People database

Origin

Firenze

Place of activity

Madeira

He acted as a procurator for various Florentine merchants in Lisbon, including Marchionni, Morelli and Sernigi, as well as for Portuguese merchants. He also maintained ties with other Florentines based on the Iberian Peninsula: in 1506, for instance, he sent an enslaved boy of thirteen from Madeira to Andrea Canigiani, who was living in Valencia.

Origin

Firenze

Place of activity

Valencia

Marchionni'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.

Origin

Firenze

Place of activity

Seville

He was a Florentine merchant who lived in Seville and ran the Seville branch of the Medici bank. Along with Marchionni and Giovanni, his brother, he obtained permission to trade enslaved people from the Canary Islands and the African coast in the kingdoms of Aragon and Castile. He also played a key role in financing exploration and conquest enterprises, including the conquest of the island of La Palma in the Canary Islands with the Genoese banker Francisco de Riberol, and Columbus's first voyage. During his second voyage, it was precisely to Berardi that Christopher Columbus sent the first known shipment of enslaved indigenous people to cross the Atlantic. In 1495, he signed an agreement with the Spanish monarchs to dispatch twelve caravels to the West Indies to supply Hispaniola. However, he did not live to see the results as he died in January 1496, before the caravels set sail. Moreover, the caravels never reached the New World as they were wrecked in the Strait of Gibraltar a few days after setting off. Following his death, the company was inherited by Amerigo Vespucci, who sold it a few years later to another Florentine entrepreneur, Donato Nicolini. Nicolini then entrusted Piero Rondinelli with the management of the Seville business.

He sent to Giannotto Berardi, partner of Bartolomeo Marchionni in Seville, the first known shipment of enslaved people from the Americas to Europe: Indigenous Taíno people.

Origin

Firenze

Place of activity

Lisbona

Having settled in Lisbon in 1470 as agent of the Cambini bank of Florence, in 1486 he obtained from the Portuguese Crown the contract to import enslaved people from the Rio dos Escravos (Benin coast); in the same year he received from the Spanish sovereigns the licence to trade in enslaved people with Castile and Aragon. It has been calculated that between 1486 and 1493 Marchionni imported at least 1,648 of the 3,589 enslaved people who arrived in Lisbon, that is 45.9%. He then re-exported some of them to Seville (through Giannotto Berardi), to Valencia (through Cesare Barzi) and to Livorno (through Francesco Guidetti).

Origin

Genova

Place of activity

Seville

A Florentine merchant, he was called by Donato Nicolini to direct in Seville the trading company that had belonged to Giannotto Berardi and that, on the latter's death, had passed to Amerigo Vespucci. He traded in enslaved people on behalf of Marchionni and Cesare Barzi. Besides the slave trade, he dealt in Canary sugar, English woollen cloth, Italian silk fabrics and many other products.

Origin

Firenze

He transported 232 enslaved Indigenous people from the Bahamas and sold the 200 survivors in Cádiz.