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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  • Cipriani Matteo

    1770–1837
    Slave owner, Investor, Mediator Transports and maritime activities
    Origin
    Centuri
    Place of activity
    Livorno

    Born in Centuri, Corsica, on 30 November 1770, he settled in Livorno and died in Pisa on 16 April 1837. A Corsican-Livornese merchant, during the Napoleonic Wars he accumulated a large fortune in colonial trade in the Antilles together with his brother Domenico, with interests in St. Thomas, Puerto Rico and Trinidad. His relatives Sebastiano and Cipriano Cipriani owned plantations and enslaved people in Trinidad. He had lent large sums on slave estates in Trinidad; after the British emancipation of 1834 he obtained, through his son Leonetto, that the mortgages be extended to the enslaved people as well. The Cipriani family indeed figures among the beneficiaries of the compensation granted after abolition. Among his correspondents was the Venezuelan general Mariño, owner of the largest hacienda in the province of Caracas.