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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Balocco Cesare
1666–1668Agent of the Grillo and Lomellini asiento. In 1666 he was sent to London to conclude an agreement with the Company of Royal Adventurers for the shipment of enslaved Africans to the Caribbean.
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Bosco Alessandro
1662Agent of Grillo and Lomellini in Amsterdam. Thanks to his mediation, on 15 September 1662 Grillo and Lomellini signed with the Dutch West India Company (WIC) a contract providing for the annual delivery of 1,200 enslaved people to Curaçao.
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Cavaleri Pietro Mattia
1668–1674Agent of the Grillo and Lomellini asiento in the islands of Cuba, Puerto Rico and Santo Domingo. He had previously operated in Madrid as a private lender and as a merchant through a company based in Genoa, together with his partner Bartolomeo Capa. He began working for Grillo in 1664, if not earlier, supervising the delivery of almost 125,000 pesos from Cartagena to Italy, part of a loan that Grillo had granted to the Crown.
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Compiano Francesco Maria
1663–1674An agent of Grillo and Lomellini, he distributed enslaved Africans to Spanish ports such as Veracruz, Portobelo, Caracas, Cartagena de Indias and Cumaná. Before joining the asiento he had organised illegal expeditions to sell enslaved people between Cádiz, the Canaries, Curaçao and Portobelo. In 1665, during the contracts between Grillo and Lomellini and the Company of Royal Adventurers, the English company that held the monopoly of trade with Africa, including the slave trade, he also travelled to Jamaica and Barbados.
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D'Andrea Stefano
1668–1672He replaced Francesco Feroni as Grillo's agent in Amsterdam, where he bought enslaved people for the asiento and purchased other goods to be sent to America.
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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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Giustiniani Giustiniano
1663–1704From 1663 to 1674 Giustiniani served on the Isthmus of Panama as an agent of the Grillo and Lomellini asiento. His duties included the logistics of the slave trade: he received the asiento ships arriving at Portobelo, assessed the state of health of the captives, saw to their sustenance, sold them in the local markets and organised their transfer across the isthmus to Panama. He was thus involved in twenty-five asiento voyages that reached the isthmus, and was responsible for the lives of almost 11,500 captives. After the end of the Grillo and Lomellini asiento he married a noblewoman from Navarre and returned with her to Spain, to Madrid. He nevertheless continued to be involved in the slave trade through his close collaboration with his brother-in-law Antonio Echeverz, who at the beginning of the eighteenth century had become one of the most powerful men on the isthmus, a great owner of land and of enslaved people. In the first months of 1692 the Venetian Nicolás Porcio, a key figure in the asiento since the late 1670s, appointed Giustiniani chief administrator of the asiento in the event of his death, which occurred two years later. With the proceeds of the slave trade Giustiniani purchased government offices and titles from the Crown: honorary offices in the Council of Italy and the Council of War (1684), the office of provincial alcalde of Panama and Portobelo (1685), the habit of knight of the Order of Calatrava (1692), and the titles of Marquis of Peñaflorida and Viscount of Casares (1704).
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Giustiniano Giovanni Battista
1646–1671Agent of the Genoese Domenico Grillo between the 1650s and 1670s, he operated in Cádiz, Seville and Madrid to buy, sell and charter the ships of the asiento and to receive and manage the return cargoes, linking the decisions of the asentistas to port and commercial logistics.
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Grillo Agostino
1663–1674A distant relative of Domenico Grillo, he took part in the asiento as an agent, first in Portobelo (1663-1670) and then in Lima (1671-1673).
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Grillo Giovanna
1701Sister of Domenico Grillo, holder with Ambrogio Lomellini of the asiento de negros from 1663 to 1674. In the 1640s she married Carlo Imperiale, her brother's trusted agent in Genoa for the business of the asiento. Her role went beyond mediation between Grillo and Imperiale: together with her brother Marco Antonio she personally handled the sale of American products in Genoa, and Domenico appointed her his representative in the city in the last years of his life.
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Imperiale Carlo
c. 1650–1667A member of the Genoese old nobility, in the 1640s he married Giovanna Grillo, sister of Domenico. He was Domenico Grillo's ally in the Castilian wool trade and in the mobilisation of financial resources on a continental scale and, until his death, which occurred around 1667-1668, was his trusted agent in Genoa for the business of the asiento.
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In 1670 Grillo and Lomellini appointed him agent in Puerto Rico, together with two other agents, one Andalusian and one Creole. He had previously resided in Seville.
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Panesi Fulgencio
1665–1679 (decade)Brother of Giovanni Andrea Panesi, with whom he ran in Cádiz what contemporaries considered the largest trading house in the city in the 1670s. At the beginning of 1665, when a ship of the asiento attempted to smuggle silver into Cádiz, the Panesi brothers paid the price for protecting Domenico Grillo's interests in the cargo. In June 1666 Grillo and Ambrogio Lomellini granted power of attorney to Giovanni Andrea and Fulgencio Panesi and to Giovanni Francesco Garibaldo.
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Panesi Giovanni Andrea
1665–1679 (decade)A merchant of Cádiz, close partner of Domenico Grillo and Ambrogio Lomellini. With his brother Fulgencio he ran what contemporaries considered the largest trading house in the city in the 1670s. At the beginning of 1665, when a ship of the asiento attempted to smuggle silver into Cádiz, the Panesi brothers paid the price for protecting Grillo's interests in the cargo, and Giovanni Andrea ended up in prison.
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In 1673 Grillo asked the Council of the Indies to appoint him agent of the asiento in Peru; he probably never crossed the Atlantic. In the 1660s he had worked in Madrid as an agent of Giovanni Battista Lomellini.