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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Cota Horacio
1633–1639Appointed by Nicola Salvago as agent in Buenos Aires, with the task of supervising the sale of enslaved people.
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D'Andrea Stefano
1668–1672He replaced Francesco Feroni as Grillo's agent in Amsterdam, where he bought enslaved people for the asiento and purchased other goods to be sent to America.
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dalla Man Isach
1763–1768From about 1763 he started a direct trade in glass beads between Venice and Liverpool, entering into relations with the Company of Merchants Trading to Africa and, in 1766-1767, with the slave-trading house William Davenport & Co., of which he was a supplier with shipments from Venice and from the Livorno branch. In 1768 the Venetian authorities excluded him from this trade, accusing him of having delivered beads of poor quality.
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De Luca Miguel
1751–1800 (part of century)He was sent to Buenos Aires to represent the trading company Patron y Cía, active in the slave trade. He married the daughter of Juan Bautista Patron and in 1778 took part in the failed Spanish expedition to colonise two islands in the Gulf of Guinea, Fernando Poo and Annobón, and to establish there a direct trade in enslaved people with the Río de la Plata.
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de Mari François
1702A Genoese nobleman active between Madrid and Paris, in 1702 he was registered as the holder, on behalf of Francesco Grillo, of a share of 150,000 livres in the Compagnie de Guinée et de l'Asiento. The subscription was actually carried out in Paris by the banker Jean Laurent Verzure, who represented him.
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Agent of the Cambini for the Pisa and Livorno branches, he was the owner of an enslaved African woman, Marta, who arrived in Livorno from Lisbon in 1461 through Giovanni Guidetti.
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Feroni Francesco
1660–1670Born in Empoli between 1614 and 1616, he moved to Livorno, where he worked for the merchant and senator Lorenzo Buonaccorsi, who probably sent him to Amsterdam. There he first took part in the grain trade to Italy, and above all to Livorno, where in 1645 he managed to send 1,650 tons of Baltic grain by chartering sixteen ships; further shipments followed. He became an important figure in the Italian community of Amsterdam, and Ferdinando II asked him to represent him before the States General. In the meantime he diversified his business: he entered the trade with Portugal, to which he exported linen and textiles and from which he imported Brazilian sugar and salt, and he was one of the main importers of Spanish wool into the United Provinces. His most profitable trade, however, was the slave trade. He invested part of the profits from the grain trade in the purchase of a ship, the Speranza, which carried textiles and alcoholic drinks to Guinea in exchange for enslaved people; after they had been sold in America, on the return voyage the Speranza carried sugar, cocoa, tobacco and gold ingots to Europe. His commercial successes depended on his good relations with the Dutch West India Company. From 1662 he took part in the Grillo and Lomellini asiento, bringing enslaved people from Guinea to the Caribbean.
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Fornari (Forne) Domingo
1518–1526With his brother Tomas, Augustin de Vivaldo 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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Fornari (Forne) Tomas
1518–1526With his brother Domingo, Augustin de Vivaldo 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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Fortunato Antonio
1835A Neapolitan ship's captain naturalised Spanish in Santiago de Cuba, he was the owner of the schooner La Caridad and its cargo. On 18 September 1835 the ship, on a voyage from Norfolk, in the United States, to Bonny, with New Orleans as its final destination, was intercepted by HMS Triculo, under the command of Richard Warren, off Saint Thomas on the equator, after a call at the island of Príncipe. There were 112 enslaved people on board, 107 of whom were emancipated. The case was judged by the Mixed Commission of Sierra Leone.
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Gallesio Franco
1669–1672Captain of the ships of the Grillo and Lomellini asiento. On 1 September 1671 the ship La Concordia Dorada, commanded by Franco Gallesio, arrived in Caracas with 259 enslaved people; the captain declared that he had left Curaçao on 1 August 1671 and that there had been no deaths during the voyage. In Caracas the enslaved people were handed over to the factor don Juan Antonio Blanco. Two years earlier the same commander had landed enslaved people in the port of Cartagena, after embarking them at Curaçao and Portobelo on the ship S. Nicolò da Tolentino. Between 1669 and 1672 he transported a total of 1,205 enslaved people to the ports of Veracruz and Portobelo.
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Before entering the service of Grillo and Lomellini he had served in the Armada Real and in the naval squadron of the Prince of Montesarchio. He began his career representing Grillo and Lomellini in Cádiz, where he supervised the work of other factors and organised the city's naval resources. In 1667, on the initiative of Ambrogio Lomellini, he left for the Indies as a factor; having reached Cartagena de Indias, he began to sail with the company's ships in the Caribbean. Between 1671 and 1672 he transported 1,563 enslaved people between the ports of Curaçao, Portobelo, Veracruz and Cartagena, always aboard the Santa Cruz.
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Ginori Lorenzo
1675A Florentine merchant and agent active in Lisbon, in 1675 he was commissioned by Cosimo III de' Medici to procure and send to Florence a young Black or Brazilian man skilled in the processing of sugar cane.
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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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Giustiniano Giovanni Battista
1646–1671Agent of the Genoese Domenico Grillo between the 1650s and 1670s, he operated in Cádiz, Seville and Madrid to buy, sell and charter the ships of the asiento and to receive and manage the return cargoes, linking the decisions of the asentistas to port and commercial logistics.
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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 Giovanna
1701Sister of Domenico Grillo, holder with Ambrogio Lomellini of the asiento de negros from 1663 to 1674. In the 1640s she married Carlo Imperiale, her brother's trusted agent in Genoa for the business of the asiento. Her role went beyond mediation between Grillo and Imperiale: together with her brother Marco Antonio she personally handled the sale of American products in Genoa, and Domenico appointed her his representative in the city in the last years of his life.
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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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Imperiale Carlo
c. 1650–1667A member of the Genoese old nobility, in the 1640s he married Giovanna Grillo, sister of Domenico. He was Domenico Grillo's ally in the Castilian wool trade and in the mobilisation of financial resources on a continental scale and, until his death, which occurred around 1667-1668, was his trusted agent in Genoa for the business of the asiento.
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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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Lorenzo Nicolini
1594Clerk of a slave ship fitted out by Cesare Baroncini.
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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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Manuche Camilo
1594He took part in the expedition of a slave ship fitted out by Cesare Baroncini.
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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.