People database
People from the Italian peninsula involved in the Atlantic slave trade and slavery, 15th–19th centuries. Search by name or filter by role, place, network and period.
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Salvago Carlo
1639–1659On the death of his brother Nicola, in 1639, he inherited all his property and sought to obtain further licences to bring enslaved people to Buenos Aires. With his brother Enrico he used the Regia Camera of Milan to exchange the silver he brought from the Americas, and he entered the wool trade between Spain and Genoa.
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Salvago Cristobal
1490–1500He traded in enslaved people with the Canary Islands.
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Salvago Enrico
1633–1635A Genoese merchant, between 1633 and 1635 he fitted out and dispatched a ship from Genoa to Brazil via Lisbon, perhaps making use of the licences and the slave asiento of his relative Nicola Salvago; it is not certain that he held an authorisation of his own.
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Salvago Luca
1490–1500Owner of a sugar plantation in Madeira.
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Salvago Nicola
1630–1649In 1630 Nicola Salvago purchased from the Cardinal-Infante, who in turn had obtained them from his brother Philip IV, a batch of licences to sell 1,500 enslaved people in Buenos Aires. In 1634 he obtained from the Casa de la Contratación of Seville permission to bring another 1,000 to the same city, and in 1638 he purchased a further 335 licences for the same traffic. He also introduced many enslaved people into Buenos Aires illegally, often on his own ships such as the Santísima Trinidad.
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Salvago Tomasso
1450A member of the Salvago merchant family, on 28 April 1450 he purchased an enslaved person in Genoa from Geronimo de Carmarino, as documented by a notarial deed. He is a different person from the Tomasso Salvago active as factor for Ansaldo Grimaldi in Seville in 1530.
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Sauli Franceso Maria
1620–1699Francesco Maria Sauli operated in Genoa on behalf of Grillo and Lomellini: he received and sold the goods arriving from Cádiz, procured credit and insured the asiento ships. His activity, however, went far beyond this: he invested in Roman and Neapolitan public debt, traded in grain, silver, silk textiles and marble, and invested in the Genoese shipyards. In 1666 he supplied Grillo and Lomellini with galleons of 500 tons each for the slave trade. In 1667 he procured for Feroni, in Amsterdam, funds to buy enslaved people for the asiento. At the beginning of 1668 Grillo asked him to insure the ship Santa Cruz, of 500 tons, with 34 guns and a crew of 70 men, commanded by Giovanni Francesco Garibaldo: the ship was to sail from Cádiz to Angola, load enslaved people there and carry them to Curaçao, Santo Domingo and Puerto Rico, perhaps also to Cumaná and Caracas, and then transport silver from Cádiz to Genoa. In March 1668 Sauli won the tender for the insurance.
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Secchi Jean
1878–1879Between 1878 and 1879 Secchi and his associates, Pantin, Lecavallerie, Texidor, Larrabide and Jimenez, transported to Cuba groups of seven to forty people at a time, of Indian, Chinese and Venezuelan origin, as indentured servants.
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Soderini Giovanni
1536–1556He was born in Florence on 27 July 1511. Following the beheading of his father, a republican, and the sequestration of the family's property, he was forced to leave the city. He moved to Seville, and from there to Santo Domingo around 1536. By 1543, he owned La Magdalena, a sugar mill located southwest of Santo Domingo. During this period, he met Alonso Hernández de Las Varas, a wealthy sugar entrepreneur whose family had been established in Hispaniola for many years. Shortly afterwards, he married Alonso's eldest daughter, Isabel, thereby entering the island's sugar oligarchy. Through this marriage, he became co-owner of the Santa Bárbara sugar mill near Azua la Vieja. Towards the end of his life, it is estimated that he owned around 200 enslaved people, with 53 registered at La Magdalena in 1556, 138 at Santa Bárbara in 1557, and nine in his domestic service. Despite having attained an excellent position, he diversified his business by trading with Cuba. In 1552, he organised an enterprise with the German Melchor Grubel to mine gold in the Colombian Andes.
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He was among those who in 1634 obtained licences to sail from the ports of Seville, Sanlúcar de Barrameda, Cádiz, Lisbon and the Canaries, load enslaved people at Cape Verde, in Guinea, at São Tomé, in Angola and at Mina, and transport them to New Spain and Tierra Firme (Colombia and Venezuela).
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Spinola Stefano
1526A Genoese merchant, in 1526 he concluded with the King of Portugal a contract for 600 peças of enslaved people, in which the Cremonese merchant Giovan Francesco Affaitati was also involved. He is a different person from his namesake Stefano Spinola, who in 1610 sold an enslaved person in Genoa to the Centurione enterprises.
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Spinola Tolomeo
from 1547With other Genoese (Pinelli, Negron, Fiesco) he formed a company with a capital of 12,000 ducats, one third of which was his. The company sold enslaved people in New Spain in exchange for sugar. The link between the slave trade and sugar became ever closer, and sugar became the second largest export after silver. The partners also invested in sugar production in Hispaniola and Puerto Rico in the first quarter of the sixteenth century.
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Terri Antonio
1755–1767Born in the Marquisate of Finale, in the Republic of Genoa, the legitimate son of Antonio Terri and Angela Adriano. In Cádiz he married Antonia Álvarez Campana Cardona, whose mother was a native of Finale (AGN, Protocolo 20, 1780). Between 1755 and 1767 he is documented in three transactions involving enslaved people.
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Vitale Benito
1631He financed the voyage of the slave ship Santísima Trinidad, owned by Nicola Salvago, together with Pedro María Ayrolo. The ship sailed from Spain to Luanda, and then transported enslaved people to Buenos Aires.
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Vivaldo Adamo
1518A Genoese merchant, in the 1510s and 1520s he purchased from Laurent de Gouvenot, together with Tomas de Fornari, the licences to introduce enslaved people into the Spanish Indies and exploited them through a company.
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Zangroni Giovanni
1826Owner, together with Claudio Picaluga and Francischo (Francesco) Chichiola, of the ship Amable Claudina and its cargo. Having sailed from Bordeaux bound for La Guaira, the ship was intercepted by the Royal Navy and the case was judged by the Mixed Commission of Sierra Leone.