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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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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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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Participation 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, which appointed his natural son Francesco ambassador to England and France and, in 1588, Governor General (de iure) of Brazil.
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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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Grasso Giovanni Battista
1660–1679 (decade)A Genoese merchant active in Cádiz, in the 1660s and 1670s he took part in the expeditions of the asiento ships to the Caribbean together with his brother Pantaleo Grasso and the partners Giovanni Battista Porrata, Giovanni Rolato, Pietro Del Forno, Giovanni Battista Priaruggia and Alberto Bieluto, who formed a single Cádiz network.
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Grasso Pantaleo
1660–1679 (decade)A Genoese merchant active in Cádiz, in the 1660s and 1670s he took part in the expeditions of the asiento ships to the Caribbean together with his brother Giovanni Battista Grasso and the partners Giovanni Battista Porrata, Giovanni Rolato, Pietro Del Forno, Giovanni Battista Priaruggia and Alberto Bieluto.
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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 Francisco
1701Heir to the business house of his uncle Domenico Grillo, who with Ambrogio Lomellini had managed the asiento de negros, and Marquis of Villafranca. He was the only Spanish subject to enter the Real Compañía de Guinea y del Asiento, the French company which in 1701 obtained the monopoly of the slave trade to Spanish America. He took part in it through the Genevan banker Verzure, purchasing shares of 3,000 livres which entitled him only to the profits, without access to management or to the shareholders' meetings.
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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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Imperiale Francesco Maria
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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A Cádiz firm described as a cartel of Ligurian investors, holder of 52 shares of the Real Compañía de La Habana, deeply involved in the Cuban slave economy. The company note of 1 July 1790 lists the brothers Joseph and Tomás Ardizone as co-partners.
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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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Lercaro Stefano
1576–1587In 1576, he and the Florentine Giacomo Bardi invested in the Mina Company, which was established by the Casa da Índia to administer the slave trade and the trade of raw materials in Guinea. This was one of the most profitable enterprises in Portugal. At the same time, he undertook diplomatic activities between the Republic of Genoa and Portugal, sometimes in direct contact with the king. In 1587, he and his partner Giulio Spinola obtained authorisation to open an exchange bank in Lisbon. This gave them a monopoly, as the agreement excluded the opening of similar banks by others for ten years.
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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.
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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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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.