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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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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In August 1494 he transported 65 enslaved people from Tenerife from La Gomera to Valencia on behalf of Alfonso Sanchis, treasurer of the king.
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Pinelli Francesco
1480–1493A Genoese merchant, he lived in Valencia from 1470 to 1491. His family had moved to the Iberian Peninsula as early as 1435, chiefly as exporters of wool to Genoa. In 1480, together with the Spanish merchant Diego de Soria, he won the contract as collector and depositary of the papal tithe for the Castilian conquest of the Canaries. There followed a small but steady flow of Pinelli's employees in Seville who sold enslaved people from the Canaries. Between 1489 and 1491 the two, together with Sánchez, lent the sovereign 25 million maravedís for the conquest of the Kingdom of Granada. They also acted as intermediaries in the sale of enslaved people from Málaga and the Canaries. In 1493 Pinelli and other Genoese resident in Andalusia granted Columbus a large loan, in exchange for the subcontract to supply all the goods needed for the second voyage.