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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Bacarreza Ambrosio
1769–1796Lieutenant of the Dragoon regiment of the Lima militia until 1790, when he requested royal licence to enter the Franciscan order (AGI, Lima, 689B, N. 10). Between 1770 and 1772 he is documented in three transactions involving enslaved people.
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Bacarreza Antonio
1763–1790Born in Genoa, son of Josef Bacarreza and Angela Conforte (AAL, Licencias matrimoniales, 1773). Between 1771 and 1787 he is documented in six transactions involving enslaved people.
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Bacarreza Cayetano
1778–1830Born in Genoa, the legitimate son of Jose Bacarreza and Lucía Conforte (AGN, Protocolo 60, 1830). In his will he declared that he owned four enslaved people. Between 1809 and 1817 he is documented in three transactions involving enslaved people. The deed by which he received his wife's dowry also included some enslaved people, entrusted to his administration.
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A Genoese merchant and banker. On his death, in 1665, he left to his wife all the enslaved people he owned.
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Baldase Bernardo
c. 1791–1810A merchant of Italian origin resident in Havana. With his brother Vicente Baldase, a merchant resident in Cádiz, he was joint owner of the sugar ingenio «La Santísima Trinidad», purchased in May 1795 from Juan de Sequeira. Between 1796 and 1797 the firm went bankrupt, and from the quiebra arose a long legal dispute between the Consulado of Havana and that of Cádiz over the settlement of the debts. The precautionary seizure of the plantation led to the drawing up of the inventory of assets and the detailed list of the enslaved people who worked there, including the family groups of Aldonza de Luca and Nicolasa Luca.
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Balestrieri Nicolau
1823–1830Registered as Italian and a merchant (negociante), on 1 October 1829 he moved to Porto Alegre with his wife, a daughter and an enslaved woman.
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Barberi Lucas
1788–1821Lucas Barberi y Blanco, resident in Lima, was born in Arenzano, «five leagues from Genoa». In his will he declares that he owns three enslaved people (AGN, Protocolos notariales, no. 638, escribano Jose Maria de la Rosa, 1821). Between 1790 and 1819 he is documented in ten transactions involving enslaved people.
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Barbieri Esteban
1789–1804The Buenos Aires census of 1804 recorded that he arrived in the city in 1789. Aged fifty, he owned a grocery shop, a furnished house, five enslaved people, and 1,000 pesos.
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Basi Francisco
1764–1804The Buenos Aires census of 1804 records that he arrived in the city in 1764. He was a miller and owned two enslaved people and 2,000 pesos in silver. He lived in a rented house.
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Benzano y Dagnino Antonio
1800–1820Born in Sestri, in the Archdiocese of Genoa (AAL, Expedientes matrimoniales, 1811). In his will he declares that he owns four enslaved people.
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Bunda Antonio
1770–1777Born in the place called Bendon, in the jurisdiction of Albenga, province of Genoa, son of Juan Bautista Bunda and Catalina Pana (AGN, Protocolo 559, 1776-1777). In his will he declared that he owned an enslaved man, José María, whom he left to the Convento Grande de San Francisco to serve the friars; if he were not considered suitable, the convent could sell him.
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Cadorna Esteban
1790–1818Between 1790 and 1818 he is documented in Lima in at least twenty-one transactions involving enslaved people, several times as buyer and as seller. In 1804 he also formed a company with two other partners, contributing 12,000 pesos to a capital of 36,000, intended for the purchase of 150 enslaved people in Buenos Aires and their resale in Lima.
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Cambini Francesco e Bernardo
1461–1469Owners of two enslaved African women, Isabell and Giovanna, who arrived in Livorni from Lisbon in 1461 and 1469 respectively through Giovanni Guidetti, agent of the Cambini bank in Lisbon.
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Caneva Andrea
1776–1804He arrived in Buenos Aires in 1776 and married Juana Balerga there. He was a merchant and owned two shops, two houses, half a ship and nine enslaved people.
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Capanegra Agustin
1816–1827Like other Genoese, he farmed rented land. He owned a house in a quinta in the Buenos Aires area and no fewer than fourteen enslaved people.
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Carmelino Angel
1800–1830In the Lima census of 1813 three enslaved people are recorded in his household. In his will of 1816, however, he declared that he owned five: José, Juan, Dolores, Marco and Félix.
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Carmelino Angelo
from 1813An Italian immigrant attested in Lima from at least 1813, the year of his marriage, he became the owner of an inn and owned five enslaved people.
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Carnilia Francisco
1773Originally from Genoa and resident in Buenos Aires, the legitimate son of don Juan Bautista Carnilia and doña María Antonia Porta. In his will of 1773 he directed that on his death Pedro, an African man he held in slavery, be freed, acknowledging his good services and loyalty.
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An employee of the Cambini, together with his brother Chiaro he purchased an enslaved African woman, Luza, who had come to Livorno from Lisbon through Bartolomeo Marchionni.
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Castellon Jacome
1510–1535Son of a Genoese merchant resident in Toledo, he settled in 1510 in Santo Domingo, where he was the agent of the Genoese merchants of Seville for the trade in enslaved people and sugar. He also invested in land, in stock-raising and in the city's property market, and purchased an ingenio (sugar-cane plantation) on the island. In 1522 he was sent by the Spanish authorities to put down an indigenous rebellion at Cumaná, and subsequently obtained the title of superintendent of the fortress. This post allowed him to engage in the trade in enslaved indigenous people on the Venezuelan coast, employed above all in pearl fishing. He remained at Cumaná for seven years, until 1528, then returned to Santo Domingo, where he was the agent of Pedro Benito de Basiñana and of Geronimo Grimaldi, who were involved in the slave trade with the island. In 1534-1535 he was considered one of the most important entrepreneurs of the New World.
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Castellon Tomas
1509–1527Brother of Jacome Castellon, after serving as agent of the Genoese community of Seville in Hispaniola he acquired a property in Puerto Rico, where he established the first sugar-cane plantation.
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Cipriani Cipriano
1770–1834He belonged to a family of Tuscan origin with commercial interests between Livorno and Corsica, in particular at Centuri. Brother of Matteo Cipriani and uncle of Leonetto Cipriani, he owned the Moka plantation in Trinidad, in the British West Indies, and was also linked to the Ortinola property, in the Maracas region. His name appears, together with that of his wife Amelia Caracciolo Cipriani, among the slave owners who received the compensation granted by Great Britain after the abolition of slavery in the British colonies, which came into force in 1834. For the Moka plantation (Trinidad compensation no. 997) he received £6,832 10s 5d; he also received the compensation awards Trinidad no. 1017 (£270 12s 0d) and Trinidad no. 1413 (£1,799 14s 7d).
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Cipriani Matteo
1770–1837Born 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.
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Cipriani Sebastiano
until 1834Of the Tuscan Cipriani family, brother of Cipriano, Matteo and Domenico, all with interests in the British colony of Trinidad. His name figures among the beneficiaries of the compensation granted by Great Britain to slave owners after the abolition of slavery in the British colonies, in 1834: it appears in connection with the compensation awards Trinidad no. 434 (Port of Spain) and Trinidad no. 1334 & B (perhaps Valsayn). Award no. 434, registered on 28 March 1836, concerned 19 enslaved people and provided for £900 12s 1d. The colony's registers also show that in 1834 he registered 20 enslaved people in his own name and that of his wife.
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d’Este Luigi
1580A cardinal of the House of Este, he owned eighty enslaved people at his villa in Tivoli. After their revolt, in 1580, he purchased another fifty.