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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Campana Bastiano
1547Agent and factor of Duke Cosimo I de' Medici. In 1547 he was sent to Portugal to purchase for the duke goods, animals and enslaved people destined for the court of Florence. His diary contains the accounts of those purchases.
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de’ Medici Cosimo I
1555Duke of Florence and later Grand Duke of Tuscany, he owned enslaved people employed on the Medici galleys. A list of 1555 of the oarsmen in his possession includes a man described as «moro negro», employed on board as a trumpeter.
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de’ Medici Cosimo III
1680–1699 (decade)Grand Duke of Tuscany, between the 1680s and 1690s he had purchased for his court Eustachio, an African man skilled in the preparation of sweets «all'indiana», who remained his property. He also asked his agent Lorenzo Ginori to procure for him a young Black or Brazilian man skilled in the processing of sugar cane.