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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Imperiale Francesco Maria
1654–1655He financed the voyage of the slave ship Nuestra Señora de Guapelo y Guadalupe, which was owned by Giovanni Battista Piuma Campodonico and was set to transport enslaved people from Luanda to Santo Domingo in the Caribbean.
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Lercaro Stefano
1576–1587In 1576 he invested, together with the Florentine Giacomo Bardi, in the Mina company, opened by the Casa da Índia to administer the trade in enslaved people and raw materials in Guinea, one of the most profitable in Portugal. Meanwhile he carried out diplomatic activities between the Republic of Genoa and Portugal, at times in direct contact with the king. In 1587 he obtained with his partner Giulio Spinola authorisation to open an exchange bank in Lisbon, which gave him a monopoly position, since the agreement excluded for ten years the opening of similar banks by others.
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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.
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Montesisto Giuseppe
1765–1772Genoese consul in Cádiz, he invested in the Compañía Gaditana de Negros and thus in the slave trade to the Spanish colonies.
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Montovio Giovanni Battista
1654–1655He financed the voyage of the slave ship Nuestra Señora de Guapelo y Guadalupe, which was owned by Giovanni Battista Piuma Campodonico and was set to transport enslaved people from Luanda to Santo Domingo in the Caribbean.
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Porrata Giovanni Battista
1661–1670A Genoese merchant active in Cádiz, between 1661 and 1670 he was a trading partner of the asiento and took part in the expeditions of its ships to the Caribbean. He belonged to the same Cádiz group as Giovanni Rolato, the brothers Giovanni Battista and Pantaleo Grasso, Pietro Del Forno, Giovanni Battista Priaruggia and Alberto Bieluto.
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Priaruggia Giovanni Battista
1660–1679 (decade)A Genoese merchant active in Cádiz, in the 1660s and 1670s he took part as a partner in the expeditions of the asiento ships to the Caribbean, together with Giovanni Battista Porrata, Giovanni Rolato, the Grasso brothers, Pietro Del Forno and Alberto Bieluto.
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Rezzonico Aurelio
1666A merchant originally from Como and partner in Venice of Pietro Cernezzi, in 1666 he contributed to the loan of 9,180 ducats sent to Amsterdam to pay for a cargo of enslaved people for the asiento. The operation passed through the house of Giovanni Battista Benzi and Giovanni Gabriele Voet and combined Venetian capital with payments to the suppliers of the Dutch market.
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Rolato Giovanni
1661–1663A Genoese merchant and partner of the asiento in Cádiz between 1661 and 1662, he was investigated for smuggling in the Indies. He belonged to the same trading network as Giovanni Battista Porrata and the other Cádiz partners who took part in the slave-trading expeditions in the Caribbean, including the Grasso brothers, Pietro Del Forno, Giovanni Battista Priaruggia and Alberto Bieluto.
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Rossi Juan Bautista
1784A trustee and business agent, in Madrid he collected the income from the Real Compañía de La Habana, deeply involved in the Cuban slave economy, due to the Infante Fernando, Duke of Parma: 3 and one-third shares, which came from the estate of Elisabeth Farnese. The dividend, 83 and one-third pesos, equal to 1,268 reales de vellón, was collected on 30 July 1784.
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Rovellasca Giovanni Battista
1583–1599From 1583 to 1589 he held the contract for the trade in enslaved people from the island of São Tomé to the Antilles. Between 1595 and 1599 he purchased a licence to import 230 enslaved people into Cartagena de Indias.
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Saluzzi Giacomo
1632–1636Through his representative, Antonio Balbi, he claimed the dividends of a shipment of enslaved Africans undertaken together with Antonio del Campo and Benavidez. He also claimed 84,500 ducats for the cargoes shipped to the Indies in 1632. He appears also to have benefited from the licences granted by the court of Philip IV in the 1630s, which links him directly to those granted to Nicola Salvago.
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Salvago Ambrogio (o Ambrosio)
1603–1609At the beginning of the seventeenth century he invested, together with Francesco Serra, in the asiento of the Portuguese Gonzalo Baez Coutinho.
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Salvago Enrico
1633–1635A Genoese merchant, between 1633 and 1635 he fitted out and dispatched a ship from Genoa to Brazil via Lisbon, perhaps making use of the licences and the slave asiento of his relative Nicola Salvago; it is not certain that he held an authorisation of his own.
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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.
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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.
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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 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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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.
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Owner of the ship San Pedro, used in the slave trade by Cesare Baroncini.
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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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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.