The Forgotten Slave Trade: The White European Slaves of Islam

by (Historian) Simon Webb

The solution to the difficulties, both practical and religious, which prevented Muslims from making their own eunuchs was to engage slave traders in Europe to provide a ready-made product which could then be purchased, already castrated and in good health. These eunuchs were manufactured in Europe, from pre-pubescent European boys and the history of the vile trade has almost been forgotten today. Whatever other horrors the Atlantic slave trade entailed, routine castration was never one of them. It is true that black slaves in America and the Caribbean were from time to time castrated, but this was never a common occurrence and was usually inflicted due to exceptional circumstances, such as an accusation of rape. With the act of castration so likely to result in death, it would have made no sense to hazard the lives of slaves in this way too frequently. In Europe, by contrast, the castration of white slaves was carried out on an industrial scale (Tracy, 2013). In Venice and the French city of Verdun ‘castration houses’ were set up to produce eunuchs for export to Egypt and other Muslim countries. The majority of the young boys were Slavs taken prisoner by the Vikings and then sold on to slavers. The Slavs, from whose name is derived the modern word ‘slave’, are an ethnic group which originated in what is today western Russia.