Just when we thought we knew everything about the historical trading of humans, along comes Simon Webb with this absolutely riveting book on the white slave trade! What an interesting book, and I completely agree with other reviews that this book should be included in the battery of publications on this subject. While it cannot mitigate the suffering and depravity suffered by Black slavery, it does provide another insight into the views and moral values of men who will do and sell anything to turn a profit. I would have no problem incorporating this book in a class lesson or as part of a curriculum on the slave trade. Very well done Simon. My thanks to Netgalley for an ARC of this book, also Pen and Sword publishers who excel themselves on their choices.

We know about one aspect of the slave trade, as we have discussed and dissected it in our classrooms for decades. But there is another hidden aspect of the slave trade, one that has been altogether forgotten and dismissed by many.
Simon Webb goes into detail on this forgotten aspect of the slave trade, giving us the history and details that have been overlooked for so long.
I highly recommend this read. It was eye-opening, and very compelling as well. This is one that should be on everyone's list to read this year!

This is an important book everyone should read about the history of slavery. Today, when mentioning the subject, we all think about the transportation of Africans over the Atlantic to America for free labor. What most don't know is that slavery has not been an "African thing"; Christians have long suffered from the slave trade. This book taught me so much, from the history of Islam to the settlement and success of the Ottoman Empire. Author Simon Webb also link many, if not most, of today or recent History to the slave trade so many Christian have suffered from for so many centuries. I could go on and on about the topics discussed and lessons learned but I will simply advise you to get yourself a copy of this novel and learn for yourself. The book includes meaningful illustrations and is divided into clear topics, which can help you navigate if you are interested in a particular geographical area or period.

Thank you very much Net Galley and publisher for this e-ARC in exchange for my honest review.

A look at the other slave trades that happened in history. It does mention/talk a little bit about the American slave trade. But mainly talks about the one in Muslim countries and a bit in other places. spans over a few humdred years.

This might, quite possibly, be the most important review I have ever written.

The book's title and premise seemed interesting, if a bit controversial.

I'm well aware that when people think of slavery it's almost exclusively the enslavement of Africans by white Europeans, unless of course, they're from certain parts of the globe, like myself, where the Ottoman slave trade comes to mind first.

I expected this book to be centered around Western Europeans, which it mostly was, but I won't lie and say I wasn't at least a bit "excited" (if one could ever say that about a slavery book) when I saw the fourth chapter was called "Mamluks and Janissaries". That suggested my region would definitely be mentioned. We tend to get overlooked in such matters so I was eager to read something that hits close to home.

Unfortunately, while the author did research other subjects in the book and provided sources for them, every mention of Yugoslavia, Serbia and Kosovo was clouded by un-sourced personal bias. In this day and age sources are readily available and it's easy to find not one, but hundreds of them to disprove the claims made in this book. But we'll come back to that later.

What I want to talk about now is the positives.

I think this book partially achieved what it set out to do. It didn't try to lessen the impact the slave trade had on black people today, but tried to shed light on other slave trades that happened and affected various people (mainly Europeans in this case) around the world.

The Algerian parts were very interesting and I do believe I learned a thing or two there. And even the English were slaves once, who would have thought?

The portrayal of Janissaries was mostly accurate but I wish the author added more details (not unlike the eunuchs in chapter three)...perhaps details that Dr Ivo Andrić, who was born in Bosnia and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1961 for his novels about Bosnian Christian suffering, described in his book "The Bridge on the Drina"?

Further reading on this topic (mind you, link one has a bunch of information about Bosnians from the very moment they converted to Islam till the 90s when they fought together with UÇK, Al Kaida and Mujahideens which will be relevant later): John R. Schindler's book "Unholy Terror" and articles such as https://leejaywalker.wordpress.com/tag/john-r-schindler-is-the-author-of-unholy-terror/ and https://mightynose.wordpress.com/2013/04/05/demolishing-the-myth-of-the-tolerant-ottoman-rule-in-balkan/amp/.

The writing style was easy to follow, even though it was extremely repetitive.

So where did it all go wrong? I'm about to show you.

"During the fighting in the 1990s between the countries which had once made up Yugoslavia, some of the worst atrocities were comitted by Slavs against Muslims. In July 1995, 8000 Muslims were slaughtered by a Serb militia who were determined to use ethnic cleansing to ensure that an area of Bosnia contained only Christian Slavs."

As if that wasn't enough, here's more (apologies that I didn't underline/highlight it, the important part starts with "It will be recalled that..." and ends with "...700 years ago") :

((Please refer to my Goodreads review for the images which I'm referencing))

Now before I tackle this, it's important to Note that these "poor" Bosnian and Albanian Muslims who suffered alleged ethnic cleansing were actually in the front lines of Nazi SS divisions during which time they murdered hundreds of thousands of Serbs and Jews from the Balkans. More here (also included, the role of Bosnians in 9/11 and the fact that Bosnia, Albania and Kosovo have the biggest number of ISIS fighters and the largest number of ISIS training camps in Europe): http://greyfalcon.us/Kosovo%20and%20Bosnia%20During%20World%20War%20II.htm

https://acdemocracy.org/al-qaedas-balkan-ties-the-bosnian-connections-to-the-world-trade-center-attacks-an-acd-exclusive/

https://gordonswar.blogspot.com/2016/04/isis-nazi-state.html?m=1

http://vostokian.com/isis-and-the-balkans/

https://medium.com/@meiran.galis/the-truth-about-kosovo-albanians-saving-jews-during-the-holocaust-1fc01ef21519

https://global-politics.eu/balkan-caliphate-saudi-power-kosovo/

Now back to the quotes above, I could've just stopped reading at the first quote, marked the book as "did not finish" and stayed quiet. But I am not going to stay quiet. Not when the author called my people genocidal, a claim which has been disproven time and time again thanks to many illogical contradictions and the sea of infomation that has come to light via certain foreign agencies, political and military personnel who fought against Serbs, witness interviews, written books, documentaries etc.

http://us.srebrenica-project.org/2019/07/23/george-pumphrey-more-evidence-on-the-srebrenica-numbers-game/

As for the figures well...the evidence given at The Hague war crimes tribunal casts serious doubt on the figure of "up to" 8,000 Bosnian Muslims massacred. That figure includes "up to" 5,000 who have been classified as missing. More than 2,000 bodies have been recovered in and around Srebrenica, and they include victims of the three years of intense fighting in the area. The math just doesn't support the scale of 8,000 killed.

There is evidence which suggests that Naser Orić, the Bosnian Muslim military leader in Srebrenica, was responsible for killing as many Serb civilians outside Srebrenica as the Bosnian Serb army was for massacring Bosnian Muslims inside the town.

Diana Johnstone, the author of "Fool's Crusade: Yugoslavia, NATO and Western Delusions" described everything from the fake genocide in Srebrenica to the whole propaganda regarding the Yugoslav wars. I highly recommend reading this: https://www.counterpunch.org/2015/07/16/denying-the-srebrenica-genocide-because-its-not-true-an-interview-with-diana-johnstone/

Edward S. Herman - An American economist and media analyst with a specialty in political economy and the media wrote a book about The Srebrenica Massacre: Evidence, Context and Politics with Noam Chomsky explaining that Srebrenica was a political fraud. https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-srebrenica-massacre-was-a-gigantic-political-fraud/5321388

Some Chomsky interviews: https://mobile.twitter.com/FriendsOfSerbs/status/1150501119698833409?s=19

https://mobile.twitter.com/FriendsOfSerbs/status/1154851219917201420?s=19

https://mobile.twitter.com/FriendsOfSerbs/status/1270733023819030528?s=19

Remember all the rape propaganda? The exact same number of 20, 000 women was used in both Bosnia and Kosovo. The journalist Mark Tran of The Guardian wrote an article where he mentioned 20,000 rapes allegedly committed by Serbs, ignoring the March 2000 Human Rights Watch assertion of 96 war-related rapes in 1998 through 1999, as cited in their report. https://www.refworld.org/cgi-bin/texis/vtx/rwmain?page=country&category=&publisher=HRW&type=&coi=SRB&rid=&docid=3ae6a87a0&skip=0

Shortly after, in August 2000, award-winning Guardian reporter Audrey Gillan’s “The Propaganda war,” cites her failure to uncover any evidence of mass rapes in Kosovo. http://sorryserbia.com/2015/kosovo-rape/

This article is the most detailed analysis of the "rape and politics" methodology which has been used against Serbs during the Yugoslav wars. http://sorryserbia.com/2013/fools-crusade/

And even more on mass rapes & dead babies propaganda, from Iraq to Bosnia and Kosovo https://www.antiwar.com/orig/savich1.html

Death camp where? Certainly not here. https://swprs.org/propaganda-in-the-war-on-yugoslavia/?amp

https://fpif.org/serb_demonization_as_propaganda_coup/

It gets even worse.
Starts with "Another and more recent..." ends right before the Endword.

((Images again))

The 90s wars. A French general publicly spoke about Germany wanting to destroy Serbs and Yugoslavia out of revenge and that they had an agenda to do so long before the wars even began.

“It should be noted that the dismemberment of Yugoslavia was an operation long prepared in Germany…
So, Berlin, at the time it was Bonn, thought that Serbian resistance contributed to German defeat in world wars. These people were to be punished…” Brigadier-General Pierre Marie Gallois

Link to his interview: https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=emb_title&v=S2xNHknsQPI

The BND is the German foreign intelligence service which, in cooperation with the CIA, finalised the destruction of Yugoslavia into "colonies". There's documents that got leaked as well as WikiLeaks files which testify that the BND was supplying terrorists in Bosnia & Kosovo with weapons during the wars. https://wikileaks.org/wiki/The_End_of_the_Affair%3F_The_BND,_CIA_and_Kosovo%27s_Deep_State

http://www.parstimes.com/history/iran_bosnia.html

https://barenakedislam.com/2015/07/10/the-disaster-that-bill-clinton-created-in-bosnia-by-backing-muslims-against-the-serbs-has-now-become-next-front-for-the-islamic-state-isis-caliphate/

https://adarapress.com/2020/01/07/how-bill-clinton-alija-izetbegovic-and-iran-successfully-colluded-to-establish-muslims-as-the-new-jews-of-europe/amp/

General MacKenzie, who participated in both wars in Bosnia and Kosovo on the opposite side of Serbs stated that they "bombed the wrong side". https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=iy1JzwpJ9ec

Former American General Douglas MacGregor said the same thing. "So we intervened against the Orthodox Serbs, Orthodox Christian Serbs, in Kosovo and put essentially a Muslim drug mafia in charge of that country and called it a great success for democracy."

And Russian support for Serbia helped start WW1? Did I just read that? Did You, dear reader, just read that? What the what???!!! No.

Soon after the assassination, the Austro-Hungarian Foreign Ministry sent Friedrich von Wiesner to Sarajevo, to investigate whether the Serbian government was involved in the affair.

Wiesner said that there was no evidence, however, the Ultimatum was already written. Aka they wanted to attack Serbia no matter what.

As for the Russian help during the 90s, this book makes it sound as if we got the whole country backing us up, which wasn't true. The president at the time didn't define his support and the soldiers that did arrive did so on their own initiative because yes, they didn't want to watch their Slavic bretheren get slaughtered and have their holy land stolen from them.

In Bosnia all the way up to the 90s wars, Bosnian Serbs (Christians) were the majority, just as they were in Kosovo, as testified by the "Dečani muniment" from 1330, the Turkish census from 1445 and many leaders of the Catholic Church.

The Dečani muniment specified that Metohija and the surrounding areas belong to the Dečani manor (89 settlements, of which only three were inhabited by Albanians). There were 3,433 houses in those settlements, of which only 44 (1.8 percent) were Albanian.

Albanians only started to massively overrun Kosovo in the 18th century which can be seen in these statistics (which were created by the World Bank and OSCE, so they're reliable):

((Image))

People have been aware of the situation in Kosovo since the beginning of the war until now, but many still don't know the terror, genocide and ethnic cleansing the Serbs have experienced from WW2 until 1998.

https://www.bidd.org.rs/kosovo-under-nazi-germany-nazi-created-albanian-security-forces-in-kosovo-during-world-war-ii/

https://adarapress.com/2019/07/04/kosovo-in-the-1980s-murders-rapes-and-expulsions/amp/

An Albanian Muslim president ordering the rape of Serbian women to create an "ethnically pure" Kosovo even went "viral".
https://www.nytimes.com/1987/11/01/world/in-yugoslavia-rising-ethnic-strife-brings-fears-of-worse-civil-conflict.html

Milošević's trial lasted four years, and they hadn't been able to prove anything during that long period. On the contrary, he laid out many goverment secrets and proved that the plan to destroy Yugoslavia was very real and named everyone who had a part in it. And so he ended up dead. There's a book about it by Robin de Ruiter called "Who killed Slobodan Milošević and Why".

“Milošević’s political goal was to preserve Kosovo within Serbia’s borders and to prevent Albanian majority to drive Serbian minority out of Kosovo. There was no incitement of nationalist hatred, nor has the ethnic cleansing been carried out. On the contrary, Milošević and Socialist Party members always stressed the advantages of multiethnicity for Serbia” She wrote.

To wrap this up, Serbs have suffered at the hands of "the most peaceful religion in the world", from Ottoman times, to the Balkan Wars, WW1, WW2, the 90s wars, the March pogrom in 2004 during which over 150 Serbian churches and monasteries were destroyed and they continue to suffer today, the few of those who still live in enclaves in Kosovo and face daily attacks on their homes and kidnappings of their children.

In the Forgotten Slave Trade the illegal NATO bombing of civilians, journalists, hospitals, schools, bridges, trains, power lines, water supplies and factories is "justified".

The links between the Ottomans and present-day Balkans could (SHOULD) have been presented differently. I was very disappointed with this book because of that. The author gives his subjective political opinion, which clashes with the genre of the book. It's simply unforgivable to lead those who have little to no prior knowledge of these events to the wrong conclusuion. However, this is an early copy so perhaps the final version is less all over the place? A girl can only hope.

For all of those reasons, I'm choosing not to rate this book on Goodreads. I don't want my personal feelings to get in the way of an honest rating.

And for anyone who'd like to inform themselves by watching documentaries, I'd recommend The Weight of Chains by Boris Malagurski and the Czech film Stolen Kosovo by Václav Dvořák. Both are free to watch on YouTube and have subtitles for parts that aren't in English.

Weight of Chains: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=waEYQ46gH08

Stolen Kosovo: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UWzf8Rke3p4

I'd still like to thank NetGalley and the publishers for providing me with an e-ARC in exchange for an honest review. And special thanks to Vesna (you know who you are) for helping me out with the sources and then some.

The Forgotten Slave Trade is a broad and informative look at the 'Triangular Trade' of slaves between Europe and North Africa. As noted by Webb, this is a largely ignored and forgotten part of world history as slavery is explored through the lens of the Transatlantic Slave Trade. Throughout the book, it's made clear that Webb is trying to dispel the notion that slavery is a uniquely European sin and for the most part he remains respectful of the push to highlight the ills of Imperialism while criticising the selectivity of which nations are frowned upon.

How informative is it?
Webb has managed to create an informative and detailed timeline of the Barbary slave trade along with that which preceded it and followed. He also did a great job of explaining the role of religion in conflicts between Christian Europe and the Islamic Middle East. The role of Islam in the Ottoman Empire and historic justifications for slavery and its practices was also well explained and the occasional links to recent conflicts was fascinating.

The scope of this book spans centuries and three continents, focusing on the roles of the Barbary corsairs, Ottoman Empire, Morocco and the response of European nations and the U.S. over time to the issues presented. I went into this book knowing virtually nothing about the Barbary slave trade other than that it happened and was surprised to learn about its prevalence and impact, especially the eventual U.S. involvement.

What didn’t I love?
• The book was at times under supported by evidence and could go for pages without citation. There were several instances where very old/questionable sources were used. At one point a Daily Mail article is used as a reference, a ‘News and Observer’ article at another. I understand that in some cases information may have been difficult to source, but I seriously doubt news articles and descriptions of culture from 1912 were the only available.
• The writing was at times repetitive and could do with editing, although it must be noted that I read an ARC copy and this issue may have been remedied. It could also be a bit dry and boring but I think that’s mainly because it’s a pretty dense and hardcore bit of history to write about.
• Several times throughout the book Webb made a point of comparing the treatment of European slaves in North Africa with black slaves, saying one was worse or equal in awful to the other. I felt these comparisons were unnecessary and made me a bit uncomfortable; the horrors of the Barbary slave trade stood alone just fine. Webb was trying to avoid by looking at slavery through the American/Imperial lens but fell into that trap himself.

Should you read it?
If you’re at all interested in a little-discussed history of slavery I think this text provides a great introduction. However, I did find some parts of the text lacked sufficient citation. Furthermore, I feel the political motivations behind it at times hampered this exploration by causing the author to unnecessarily compare slavery across the world and overstate the importance of slavery in historic and modern events.

Note: I received a copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. I'd like to thank Simon Webb and Pen&Sword History for the opportunity.

This book made for interesting reading, challenging the concept of 'The Slave Trade' as being solely the taking of black Africans as slaves. The author works through time, explaining that slavery was a far older concept, and showing many instances where white Europeans have been taken as slaves by Vikings, Romans and in particular by Moslems. This knowledge, he claims, has been subliminally suppressed from the teaching of history from the 1960s as the stories of black enslavement came to front and centre, and he was keen to redress the balance.

The author is very clear that taking of individuals from their homes to work for another for no remuneration and against their will is wrong, no matter how delightful the setting or what facilities offered are. However, he goes on to place slavery at the root of all major historical events - from the American revolution to the First World War, and indirectly this may have been so. As he states 'almost all cultures, on every continent, found the idea of human beings being owned and traded as commodities to be perfectly normal and acceptable', which is a sad indictment of the human race.

However, I was rather uncomfortable as I felt there was an underlying agenda in the book - to place Islam as the root of all this evil. He even justifies the retaliation of Balkan people to the arrival of Muslims as being based on their race memory of slaving raids in the past. Following that logic through, in Britain we should be most wary of any Italians or Scandinavians, since we too were enslaved by raiding parties of Vikings and invasions of Romans. The repeated return to blaming Islam for promoting slavery of non-Muslim people felt rather laboured.

The book was not brilliantly written - in parts it was a little 'Ladybird book-ish' and in parts repetitive. And on occasion I found it rather patronising: 'It is to be hoped that all these difficult and unfamiliar names will not bewilder or confuse readers'. Really? I think anyone who can work through this rather turgid writing can manage a few Turkish names.

A very interesting subject, but it didn't quite progress as I expected, with a lengthy detour into justifying America's role in the Barbary Wars, and I certainly felt it contained a hidden agenda. Interestingly it did not include anything about modern slavery - people brought over to work in sweat shops and as sex workers.

Thank you to NetGalley and Pen & Sword History for allowing me access to the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

A very interesting review of a terrible time in our world. Obviously excited about peeling off another layer in the history of slavery, the author brings keen enthusiasm to their exploration of the topic.

The author manages troublesome content sensitively and I wonder if they might expand their interest and expertise to explore “blackbirding” slavery in the Pacific Islands. An area often neglected by historians.

This book is well researched and provides a detailed outline of how early slavery transformed over time.

Slavery existed earlier in history. It was part of the European hierarchy. In addition, slave trade over international waters was normal during that era.

The practice of slave trade influenced trade system over water and ironically development of strong navy world wide.

I found this book to be very fascinating but at the same time, it was "boring" to read at times. I felt like I was reading a timeline of historical information.

The subject of this book has a lot of promise, especially with today's renewed focus on issues around slavery. Slavery has been a widespread phenomena across time, space and various ethnic/religious groups. I went into this book expecting more of a scholarly treatment than I found, which made it difficult for me to read. The author tends to generalize, simplify or exhibit a misunderstanding around various facts - which can compromise the book.

This short but informative book gives a well-researched insight into the slave trade that isn’t the slave trade from Africa to the US and the Caribbean. It is true that the aforementioned slave trade is the one that is over-represented in schools, books ,and popular culture. This book wants to show the reader that slave trade is so much more, and a very old tradition, and white slavery has not gotten the attention it sadly deserves.

I knew quite a lot about the subject, but I realize that most people probably do know too little about this part of history. Naturally some things were news to me as well, and indeed, it is interesting to read about this subject in a compact book. The Arabs and Ottomans were some slave traders... I had also not realized the important role Bristol had in slave trade.

I appreciate that these more hidden aspects regarding slave trade are written about. I’ve never really understood why we try to hide and forget some parts of our history. How can we learn from our past mistakes if we are not willing to be open about them? If we only stick to what we learn in school or watch on TV our view of our world and it’s history is both narrow and misrepresented. I’m jubilant to see that there are authors out there writing about these subject, so thank you, Simon Webb!

I received a free advance reader copy through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.