The social insertion of enslaved individuals varied according to the slavery system, with the conditions of captivity and prerequisites for obtaining freedom often influenced by the sex of the individual. Although enslaved persons also played administrative, military and commercial roles, as was the case in the enslaved societies in the Americas as well, such roles were normally reserved for men (Landers, 2006; Mattos, 2008; Kraay, 1997). In Muslim societies, for example fifteenth-century Egypt or the nineteenthcentury Sokoto Caliphate in West Africa, the famous enslaved soldiers known as the Mamluks enjoyed prestige and access to the upper circles of power precisely because of their servile condition. The Mamluks formed an elite enslaved population which, although captive, enjoyed economic and social advantages: their perceived dissociation from local lineage and consequent exemption from political interests other than that of protecting their master were seen as a benefit (Powell, 2012; Stilwell, 2004). Enslaved males were also employed as soldiers by the Aro peoples in the Biafra region, in the Kingdom of Kongo and in Ndongo, as well as in the colonies of Angola and Benguela, while in East Africa, the famous enslaved soldiers known as the Chikunda ended up creating an ethnic identity in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (Heywood, 2009; Ugo Nwokeji, 2010; Thornton, 2006; Candido, 2011, pp. 213-22; Isaacman, 2004). Enslaved persons were also employed as commercial agents, both along the trans-Saharan routes and in markets in inland Southern Africa. Some were literate and enjoyed a certain freedom of movement, travelling between oases in the Sahara and commercial hubs in North Africa, sending letters to their masters (Daddi Addoun and Hall, 2013). Such agents also acted on behalf of their masters in States in inland Southern Africa, performing roles similar to those of the enslaved persons known as escravos de ganho who sold items to earn money in the streets of Salvador, Buenos Aires, Cartagena and Havana