In 1716, a Cornish cabin boy named Thomas Pellow and fifty-one of his comrades were captured at sea by Barbary corsairs. Their captors-Ali Hakem and his network of slave traders-had declared war on Christendom, and thousands of Europeans had been taken to the slave markets of North Africa. Pellow and his shipmates were bought by Moulay Ismail, the sultan of Morocco, who was constructing an imperial palace of such scale and grandeur that it would surpass every other building in the world. Pellow, however, escaped the fate of the other laborers thanks to his resourcefulness and intelligence, and was one of the fortunate few who survived to tell his tale, eventually returning to his own country. An extraordinary story, drawn from unpublished letters and manuscripts written by slaves and by the padres and ambassadors sent to free them, Giles Milton's White Gold reveals a disturbing and long-forgotten tale. Book jacket.