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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Castellon Jacome
1510–1535Son of a Genoese merchant resident in Toledo, he settled in 1510 in Santo Domingo, where he was the agent of the Genoese merchants of Seville for the trade in enslaved people and sugar. He also invested in land, in stock-raising and in the city's property market, and purchased an ingenio (sugar-cane plantation) on the island. In 1522 he was sent by the Spanish authorities to put down an indigenous rebellion at Cumaná, and subsequently obtained the title of superintendent of the fortress. This post allowed him to engage in the trade in enslaved indigenous people on the Venezuelan coast, employed above all in pearl fishing. He remained at Cumaná for seven years, until 1528, then returned to Santo Domingo, where he was the agent of Pedro Benito de Basiñana and of Geronimo Grimaldi, who were involved in the slave trade with the island. In 1534-1535 he was considered one of the most important entrepreneurs of the New World.
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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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Cei Galeotto
1532–1560Born in Florence in 1513, like Soderini he was forced to leave the city because of his father's republican ideas. His father was executed and the family's large patrimony was confiscated. In 1532, he moved to Seville. In 1539, he sailed for Santo Domingo aboard the Concepción. After a few weeks, the ship put in at Cape Verde to purchase enslaved people to be transported to the Antilles. A total of 250 people were embarked (Cei bought 40 of them) at a price of 36 ducats each. During the voyage, 12 people died of smallpox. Prior to departure, he entered into a two-year accomandita with Luigi Ricasoli, a fellow Florentine based in Seville. Under this agreement, Ricasoli would supply Cei with goods to sell. Cei began selling his merchandise, but Ricasoli's death interrupted the shipments from Spain. After concluding his business with the Ricasoli heirs, he embarked on a caravel bound for Venezuela and Cabo de la Vela. In the nearby pearl-fishing area, he purchased three indigenous people to work as fishermen, who earned him 400 ducats in about ten months. In September 1542, he returned to Santo Domingo, where he resumed living with Giovanni Soderini and Mauro Fantoni. Over the next few years, he participated in various colonisation expeditions in Venezuela and the New Kingdom of Granada, reaching as far as Bogotá. In 1553, he returned to Seville, where he resumed and expanded his commercial activities to include Italy, Germany, and France. He returned to Florence in 1560, where he held several public offices, and he died there in 1579.
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Centurione (Centurion) Melchor
1518–1526Brother of Gaspar, he was the agent of Forne, Vivaldo and Vazquez in Santo Domingo, where he exchanged enslaved people for sugar.
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Fantoni Mauro
1512–1550He was born in Seville, probably in 1512, to Iacopo from Florence and Antonia Gonçales from Portugal. His father had arrived in Andalusia in 1506 and entered the city's lucrative trade in collaboration with other Florentine merchants, becoming the go-to contact for many Tuscan traders active in Seville. In 1532, Iacopo sent his eldest son, Bernardo, to Florence, while Mauro continued to trade with the Americas. A few years later, to reduce the risk of seizures and confiscations, and to take advantage of opportunities in the New World, Iacopo decided to send Mauro to Santo Domingo. This seems to have been prompted by the heirs of Luigi Ricasoli wanting to send a representative to the island to conclude business begun with Galeotto Cei. Fantoni arrived in Santo Domingo between 1541 and 1542, probably spending the rest of his life in the Caribbean. In June 1543, he married Maria Giustiniani, who was from Genoa. He joined the company of Luigi da Lampugnano, Giovan Antonio Piccolomini, and Scipione Pecci to fish for pearls on the island of Cubagua. The company purchased the galleon San Andrés, commanded by Juan Sodo, and Fantoni sent four enslaved men to the Caribbean to work in the enterprise through him. Fantoni sent two of them — Alonso, aged twenty-four, and Juan Marcos, aged twenty — while Pecci assigned a black man named Francisco, aged about twenty-five, to the company. Juan Sodo chose Pedro, who was also twenty-five years old. The contract stipulated that the four men should receive a monthly wage of 1,000 maravedís, as well as food and drink.
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Giustiniani Esteban
1520–1535An agent of the company of Vivaldi, Forne and Grimaldi, he settled in Santo Domingo, where together with Pedro Vazquez de Mella he purchased a sugar plantation that became very productive. At the end of the 1520s he founded his own company, Giustiniani & Co., which traded in enslaved people and land. His partners were probably Melchor Centurione and Valian de Forne, already his partners in other operations.
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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.