It seems important that there should be some exploration of the enslavement of white Europeans at a time when only the dreadful Atlantic slave trade in black Africans is an important part of public discourse.
Proportionality is important: 15 million Africans enslaved and transported as against roughly a tenth of that number of Europeans. Yet to understand the whole awfulness of slavery, all of it, through history and including the present day, needs to be studied.
Unfortunately this book makes only a small contribution to the task. Tom Pellow was captured as a boy by North African pirates at the end of the 17th century. It took him 23 years to escape and return to Cornwall. His story was far from unique but he was clearly intelligent and his experiences were published. Wrapped awkwardly around Pellow's tale is the wider picture of the many thousands of European captives who were worked to death by the rulers of Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia, and the ineffective measures taken by their home governments to rescue them.
It is a nice irony that this North African trade was eventually crushed in the early 19th century by a Royal Navy fleet commanded by a distant descendant of Tom Pellow, Sir Edward Pellew.
The biggest criticism of the book I have is that it relies too much on the almost day by day routine and hardships suffered by Thomas Pellow, the main character. The book would be excellent if it only had 100 odd pages. But after a while it's just more of the same arrogance and torture inflicted by that muslim buffoon on his victims.
I think the author could well have summarized the story's main ideas and expanded a little on the sociological background of the times, the context. So much blood and guts spilled over the pages gives if a feel of exaggeration, lessening the entire experience. But sadly this story is no joke. It deserves a much serious treatment.
Each nation pays for its own sins, just like any person.
