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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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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Spinola Ambrosio
1594He held licences for the trade in enslaved people on the ship San Miguel.
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Tedeschi Giuseppe
c. 1670–1700A missionary, he sent enslaved people from Goa to Cosimo III.
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Terri Antonio
1755–1767Born in the Marquisate of Finale, in the Republic of Genoa, the legitimate son of Antonio Terri and Angela Adriano. In Cádiz he married Antonia Álvarez Campana Cardona, whose mother was a native of Finale (AGN, Protocolo 20, 1780). Between 1755 and 1767 he is documented in three transactions involving enslaved people.
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Vanni Bartolomeo
1460–1469 (decade)An agent of the Cambini bank, from the early 1460s he took part in the importation of enslaved Black people from Lisbon to Florence. He operated in the same network as Giovanni Guidetti, who in 1461 brought to Tuscany Isabell, Barbera and Marta, destined respectively for the Cambini family, Giovanni degli Albizzi and Ridolfo di ser Gabriello.
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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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Vespucci Amerigo
1499He transported 232 enslaved Indigenous people from the Bahamas and sold the 200 survivors in Cádiz.
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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.
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Zangroni Giovanni
1826Owner, together with Claudio Picaluga 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.