Regarding racial types in the book, I tend to assume Tolkien was thinking in medieval terms, and so would have envisaged Easterlings as Huns, Avars, Magyars, Turkic peoples etc, while Southrons and Haradrim would have been vaguely Moorish. Though, of course, everyone in Middle-earth (barring Valar and Maiar) came from the east at some point, and in the Silmarillion it is the north that is the source of evil.
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