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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Amatori Benozzo
1503–1517He acted as a procurator for various Florentine merchants in Lisbon, including Marchionni, Morelli and Sernigi, as well as for Portuguese merchants. He also maintained ties with other Florentines based on the Iberian Peninsula: in 1506, for instance, he sent an enslaved boy of thirteen from Madeira to Andrea Canigiani, who was living in Valencia.
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Ardizone Joseph
1790–1793Co-partner of the firm Juan Bautista Eustaquio Pedemonte y Compañía, according to the company note entered in the register on 1 July 1790. With his brother Tomás he belonged to the Genoese group that held 52 shares of the Real Compañía de La Habana, deeply involved in the Cuban slave economy. The dividend, 1,300 pesos, was paid out on 13 April 1793 and collected on their behalf by their attorney Felipe Victorio de Ravara.
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Ardizone Tomás
1790–1793Brother of Joseph Ardizone and, with him, co-partner of the firm Juan Bautista Eustaquio Pedemonte y Compañía. The group held 52 shares of the Real Compañía de La Habana, deeply involved in the Cuban slave economy. The total dividend, 1,300 pesos, was collected on 13 April 1793 through the attorney Felipe Victorio de Ravara.
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Ayrolo Pedro Maria
1631THe financed the voyage of the slave ship Santísima Trinidad, owned by Nicola Salvago, together with Benito Vitale. The ship sailed from Spain to Luanda, and then transported enslaved people to Buenos Aires.
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Bacarreza Antonio
1763–1790Born in Genoa, son of Josef Bacarreza and Angela Conforte (AAL, Licencias matrimoniales, 1773). Between 1771 and 1787 he is documented in six transactions involving enslaved people.
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Balbi Antonio
1632–1635A Genoese, in 1632 he was an attorney at court and represented Giacomo Saluzzi in collecting the sums owed for sales and shipments of enslaved Black people in Seville and in the Indies.
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Balocco Cesare
1666–1668Agent of the Grillo and Lomellini asiento. In 1666 he was sent to London to conclude an agreement with the Company of Royal Adventurers for the shipment of enslaved Africans to the Caribbean.
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Banfi y Montoto María Catalina
1781–1784Only daughter and universal heir of José Banfi y Parrilla, a banker of Genoese origin, knight of the Order of Calatrava and minister of the Supreme Council of the Indies. By an executory decree of the Council of Castile of 2 March 1781 she obtained full and independent administration of her dowry and of her father's estate. On 24 July 1784 she appeared in person at the offices of the Real Compañía de La Habana, deeply involved in the Cuban slave economy, and collected the dividends on her 14 shares, what remained of the 16 in her father's inventory.
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Banfi y Parrilla José
until 1781A banker of Genoese origin, knight of the Order of Calatrava and minister of the Supreme Council of the Indies, he died before 1784. His inventory included 16 shares of the Real Compañía de La Habana, deeply involved in the Cuban slave economy, with a nominal value of 500 scudi of 128 quarti each, later reduced to 14 and registered in the name of his daughter María Catalina.
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Barbaria Giorgio
1776–1800 (part of century)In the last quarter of the eighteenth century he was the most important producer and merchant of glass beads in Venice and a member of the guild of the Perleri. His business combined large-scale production and trade, with shipments to the western (Ponente) ports. His beads were destined above all for large merchant houses involved in the Atlantic slave trade, which used them as goods of exchange on the African coasts. Decisive for his success was his relationship with the firm Juvalta, Frisoni & Giese of Lisbon, active in Atlantic trade (colonial goods, ivory, enslaved people) and with partners in Luanda. His case shows the link between Venetian manufacturing and the circuits of the slave trade.
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Barbaria Giovanni
c. 1781–1800Brother of Giorgio Barbaria and like him a manufacturer and merchant, in the last decades of the eighteenth century he shipped glass beads to the western (Ponente) ports.
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Barberi Lucas
1788–1821Lucas Barberi y Blanco, resident in Lima, was born in Arenzano, «five leagues from Genoa». In his will he declares that he owns three enslaved people (AGN, Protocolos notariales, no. 638, escribano Jose Maria de la Rosa, 1821). Between 1790 and 1819 he is documented in ten transactions involving enslaved people.
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Barzi Cesare
1486–1519Marchionni's agent in Valencia. Between 1489 and 1497, he imported an average of 268.5 enslaved Black people into Valencia each year, totalling 2,148. In the 1490s, he was the city's leading slave trader. He was also a marine insurer, typically insuring cargoes of sugar bound for the Mediterranean (Pisa) or Flanders, either on his own behalf or on behalf of other operators, primarily Italians or conversos. In 1510, he founded a trading company in Lyon with several other partners, including Venturi, Carnesecchi and Boninsegni.
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Bieluto Alberto
1660–1679 (decade)A Genoese merchant active in Cádiz, in the 1660s and 1670s he was a partner in the expeditions of the asiento ships to the Caribbean. The same network included Giovanni Battista Porrata, Giovanni Rolato, the brothers Giovanni Battista and Pantaleo Grasso, Pietro Del Forno and Giovanni Battista Priaruggia.
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Bonafante Camilo
c. 1591–1610A Genoese, resident first in Callao and then in Arica, he procured enslaved people for the merchant Jacom Fragoso, originally from Recco and active between Lima, Arequipa and Puno, who sold them alongside other goods.
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Bonini Stefano
c. 1591–1610A minor investor in the Spanish asiento in the 1590s. In the early seventeenth century he was residing in Cartagena.
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Infante and Duke of Parma, beneficial owner of 3 and one-third shares of the Real Compañía de La Habana, deeply involved in the Cuban slave economy, which came from the estate of Elisabeth Farnese. The dividend, 83 and one-third pesos, was collected on 30 July 1784 by the trustee Juan Bautista Rossi. The coupons document the transfer of Cuban income to the courts of the Italian peninsula.
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Princess of Asturias and wife of the future Charles IV of Spain, through the Farnese inheritance she was the beneficial owner of 3 and one-third shares of the Real Compañía de La Habana, deeply involved in the Cuban slave economy.
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Bosco Alessandro
1662Agent of Grillo and Lomellini in Amsterdam. Thanks to his mediation, on 15 September 1662 Grillo and Lomellini signed with the Dutch West India Company (WIC) a contract providing for the annual delivery of 1,200 enslaved people to Curaçao.
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Burlamacchi Benjamin
1665–1691A merchant and investor from Lucca, he settled in Amsterdam in 1665. Through his own trading house and his relations with the Genoese correspondents in Cádiz (Maffei, Ratto and Marien) and with the Tensini in Amsterdam, he financed operations connected with the slave trade of the asiento de negros and also corresponded with agents in Curaçao, such as Balthasar Beck. In 1691 he left for Bengal in the service of the VOC, the Dutch East India Company, and died there in 1697.
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Cadorna Esteban
1790–1818Between 1790 and 1818 he is documented in Lima in at least twenty-one transactions involving enslaved people, several times as buyer and as seller. In 1804 he also formed a company with two other partners, contributing 12,000 pesos to a capital of 36,000, intended for the purchase of 150 enslaved people in Buenos Aires and their resale in Lima.
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Campana Bastiano
1547Agent and factor of Duke Cosimo I de' Medici. In 1547 he was sent to Portugal to purchase for the duke goods, animals and enslaved people destined for the court of Florence. His diary contains the accounts of those purchases.
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Camusso Carlos
1796–1802Agent of Benito Patron's company in Montevideo.
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Camusso José
1789–1803Born in Cádiz, he took part in the slave trade together with his brother Carlos, in collaboration with Benito Patron's company.
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Cavaleri Pietro Mattia
1668–1674Agent of the Grillo and Lomellini asiento in the islands of Cuba, Puerto Rico and Santo Domingo. He had previously operated in Madrid as a private lender and as a merchant through a company based in Genoa, together with his partner Bartolomeo Capa. He began working for Grillo in 1664, if not earlier, supervising the delivery of almost 125,000 pesos from Cartagena to Italy, part of a loan that Grillo had granted to the Crown.