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.
Advanced search
-
de' Medici Francesco
1608–1610Nephew of Giovanni de' Medici, between 1608 and 1610 he purchased from his uncle the rights and proceeds of the giurì di Spagna, the taxes on the trade in enslaved people bound for the New World.
-
de' Medici Giovanni
until 1608Natural son of Cosimo I, he held the rights to collect the giurì di Spagna, the duties on the trade in enslaved Black people to the Indies. In 1608 he submitted a petition to sell these rights to his nephew Francesco de' Medici.
-
Participation in the slave trade and in other business in Atlantic exchanges enabled his family to enter the Portuguese nobility in the mid-sixteenth century, to purchase the captaincy of Ilhéus and to win the favour of the Lisbon court, which appointed his natural son Francesco ambassador to England and France and, in 1588, Governor General (de iure) of Brazil.
-
Migliorucci Pietro Giuseppe
1720–1728Also known as Peter Joseph Migliorucci, a Tuscan merchant and banker active in London in the first decades of the eighteenth century. After the collapse of the banker Sir Justus Beck he was appointed assignee in bankruptcy and trustee of his estate, together with Gerrard Van Neck and Claude Jamineau. Among the assets seized was a portfolio registered in Beck's name but belonging to the merchant Jacob George Le Grand: 4,050 pounds sterling of government annuities converted into shares of the South Sea Company, holder of the asiento. In 1728 he was named as a defendant in a suit before the Court of Chancery, which accused him of having «combined and confederated» with the company's management to withhold shares and dividends.
-
Salviati Lorenzo
1601A Florentine marquis, in 1601 he obtained from Philip III the privilege of the so-called giurì di Spagna, that is, the right to collect the duties on the sale and trade of enslaved Black people transported to the West Indies. The proceeds and credits connected with this duty later passed into the assets of the Monte di Pietà of Florence.
-
Owners of an enslaved African woman, one of the three whom Giovanni Guidetti sent from Lisbon to Livorno on the caravel Santo Spirito at the end of 1464.
-
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.
-
Owner of the ship San Pedro, used in the slave trade by Cesare Baroncini.