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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Moro Angel
1827He owned one enslaved person alongside his partner, Ángel María Pensay. They both worked in partnership with Francisco Granea.
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Mosti Joseph Antonio
1760–1789 (decade)A Genoese merchant naturalised Spanish, son of Esteban Mosti and with him agent in Cádiz of the Durazzo for maritime loans. In 1773 his house specialised in sea-loan contracts on shipments bound for Havana, Cartagena, Honduras and Buenos Aires. Through him and through Enrile, Giacomo Filippo Durazzo financed the expeditions of the Compañía Gaditana de Negros, Enrile's partner in the slave trade. He also kept Durazzo informed about the progress of the Compañía Gaditana de Negros and acted as intermediary between him and Enrile in the settlement of the balances, when in 1772 participation in the enterprise was ended.
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Mucini Stefano
1464He bought an enslaved African woman from Giovanni Guidetti, who had brought her to Livorno from Lisbon.
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Naon Luis
1843He declared that he owned four enslaved people, 700 silver pesos, and two quintas in San José de Flores, near Buenos Aires. As well as being involved in direct production, he had interests in retail trade; a census from the early nineteenth century lists him as a pulpero. Over time, he maintained and expanded both activities. Upon his death in 1843, his estate was valued at 698,216.5 pesos and included a pulpería, several warehouses, five quintas and other properties.
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Olivari José
1807–1827A pasta maker, married to a woman from Montevideo, he had four children and owned four enslaved people.
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In August 1494 he transported 65 enslaved people from Tenerife from La Gomera to Valencia on behalf of Alfonso Sanchis, treasurer of the king.
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Treasurer to Her Royal Highness, in Madrid he looked after the financial interests of María Luisa of Bourbon-Parma, Princess of Asturias. On 9 July 1784 he collected on her behalf the dividend on 3 and one-third shares of the Real Compañía de La Habana, deeply involved in the Cuban slave economy: 83 and one-third pesos, equal to 1,268 reales de vellón. The securities came from the estate of Elisabeth Farnese.
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Pallavacino (Palavecino) Pedro
1770–1799His will includes an estate of 44,109.7 pesos: four houses in the city centre, a bakery with three grain mills, six enslaved people and 17,000 pesos in cash.
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Palmaro Francesco
1484–1507Resident in Valencia from 1484, he bought 87 enslaved Guanche people from Tenerife and resold them on the peninsula. He also bought from Alonso de Lugo, who had conquered the island, the ingenio (sugar plantation) of Agaete.
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Panesi Fulgencio
1665–1679 (decade)Brother of Giovanni Andrea Panesi, with whom he ran in Cádiz what contemporaries considered the largest trading house in the city in the 1670s. At the beginning of 1665, when a ship of the asiento attempted to smuggle silver into Cádiz, the Panesi brothers paid the price for protecting Domenico Grillo's interests in the cargo. In June 1666 Grillo and Ambrogio Lomellini granted power of attorney to Giovanni Andrea and Fulgencio Panesi and to Giovanni Francesco Garibaldo.
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Panesi Giovanni Andrea
1665–1679 (decade)A merchant of Cádiz, close partner of Domenico Grillo and Ambrogio Lomellini. With his brother Fulgencio he ran what contemporaries considered the largest trading house in the city in the 1670s. At the beginning of 1665, when a ship of the asiento attempted to smuggle silver into Cádiz, the Panesi brothers paid the price for protecting Grillo's interests in the cargo, and Giovanni Andrea ended up in prison.
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Parenti Niccolò
1591A Florentine merchant, in 1591 he organised a voyage from Livorno to Africa to purchase enslaved Black people and transport them to America. The expedition was joined by the eighteen-year-old Francesco Carletti, who embarked in his service on a galleon belonging to the Genoese shipowner Pietro Paolo Vassallo.
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Patron Bartolomé
1751–1800 (part of century)He took part in the Atlantic slave trade together with his brother Benito.
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Patron Benito
1787–1809In 1787 he was commissioned by the sultan to import enslaved Algerians into Morocco. In 1796 he received from the Spanish Crown a licence to import 8,000 enslaved Africans into Peru, Buenos Aires and Chile, in exchange for raw hides and silver. In 1803 he obtained a licence, valid until 1809, to introduce 10,000 enslaved Africans into Cuba.
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Patron Juan Bautista
1789–1803Captain of a ship that transported enslaved people to Buenos Aires on behalf of the merchant Ramón de Palacios, holder of the asiento for the supply of enslaved people to the Río de la Plata as agent of the English trading house Robert Main of Cádiz.
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Patron Lorenzo
1749–1790He owned three large properties and twelve enslaved people.
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Pavarin Luis
1800–1821Born in Turin, in the Kingdom of Sardinia. In his will he declares that he owns six enslaved people (AGN, Perú, Protocolo 30, escribano Ignacio Ayllon Salazar, 1818). Between 1809 and 1818 he is documented in fifteen transactions involving enslaved people.
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Pellegrino Antonio
until 1613A native of Trapani, son of Giacomo and Angela Pellegrino, he lived comfortably in Potosí until his death in 1613. A breeder and trader of carneros de la tierra, he owned 3,300 head, a house with valuable goods, a leased farm, pack animals, work tools and two enslaved Black people, recorded in the testamentary inventory.
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Pensay Angel Maria
1827He owned an enslaved person alongside his partner, Ángel Moro. They both worked in partnership with Francisco Granea.
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Pestalozza Dominique
1839–1854An Italian immigrant in New Orleans, in June 1839 he sold to Elizabeth Rapp, a free woman of colour, a house at no. 35 Enghien Street (later Franklin Avenue) and three enslaved people (notarial acts of Charles Boudousquié, 3:123, 10 June 1839, and 3:124, 12 June 1839, NONA); two of them still appear in the 1854 inventory of Elizabeth Rapp's property. The house became the shared residence of the two, documented in the City Directories of 1842 and 1851. Pestalozza died in 1854.
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Picaluga Claudio
1824–1826Born in Genoa and naturalised Dutch in Curaçao, ship's captain and shipowner. He was the owner, together with Giovanni Zangroni and Francischo (Francesco) Chichiola, of the ship Amable Claudina and its cargo. Having sailed from Bordeaux bound for La Guaira, the ship was intercepted by the Royal Navy and the case was judged by the Mixed Commission of Sierra Leone.
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In 1673 Grillo asked the Council of the Indies to appoint him agent of the asiento in Peru; he probably never crossed the Atlantic. In the 1660s he had worked in Madrid as an agent of Giovanni Battista Lomellini.
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Pinelli Francesco
1480–1493A Genoese merchant, he lived in Valencia from 1470 to 1491. His family had moved to the Iberian Peninsula as early as 1435, chiefly as exporters of wool to Genoa. In 1480, together with the Spanish merchant Diego de Soria, he won the contract as collector and depositary of the papal tithe for the Castilian conquest of the Canaries. There followed a small but steady flow of Pinelli's employees in Seville who sold enslaved people from the Canaries. Between 1489 and 1491 the two, together with Sánchez, lent the sovereign 25 million maravedís for the conquest of the Kingdom of Granada. They also acted as intermediaries in the sale of enslaved people from Málaga and the Canaries. In 1493 Pinelli and other Genoese resident in Andalusia granted Columbus a large loan, in exchange for the subcontract to supply all the goods needed for the second voyage.
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Piuma Campodonico Giovanni Battista
1654–1657A Genoese resident in Cádiz, in 1654 he obtained licences to introduce 150 enslaved people into any port of the Spanish colonies in America. Captain and owner of a ship built in Livorno, the Nuestra Señora de Guapelo y Guadalupe, he probably departed from Genoa and called at Cádiz, where he embarked other Genoese resident in the city. The voyage was financed, among others, by Francesco Maria Imperiale and by Giovanni Battista Montovio, another Genoese resident in Cádiz, who as security for their investments had the latter's brother board the ship. Piuma arrived in Luanda between the end of 1654 and the beginning of 1655. He spent more than a year there trying to obtain permission to trade from the local authorities, and there he died, together with Montovio, in April 1656. His ship, with more than 100 enslaved people in excess of what the Spanish licences allowed, reached Santo Domingo at the end of 1657, although its final destination was Cartagena de Indias.
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Pluma Pasquale
1829–1840Consul general of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany in Cuba, he was accused of having validated the papers of several slave ships. In 1836 he was involved in the murky affair of the Cavallo Marino, a Sardinian brigantine already reported by the British at Bahia for having illegally introduced a large consignment of dried meat intended for the enslaved people of the Brazilian plantations. The Cavallo Marino had arrived in Havana on 1 February 1836 and from there had set out again for the African coasts, from which she returned in January of the following year, but under the Portuguese flag. In 1840, after the Grand Duchy had signed the Anglo-French treaties for the suppression of the slave trade in 1837, the British authorities accused him of having falsified the ship's papers of two vessels engaged in the slave trade: the Bella Fiorentina, a Tuscan schooner seized on 20 May 1839 off present-day Liberia, and the Victoria de Libertade, a Portuguese schooner captured on 26 June 1839 off Sierra Leone. To these two ships, owned by two Spaniards, he had issued false papers of other states. He was dismissed in 1840.