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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Lomellini Urbano
1472–1518He was the grandson of Bartolomeo Lomellini, who settled in Lisbon in 1424, and the son of Cosmo, who was born in the Portuguese capital and became a prominent merchant. Instead, Urbano settled in Madeira with his brother Giovanni Battista and became a sugarcane producer there. He owned two plantations in the Porto da Cruz area, where he employed enslaved people, including Muslims from the Iberian Peninsula and Guanches from the Canary Islands. Meanwhile, his brother Giovanni Battista traded Madeiran sugar in Lisbon, Genoa, Milan, Naples and other Italian cities, as well as Bruges.
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Lorenzo Nicolini
1594Clerk of a slave ship fitted out by Cesare Baroncini.
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Luqui Bartolo
1816–1836A Genoese resident in district 14 of Buenos Aires, between 1816 and 1836 he lived with his wife, five children and three enslaved people.
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Maffei Beltrame
1681–1689Partner of Carlo Andrea Maffei in Cádiz, he signed with him and handled the correspondence with Benjamin Burlamacchi in Amsterdam between 1681 and 1689. He was involved in the brokering of transatlantic shipments of enslaved Africans to the Spanish West Indies within the framework of the asiento de negros.
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Maffei Carlo Andrea
1681–1689A Genoese merchant, partner in the Maffei firm in Cádiz. Between 1681 and 1689 he maintained with Benjamin Burlamacchi in Amsterdam a business correspondence of thirty-eight letters, in which the trade in «negros» is explicitly discussed in relation to the asiento de negros of Balthasar Coymans and to the shipments to Curaçao, coordinated with the agent Balthasar Beck.
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Malaboto Juan Pablo
1639Captain and trusted man of the Genoese Nicola Salvago, he organised voyages and deliveries of cargoes of enslaved people, probably coming from the Luso-African factorías.
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Manuche Camilo
1594He took part in the expedition of a slave ship fitted out by Cesare Baroncini.
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Marchionni Bartolomeo
1470–1493Having settled in Lisbon in 1470 as agent of the Cambini bank of Florence, in 1486 he obtained from the Portuguese Crown the contract to import enslaved people from the Rio dos Escravos (Benin coast); in the same year he received from the Spanish sovereigns the licence to trade in enslaved people with Castile and Aragon. It has been calculated that between 1486 and 1493 Marchionni imported at least 1,648 of the 3,589 enslaved people who arrived in Lisbon, that is 45.9%. He then re-exported some of them to Seville (through Giannotto Berardi), to Valencia (through Cesare Barzi) and to Livorno (through Francesco Guidetti).
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Marin Juan Bautista
1540–1550An agent of the Marin-Lomellini company, he resided in Veracruz, where he exchanged enslaved people for sugar. In the years 1545-1547 the company's factors sent five shipments of sugar to Spain, with a profit of 7,986,789 maravedís.
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Marin Tomas
1540–1550In 1540 he formed with Leonardo Lomellini a company for the exchange of enslaved people and sugar between Seville and Mexico. Two years later Charles V granted them a licence to introduce 900 enslaved people into the colonies in exchange for a loan of 6,300 ducats. Many of these people were transported to Veracruz on the Trinidad, the vessel of Nicolas Cattaneo; most were sold to Hernán Cortés for the sugar mills he had built at Tuxtla, near Veracruz, and at Tlaltenango, near Cuernavaca.
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Masnata José Rafael
1765–1772He took part in the expeditions of the ships of the Compañía Gaditana de Negros.
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Maza Juan Maria
1775In Lima he owned a chocolate shop and three enslaved people.
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Maza Mateo
1767–1784His presence in the Río de la Plata dates back at least to 1767, when he figured among the owners of the licensed pulperías of Buenos Aires. In 1783 he sued Felipe Zeballos over the ownership of an enslaved woman. The powers of attorney he signed in 1784 attest to his commercial interests in Chile, to which he sent several lots of yerba mate and other unspecified goods.
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Mazzei Filippo
1773–1788A Tuscan who had grown rich in London in the trade in wine, oil, pasta, silks and cheeses, in 1773 he arrived in Virginia with a dozen Tuscan farmers and the following year founded an agricultural company whose shareholders included George Washington, George Mason and Thomas Jefferson. In presenting the company to the shareholders, he explicitly declared his intention to purchase enslaved labour. In his memoirs, completed in 1813, he admitted only to having “hired 2 good Moors” for some time on his arrival in Virginia. In a letter to the King of Poland of 1788 he recalled having sold all the enslaved people he owned when he left Virginia, and having invested most of the proceeds in government bonds.
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Mazzinghi Niccolò
1467Owner of two enslaved African people, a woman and a girl, who arrived in Livorno from Lisbon in 1467 through Giovanni Guidetti.
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Merlo Antonio
1717–1718 -
Miani Giovanni
1859–1860An explorer active in sub-Saharan Africa, during his journey towards the sources of the Nile in 1859-1860 he purchased two people of the Akka population. The documentation is held at the Museo civico di Storia naturale in Venice; a bust of Miani is at the Accademia dei Concordi in Rovigo.
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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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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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He owned a chocolate shop in which three enslaved people worked.
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Monsagrati Juan Isidoro
1770–1784A native of Lucca, in 1770 he was appointed administrator and later factor in Cádiz of the Real Compañía de La Habana, deeply involved in the Cuban slave economy. He was paid 1% on the sales of goods landed from Havana and 1% on purchases destined for the colonies. The accounts he signed include the item «en negros»: 12,161 pesos and 6 reales in the Estado de los Fondos of 1777 and a further 10,295 pesos among the actual holdings in Havana in the accounts of 1782. He handled the fitting out and insurance of the fleet, including the Santa María de Gracia, a paquebote purchased for the «conducción de negros».
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Montar Francisco
1804–1827He farmed rented land and owned three enslaved people in the Buenos Aires area.
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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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Morandi Caetano
1808–1822Registered as Italian, on 7 March 1822 he departed from Rio de Janeiro for Rio Grande with two enslaved people.