the western Mediterranean. They lasted until 1830 when France put an end to it all by conquering and colonizing Algeria. The French Foreign Legion was established in 1831 for the occupation of Algeria. Once piracy was suppressed and the cash flow stopped the remaining Barbary pirate states quickly became impoverished and fell apart.