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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Salvago Stefano
1530–1539 (decade)A Genoese businessman and factor in Seville for the banker Ansaldo Grimaldi, in the 1530s he took part in trading and credit companies between Madrid, Valladolid and Seville and became an influential asentista. The sources expressly mention his asientos for the slave trade. He also operated with Antonio Grimaldi and with Tomasso Salvago, another factor of the same network.
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Salvago Tomasso
1450A member of the Salvago merchant family, on 28 April 1450 he purchased an enslaved person in Genoa from Geronimo de Carmarino, as documented by a notarial deed. He is a different person from the Tomasso Salvago active as factor for Ansaldo Grimaldi in Seville in 1530.
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Sauli Franceso Maria
1620–1699Francesco Maria Sauli operated in Genoa on behalf of Grillo and Lomellini: he received and sold the goods arriving from Cádiz, procured credit and insured the asiento ships. His activity, however, went far beyond this: he invested in Roman and Neapolitan public debt, traded in grain, silver, silk textiles and marble, and invested in the Genoese shipyards. In 1666 he supplied Grillo and Lomellini with galleons of 500 tons each for the slave trade. In 1667 he procured for Feroni, in Amsterdam, funds to buy enslaved people for the asiento. At the beginning of 1668 Grillo asked him to insure the ship Santa Cruz, of 500 tons, with 34 guns and a crew of 70 men, commanded by Giovanni Francesco Garibaldo: the ship was to sail from Cádiz to Angola, load enslaved people there and carry them to Curaçao, Santo Domingo and Puerto Rico, perhaps also to Cumaná and Caracas, and then transport silver from Cádiz to Genoa. In March 1668 Sauli won the tender for the insurance.
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Serra Baltasar
c. 1691–1700A member of the Ligurian patrician family of the Serra, active in the Spanish administration. He was appointed juez conservador of the monopoly of the asiento de negros, with the task of protecting the legal privileges and commercial interests connected with the introduction and sale of enslaved Black people in the American colonies.
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Serra Francesco
1603–1609He invested in the slave asiento of the Portuguese Gonzalo Báez Coutinho together with Ambrogio Salvago, but did not take part in the logistical management of the activities.
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He was among those who in 1634 obtained licences to sail from the ports of Seville, Sanlúcar de Barrameda, Cádiz, Lisbon and the Canaries, load enslaved people at Cape Verde, in Guinea, at São Tomé, in Angola and at Mina, and transport them to New Spain and Tierra Firme (Colombia and Venezuela).
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Spinola Ambrosio
1594He held licences for the trade in enslaved people on the ship San Miguel.
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Spinola Stefano
1526A Genoese merchant, in 1526 he concluded with the King of Portugal a contract for 600 peças of enslaved people, in which the Cremonese merchant Giovan Francesco Affaitati was also involved. He is a different person from his namesake Stefano Spinola, who in 1610 sold an enslaved person in Genoa to the Centurione enterprises.
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Spinola Tolomeo
from 1547With other Genoese (Pinelli, Negron, Fiesco) he formed a company with a capital of 12,000 ducats, one third of which was his. The company sold enslaved people in New Spain in exchange for sugar. The link between the slave trade and sugar became ever closer, and sugar became the second largest export after silver. The partners also invested in sugar production in Hispaniola and Puerto Rico in the first quarter of the sixteenth century.
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Suparo Santiago
1770–1804After emigrating to Buenos Aires in 1770, he got married and had nine children. He owned a farmhouse (quinta) and nine enslaved people.
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Usodimare Antoniotto
1455–1456A Genoese navigator in the service of the Portuguese, in 1455 he came into possession of 31 enslaved people from the Gambia. In 1456 he took part with Alvise Ca da Mosto in the expedition that reached the Casamance, the Bijagós Islands and Cape Verde.
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Genoese owner of the galleon on which, in 1591, Niccolò Parenti and the young Francesco Carletti embarked at Livorno for an expedition organised by Parenti to purchase enslaved Black people in Africa and transport them to America.
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Vigne Francis
1819–1820A Genoese ship's captain, his name appears in the records of the Mixed Commission at Freetown, Sierra Leone, in connection with the interception of the ship Marie by the Royal Navy.
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Vitale Benito
1631He financed the voyage of the slave ship Santísima Trinidad, owned by Nicola Salvago, together with Pedro María Ayrolo. The ship sailed from Spain to Luanda, and then transported enslaved people to Buenos Aires.
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Vivaldi (Vivaldo) Augustin
1518–1526With Tomas and Domingo Forne and Fernan Vazquez he bought the licence that the King of Spain had granted to Gouvenot to bring 4,000 enslaved people to the Americas in eight years. It is not known how many people they sold, but they resold the licences at very high prices, making a profit of 300,000 ducats. The same company, with Genoese and Spanish capital, owned the ingenio of Sanctis Spiritu, just outside Santo Domingo.
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Vivaldo Adamo
1518A Genoese merchant, in the 1510s and 1520s he purchased from Laurent de Gouvenot, together with Tomas de Fornari, the licences to introduce enslaved people into the Spanish Indies and exploited them through a company.