One of the more annoying bits of nonsense that crops up is the notion that there are forms of chattel slavery which are somehow benign. It is often claimed that “traditional” slavery in the Islamic world was somehow less of an abomination than the slavery in the American South or the Caribbean. Classical historians often promote a similar Gone With the Wind-ish interpretation of slavery in ancient Rome, always concentrating on the less numerous domestic servants while ignoring the millions who were worked to death in the mines, on plantations, or by the urban syndicates that owned the water-carriers.
Those who are inclined to accept this constantly resurfacing fantasy are encouraged to read this book. It’s an account of the life of Thomas Pellew, a Cornish child captured by slave-raiders in 1716. He became a slave of the Morocan sultan Moulay Ismail (whose descendant still rules Morocco today. In the 17th and 18th centuries, slave traders from the Moroccan port of Salé terrorized the Cornish coast, often raiding villages and seizing hundreds of men, women and children to sell in the lucrative slave markets of North Africa. It is estimated the roughly a million Europeans, Americans and Newfoundlanders were captured in this way, during that period. British monarchs dealt with these assaults with a combination of bluster, misdirection, double-dealing, self-interested hypocrisy, fake sabre-rattling, bribery, alliances with their own enemies, and overwhelming cowardice that was virtually identical to the Bush administration’s response to 9/11. Themselves active in a colossal slave trade, European Christian aristocrats and wealthy “entrepreneurs” were happy to collude with their Muslim counterparts.
In Thomas Pellew, who spent a great part of his life as a slave in a particularly good position to form an overall evaluation of slavery in North Africa, and who escaped to tell the tale, we have plenty of testimony to the brutality of slavery in North Africa. Even Pellew, who survived as a “privileged” personal slave, suffered unspeakable tortures, beginning at the age of eleven. The bulk of the captives were abused, tortured, and quickly worked to death in massive construction projects, or laboured in chains in the fields. There was no “benign” slavery, because there has never been any form of slavery that was benign, anywhere. Slavery is slavery, always filthy, evil and disgusting, at any time, in any place, in any culture.
Giles Milton’s book, taken largely from Pellew’s account, but well corroborated and researched, is well-written.
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