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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Siccoli Pietro
1839Captain of the Bela Fiorentina (La Bella Fiorentina), a ship built in Genoa that sailed under the Portuguese or Brazilian flag. Having set out from Havana, she was captured by the British in 1839 near the coast of Sierra Leone.
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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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He was among those who in 1634 obtained licences to sail from the ports of Seville, Sanlúcar de Barrameda, Cádiz, Lisbon and the Canaries, load enslaved people at Cape Verde, in Guinea, at São Tomé, in Angola and at Mina, and transport them to New Spain and Tierra Firme (Colombia and Venezuela).
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Spinola Ambrosio
1594He held licences for the trade in enslaved people on the ship San Miguel.
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Spinola Stefano
1526A Genoese merchant, in 1526 he concluded with the King of Portugal a contract for 600 peças of enslaved people, in which the Cremonese merchant Giovan Francesco Affaitati was also involved. He is a different person from his namesake Stefano Spinola, who in 1610 sold an enslaved person in Genoa to the Centurione enterprises.
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Spinola Tolomeo
from 1547With other Genoese (Pinelli, Negron, Fiesco) he formed a company with a capital of 12,000 ducats, one third of which was his. The company sold enslaved people in New Spain in exchange for sugar. The link between the slave trade and sugar became ever closer, and sugar became the second largest export after silver. The partners also invested in sugar production in Hispaniola and Puerto Rico in the first quarter of the sixteenth century.
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Suparo Santiago
1770–1804After emigrating to Buenos Aires in 1770, he got married and had nine children. He owned a farmhouse (quinta) and nine enslaved people.
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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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Usodimare Antoniotto
1455–1456A Genoese navigator in the service of the Portuguese, in 1455 he came into possession of 31 enslaved people from the Gambia. In 1456 he took part with Alvise Ca da Mosto in the expedition that reached the Casamance, the Bijagós Islands and Cape Verde.
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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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Vigne Francis
1819–1820A Genoese ship's captain, his name appears in the records of the Mixed Commission at Freetown, Sierra Leone, in connection with the interception of the ship Marie by the Royal Navy.
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Visich Giuseppe
1780Also cited as Joseph Visich or Giuseppe Visick, a sea captain, he commanded the imperial ship San Francisco de Paula. In 1780, while sailing from Bordeaux to Fiume (Rijeka) with a cargo of powdered sugar and refining earth, the ship was captured by the British privateer Trimmer. The inventories record on board, among the goods, two enslaved people as well. Visich was detained and questioned as to who their owner was; the two people were confiscated as a prize of war.
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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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Vivaldo Adamo
1518A Genoese merchant, in the 1510s and 1520s he purchased from Laurent de Gouvenot, together with Tomas de Fornari, the licences to introduce enslaved people into the Spanish Indies and exploited them through a company.
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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.