"these were 90% men (who were totally barred access to women)"
Giles Milton's 'White Gold' is a good account of the Barbary trade. It centres on the ordeal of the Cornishman Thomas Pellow as slave to successive sultans of Morocco in the 18th century.
Among other things it recounts is the interesting detail that Sultan Moulay Ismael was at least half subsaharan African. He forced all white slaves whom he favoured with matrimonial rights (a minority, courtiers and some overseers, I think) into unions with black women, though Pellow was excepted on a whim and allowed to marry a white(r) woman. The point is that Moulay Ismael had a shrewd pre-scientific understanding of heredity: he believed that the issue of white-black unions made superior slaves.
"these were 90% men (who were totally barred access to women)"
Giles Milton's 'White Gold' is a good account of the Barbary trade. It centres on the ordeal of the Cornishman Thomas Pellow as slave to successive sultans of Morocco in the 18th century.
Among other things it recounts is the interesting detail that Sultan Moulay Ismael was at least half subsaharan African. He forced all white slaves whom he favoured with matrimonial rights (a minority, courtiers and some overseers, I think) into unions with black women, though Pellow was excepted on a whim and allowed to marry a white(r) woman. The point is that Moulay Ismael had a shrewd pre-scientific understanding of heredity: he believed that the issue of white-black unions made superior slaves.
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