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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Ghinetti Piero
1470In 1470 he sent an enslaved African woman to Livorno to be sold to the Cambini.
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Giraldi Niccolò
c. 1550Participation in the slave trade and in other business in Atlantic exchanges enabled his family to enter the Portuguese nobility in the mid-sixteenth century, to purchase the captaincy of Ilhéus and to win the favour of the Lisbon court.
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Giustiniani Esteban
1520–1535An agent of the company of Vivaldi, Forne and Grimaldi, he settled in Santo Domingo, where together with Pedro Vazquez de Mella he purchased a sugar plantation that became very productive. At the end of the 1520s he founded his own company, Giustiniani & Co., which traded in enslaved people and land. His partners were probably Melchor Centurione and Valian de Forne, already his partners in other operations.
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Giustiniani Giustiniano
1663–1704From 1663 to 1674 Giustiniani served on the Isthmus of Panama as an agent of the Grillo and Lomellini asiento. His duties included the logistics of the slave trade: he received the asiento ships arriving at Portobelo, assessed the state of health of the captives, saw to their sustenance, sold them in the local markets and organised their transfer across the isthmus to Panama. He was thus involved in twenty-five asiento voyages that reached the isthmus, and was responsible for the lives of almost 11,500 captives. After the end of the Grillo and Lomellini asiento he married a noblewoman from Navarre and returned with her to Spain, to Madrid. He nevertheless continued to be involved in the slave trade through his close collaboration with his brother-in-law Antonio Echeverz, who at the beginning of the eighteenth century had become one of the most powerful men on the isthmus, a great owner of land and of enslaved people. In the first months of 1692 the Venetian Nicolás Porcio, a key figure in the asiento since the late 1670s, appointed Giustiniani chief administrator of the asiento in the event of his death, which occurred two years later. With the proceeds of the slave trade Giustiniani purchased government offices and titles from the Crown: honorary offices in the Council of Italy and the Council of War (1684), the office of provincial alcalde of Panama and Portobelo (1685), the habit of knight of the Order of Calatrava (1692), and the titles of Marquis of Peñaflorida and Viscount of Casares (1704).
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Grillo Agostino
1663–1674A distant relative of Domenico Grillo, he took part in the asiento as an agent, first in Portobelo (1663-1670) and then in Lima (1671-1673).
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Grillo Bartolome
1800–1820Born in San Maurizio di Genova, the legitimate son of Francisco Grillo and Francisca Calandra (AGN, Protocolo 84, 1808). Between 1805 and 1807 he is documented in three transactions involving enslaved people.
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Grillo Bartolomeo
1601–1700 (century)A Genoese merchant active in Cádiz, he was a partner of Francesco Ferrari, Domenico Recagno and Ambrogio Lomellini in organising the transport of enslaved people to American ports. Despite the surname, there is no firm evidence of a family relationship with Domenico Grillo.
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Grillo Domenico
1663–1674Holder, together with Ambrogio Lomellini, of the asiento granted by the Crown from 1663 to 1674. The two bought enslaved people from the English and the Dutch, in Jamaica, Barbados and Curaçao, in exchange for silver and other colonial products, and resold them in the ports of Spanish America. During this period they officially sold about 22,000 of them, to which must be added those introduced through illegal trade, roughly twice as many.
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Grimaldi (Grimaldo) Francisco
1514–1518Together with Gaspar Centurione, he bought a licence to send a small group of enslaved people to Hispaniola.
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Guerci Bartolome
1783–1815Between 1783 and 1809 he is documented in Lima in at least eighteen transactions involving enslaved people, as buyer, seller and intermediary. The sources attest purchases and subsequent resales, and the sale on behalf of third parties of an enslaved bozal person, that is, born in Africa, who had been sent to him on consignment from Guayaquil. Other transactions concern enslaved people from Buenos Aires and Montevideo.
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Guidetti Giovanni
1461–1467Agent of the Cambini in Lisbon, in 1461 he sent three enslaved African women and a range of goods, including hides from Ireland and silks from the Iberian Peninsula, to Livorno on the ship Santa Maria di Nazarette. The three women — Isabell, Barbera and Marta — had been baptised and were destined for domestic work. Isabell was purchased by the Cambini, Barbera by Giovanni degli Albizzi (a member of an important Florentine noble family), and Marta by Ridolfo di Ser Gabriello (a Florentine merchant who lived in Pisa and was an agent of the Cambini in Pisa and Livorno). At the end of 1464, Guidetti sent three more women aboard the caravel Santo Spirito, one of whom was purchased by Piero and Giuliano di Francesco Salviati. The following year, another woman was sent aboard the Dispensiero and purchased by Stefano Mucini, a member of a Florentine family with significant trade interests between Tuscany and Portugal. In 1467, Guidetti sent three more African women aboard the Santa Maria Nunziata. One was sold to Benedetto di Ser Francesco Guardi and the other two to Niccolò di Paradiso Mazzinghi, a Florentine merchant who lived in Pisa. In 1474, Guidetti sent two more large consignments of enslaved people to Livorno: 26 people (25 women and one man) on the Santa Maria Nunziata, and nine women on the Santa Maria Grazia. Not all of them appear to have originated in Africa, as some were described as having light skin. The 25 women were sold in Pisa and Naples, while the man and the other nine women were delivered to Lena Vettori, Guidetti's wife.
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La Chiapella Geronimo
1769–1810Born in 1742, La Chiapella first engaged in the trade in goods and enslaved people between the French and Spanish islands of the Caribbean, including Saint-Domingue, Martinique and Cuba, before settling in New Orleans. His first documented sale in the city dates from 18 September 1769, when Manuel Roch bought from him for 200 dollars a three-year-old Creole boy named Joseph. Between 1783 and 1793 he appeared in numerous transactions and sold hundreds of enslaved people. In 1788 alone he appeared in 68 transactions, more than any other merchant in the city; among the twenty-five merchant-traders of New Orleans who dealt in enslaved people, he was the fifth most active. From 1790 he invested the wealth he had accumulated in real estate: he purchased several plantations in the vicinity of New Orleans, in Florida and in Mississippi, and became the owner of hundreds of enslaved people.
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In 1670 Grillo and Lomellini appointed him agent in Puerto Rico, together with two other agents, one Andalusian and one Creole. He had previously resided in Seville.
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Lomellini Ambrogio (o Ambrosio)
1663–1674Holder, together with Domenico Grillo, of the asiento granted by the Spanish Crown between 1663 and 1674. It is estimated that in the eleven years of the asiento the two introduced about 22,000 enslaved people into the Spanish colonies, plus many others, almost twice as many, introduced illegally. He died in 1667, on the return voyage from Cartagena de Indias, where he had gone to renegotiate the asiento; Grillo achieved that aim in 1668, a few months after his death.
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Lomellini Franco
1668On the death of Ambrogio Lomellini he purchased one sixth of the Grillo and Lomellini company and was appointed supervisor of the asiento's agents in the Caribbean. He had no previous experience in the slave trade or in Spanish America, but traded in Madrid in sugar produced in Málaga.
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Lomellini Leonardo
1540–1550In 1540 he arrived in the Canaries and imported enslaved people from the African coasts for the Americas. He formed with Tomas de Marin 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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Lomellini Raffaele
1478–1498He was the son of Giovanni Lomellini, a Genoese resident of Seville who traded Madeira sugar. In 1478, he was in La Gomera, where he participated in the slave trade from the Canary Islands.
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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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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 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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Merlo Antonio
1717–1718 -
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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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 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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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.