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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Amatori Benozzo
1503–1517He 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.
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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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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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Agent of the Cambini for the Pisa and Livorno branches, he was the owner of an enslaved African woman, Marta, who arrived in Livorno from Lisbon in 1461 through Giovanni Guidetti.
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Ginori Lorenzo
1675A Florentine merchant and agent active in Lisbon, in 1675 he was commissioned by Cosimo III de' Medici to procure and send to Florence a young Black or Brazilian man skilled in the processing of sugar cane.
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Michelozzi Filippo
1750Agent of the Monte di Pietà of Florence in Spain, in 1750 he handled on behalf of the institution the collection of the arrears of the giurì di Spagna, connected with the trade in enslaved Black people, following the legal and accounting procedures at the Spanish court; he then left to Pietro Maria Fava the inventory of the records and receipts.
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Tedeschi Giuseppe
c. 1670–1700A missionary, he sent enslaved people from Goa to Cosimo III.
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Vanni Bartolomeo
1460–1469 (decade)An agent of the Cambini bank, from the early 1460s he took part in the importation of enslaved Black people from Lisbon to Florence. He operated in the same network as Giovanni Guidetti, who in 1461 brought to Tuscany Isabell, Barbera and Marta, destined respectively for the Cambini family, Giovanni degli Albizzi and Ridolfo di ser Gabriello.
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Vespucci Amerigo
1499He transported 232 enslaved Indigenous people from the Bahamas and sold the 200 survivors in Cádiz.