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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Abo Nicola
1631He was the partner of Nicola Salvago and the captain of the slave ship Santísima Trinidad. The ship sailed from Cádiz to Luanda, and then on to Buenos Aires.
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Albasini Antonio
1823–1830Registered as Italian, in August 1829 he arrived in Brazil from Lourenço Marques, present-day Maputo, in Mozambique, with a cargo of enslaved people.
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Antelmi Arrigo
1645–1675Captain of the ship Sant'Iacopo of Livorno. His account books and logbooks, covering the years from 1645 to 1657, record transactions relating to the crew and sales of enslaved people; among his papers there is also a register entitled «Ruolo delli schiavi che si trova in essere il S.or Capitano Arrigo Antelio a 20 di luglio 1657».
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Barzi Cesare
1486–1519Marchionni's agent in Valencia. Between 1489 and 1497, he imported an average of 268.5 enslaved Black people into Valencia each year, totalling 2,148. In the 1490s, he was the city's leading slave trader. He was also a marine insurer, typically insuring cargoes of sugar bound for the Mediterranean (Pisa) or Flanders, either on his own behalf or on behalf of other operators, primarily Italians or conversos. In 1510, he founded a trading company in Lyon with several other partners, including Venturi, Carnesecchi and Boninsegni.
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Ca da Mosto Alvise
1455–1462A Venetian navigator in the service of Prince Henry the Navigator, in 1455 he reached the mouth of the Senegal, where he exchanged horses for enslaved people, and continued as far as the Gambia. On the expedition of 1456 he sailed with the Genoese Antoniotto Usodimare towards the Casamance, the Bijagós Islands and Cape Verde; he then remained seven years in Lagos, before returning to Venice in 1462.
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Carrega Esteban
1520–1540In 1526 he brought a cargo of 100 enslaved people from the African coasts to Santo Domingo. He then made further voyages between Seville, the African coasts and Hispaniola under Castro's licence.
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Castelletto Agostino
1656In June 1655 one of his ships, the Nostra Signora della Guadalupe, commanded by Giovanni Battista Piuma, was seized after arriving at Luanda: Portugal had rebelled against Spain and the Genoese, allies of Spain, were treated there as enemies. In December 1655 Castelletto asked the Overseas Council in Lisbon for free access to the port of Luanda; in a consulta of 9 January 1656 the Council approved the transit of the Genoese ships belonging to him and to Francesco Maria Rosso.
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Cipriani Matteo
1770–1837Born in Centuri, Corsica, on 30 November 1770, he settled in Livorno and died in Pisa on 16 April 1837. A Corsican-Livornese merchant, during the Napoleonic Wars he accumulated a large fortune in colonial trade in the Antilles together with his brother Domenico, with interests in St. Thomas, Puerto Rico and Trinidad. His relatives Sebastiano and Cipriano Cipriani owned plantations and enslaved people in Trinidad. He had lent large sums on slave estates in Trinidad; after the British emancipation of 1834 he obtained, through his son Leonetto, that the mortgages be extended to the enslaved people as well. The Cipriani family indeed figures among the beneficiaries of the compensation granted after abolition. Among his correspondents was the Venezuelan general Mariño, owner of the largest hacienda in the province of Caracas.
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Colombo Domingo
1765–1772He was captain and owner of the ship El Loreto, with which he took part in the Compañía Gaditana de Negros and made several voyages to Puerto Rico and Cuba.
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Copelo Esteban
1802Captain of the ship Nossa Senhora da Conceição, owned by the shipowner Benito Patron, sent to Mozambique to load 400 enslaved people.
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da Noli Antonio
1460–1469 (decade)A Genoese navigator in the service of the Portuguese Crown, in the 1460s he was commissioned by Afonso V to colonise the Cape Verde Islands. The commission included authorisation to carry on the slave trade in the indigenous populations.
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Falconi Bernardo
1641–1646A Genoese sailor, he agreed to transport the Capuchin friars to the Congo in exchange for permission to capture and enslave Africans in order to sell them in the Americas.
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Feroni Francesco
1660–1670Born in Empoli between 1614 and 1616, he moved to Livorno, where he worked for the merchant and senator Lorenzo Buonaccorsi, who probably sent him to Amsterdam. There he first took part in the grain trade to Italy, and above all to Livorno, where in 1645 he managed to send 1,650 tons of Baltic grain by chartering sixteen ships; further shipments followed. He became an important figure in the Italian community of Amsterdam, and Ferdinando II asked him to represent him before the States General. In the meantime he diversified his business: he entered the trade with Portugal, to which he exported linen and textiles and from which he imported Brazilian sugar and salt, and he was one of the main importers of Spanish wool into the United Provinces. His most profitable trade, however, was the slave trade. He invested part of the profits from the grain trade in the purchase of a ship, the Speranza, which carried textiles and alcoholic drinks to Guinea in exchange for enslaved people; after they had been sold in America, on the return voyage the Speranza carried sugar, cocoa, tobacco and gold ingots to Europe. His commercial successes depended on his good relations with the Dutch West India Company. From 1662 he took part in the Grillo and Lomellini asiento, bringing enslaved people from Guinea to the Caribbean.
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Fortunato Antonio
1835A Neapolitan ship's captain naturalised Spanish in Santiago de Cuba, he was the owner of the schooner La Caridad and its cargo. On 18 September 1835 the ship, on a voyage from Norfolk, in the United States, to Bonny, with New Orleans as its final destination, was intercepted by HMS Triculo, under the command of Richard Warren, off Saint Thomas on the equator, after a call at the island of Príncipe. There were 112 enslaved people on board, 107 of whom were emancipated. The case was judged by the Mixed Commission of Sierra Leone.
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Gallesio Franco
1669–1672Captain of the ships of the Grillo and Lomellini asiento. On 1 September 1671 the ship La Concordia Dorada, commanded by Franco Gallesio, arrived in Caracas with 259 enslaved people; the captain declared that he had left Curaçao on 1 August 1671 and that there had been no deaths during the voyage. In Caracas the enslaved people were handed over to the factor don Juan Antonio Blanco. Two years earlier the same commander had landed enslaved people in the port of Cartagena, after embarking them at Curaçao and Portobelo on the ship S. Nicolò da Tolentino. Between 1669 and 1672 he transported a total of 1,205 enslaved people to the ports of Veracruz and Portobelo.
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Before entering the service of Grillo and Lomellini he had served in the Armada Real and in the naval squadron of the Prince of Montesarchio. He began his career representing Grillo and Lomellini in Cádiz, where he supervised the work of other factors and organised the city's naval resources. In 1667, on the initiative of Ambrogio Lomellini, he left for the Indies as a factor; having reached Cartagena de Indias, he began to sail with the company's ships in the Caribbean. Between 1671 and 1672 he transported 1,563 enslaved people between the ports of Curaçao, Portobelo, Veracruz and Cartagena, always aboard the Santa Cruz.
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Malaboto Juan Pablo
1639Captain and trusted man of the Genoese Nicola Salvago, he organised voyages and deliveries of cargoes of enslaved people, probably coming from the Luso-African factorías.
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Miani Giovanni
1859–1860An explorer active in sub-Saharan Africa, during his journey towards the sources of the Nile in 1859-1860 he purchased two people of the Akka population. The documentation is held at the Museo civico di Storia naturale in Venice; a bust of Miani is at the Accademia dei Concordi in Rovigo.
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Patron Juan Bautista
1789–1803Captain of a ship that transported enslaved people to Buenos Aires on behalf of the merchant Ramón de Palacios, holder of the asiento for the supply of enslaved people to the Río de la Plata as agent of the English trading house Robert Main of Cádiz.
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Picaluga Claudio
1824–1826Born in Genoa and naturalised Dutch in Curaçao, ship's captain and shipowner. He was the owner, together with Giovanni Zangroni 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.
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Piuma Campodonico Giovanni Battista
1654–1657A Genoese resident in Cádiz, in 1654 he obtained licences to introduce 150 enslaved people into any port of the Spanish colonies in America. Captain and owner of a ship built in Livorno, the Nuestra Señora de Guapelo y Guadalupe, he probably departed from Genoa and called at Cádiz, where he embarked other Genoese resident in the city. The voyage was financed, among others, by Francesco Maria Imperiale and by Giovanni Battista Montovio, another Genoese resident in Cádiz, who as security for their investments had the latter's brother board the ship. Piuma arrived in Luanda between the end of 1654 and the beginning of 1655. He spent more than a year there trying to obtain permission to trade from the local authorities, and there he died, together with Montovio, in April 1656. His ship, with more than 100 enslaved people in excess of what the Spanish licences allowed, reached Santo Domingo at the end of 1657, although its final destination was Cartagena de Indias.
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Rodriguez Juan
1520–1529A ship's captain of Genoese origin living in Seville, he was one of the most important agents of Grimaldi and Centurione in Santo Domingo. Although above all a seaman, he enjoyed their full confidence, and he also began to trade on his own account and to make profits. He made loans and went so far as to purchase vessels such as the Santa Maria and the Trinidad. He probably died in 1529.
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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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Siccoli Pietro
1839Captain of the Bela Fiorentina (La Bella Fiorentina), a ship built in Genoa that sailed under the Portuguese or Brazilian flag. Having set out from Havana, she was captured by the British in 1839 near the coast of Sierra Leone.
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Usodimare Antoniotto
1455–1456A Genoese navigator in the service of the Portuguese, in 1455 he came into possession of 31 enslaved people from the Gambia. In 1456 he took part with Alvise Ca da Mosto in the expedition that reached the Casamance, the Bijagós Islands and Cape Verde.