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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Carletti Francesco (e Antonio)
1594–1595Francesco Carletti and his father Antonio bought 80 licences, at 25 ducats each, to transport enslaved people from Cape Verde to the Indies. They bought 75 people, two thirds of them male, paying 100 scudi each in order to resell them at 170. Having left San Jacopo on 19 April 1595, after thirty days they arrived at Cartagena. Many of the people transported died during the voyage, and others arrived ill; Francesco states that he lost 40% of the capital invested. From Cartagena, where in February the goods they had sent from Spain for Peru had also arrived, they went on to Panama and from there embarked for Lima. In Lima they sold, for a total of 1,600 scudi, four of the enslaved people, who had meanwhile recovered and had travelled with them. They then sold the rest of the merchandise in exchange for some silver bars of 70-80 pounds each.
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Carmelino Angel
1800–1830In the Lima census of 1813 three enslaved people are recorded in his household. In his will of 1816, however, he declared that he owned five: José, Juan, Dolores, Marco and Félix.
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Carmelino Angelo
from 1813An Italian immigrant attested in Lima from at least 1813, the year of his marriage, he became the owner of an inn and owned five enslaved people.
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Carnilia Francisco
1773Originally from Genoa and resident in Buenos Aires, the legitimate son of don Juan Bautista Carnilia and doña María Antonia Porta. In his will of 1773 he directed that on his death Pedro, an African man he held in slavery, be freed, acknowledging his good services and loyalty.
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Carrega Esteban
1520–1540In 1526 he brought a cargo of 100 enslaved people from the African coasts to Santo Domingo. He then made further voyages between Seville, the African coasts and Hispaniola under Castro's licence.
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An employee of the Cambini, together with his brother Chiaro he purchased an enslaved African woman, Luza, who had come to Livorno from Lisbon through Bartolomeo Marchionni.
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Castelletto Agostino
1656In June 1655 one of his ships, the Nostra Signora della Guadalupe, commanded by Giovanni Battista Piuma, was seized after arriving at Luanda: Portugal had rebelled against Spain and the Genoese, allies of Spain, were treated there as enemies. In December 1655 Castelletto asked the Overseas Council in Lisbon for free access to the port of Luanda; in a consulta of 9 January 1656 the Council approved the transit of the Genoese ships belonging to him and to Francesco Maria Rosso.
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Castellon Jacome
1510–1535Son of a Genoese merchant resident in Toledo, he settled in 1510 in Santo Domingo, where he was the agent of the Genoese merchants of Seville for the trade in enslaved people and sugar. He also invested in land, in stock-raising and in the city's property market, and purchased an ingenio (sugar-cane plantation) on the island. In 1522 he was sent by the Spanish authorities to put down an indigenous rebellion at Cumaná, and subsequently obtained the title of superintendent of the fortress. This post allowed him to engage in the trade in enslaved indigenous people on the Venezuelan coast, employed above all in pearl fishing. He remained at Cumaná for seven years, until 1528, then returned to Santo Domingo, where he was the agent of Pedro Benito de Basiñana and of Geronimo Grimaldi, who were involved in the slave trade with the island. In 1534-1535 he was considered one of the most important entrepreneurs of the New World.
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Castellon Tomas
1509–1527Brother of Jacome Castellon, after serving as agent of the Genoese community of Seville in Hispaniola he acquired a property in Puerto Rico, where he established the first sugar-cane plantation.
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Cattaneo Alessandro
1506–1550Son of Cesare Cattaneo, in 1506 he rented a house in Seville; around 1508 he was trading with Santo Domingo and in the 1510s with the Cape Verde archipelago. In 1512 he formed with Giuliano Calvi and Stefano Centurione a company that entrusted him with textiles, wine and ship's biscuit worth 1,000 gold ducats, to be taken to the island of Santiago, in Cape Verde, in exchange for enslaved people. In 1513 he sold some enslaved people brought from the African coast to another Genoese merchant of Seville, Giovan Francesco Grimaldi, who transported them to the New World. In 1550 he signed an asiento with the Crown, managed in Seville by two of his brothers, Nicolas and Visconte, who owned the ship Trinidad. Another relative, Jeronimo, handled the trade between Seville and Mexico and in turn had an agent, Juan, in Mexico City.
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Cattaneo Nicoluso (Nicolas)
1514–1550In June 1514 Francisco Garay, a member of the municipal council of Santo Domingo, authorised Nicoluso Cattaneo to procure for him twelve enslaved Christian people for Hispaniola. In 1536 he received permission to introduce 76 enslaved people into the Americas in exchange for the 226,400 maravedís that the government had confiscated from him that same year as a forced loan. In the 1540s and 1550s, with the vessel Trinidad and in partnership with Vivaldo, he made several voyages between the African coasts and Veracruz.
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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.
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Cei Galeotto
1532–1560Born in Florence in 1513, like Soderini he was forced to leave the city because of his father's republican ideas. His father was executed and the family's large patrimony was confiscated. In 1532, he moved to Seville. In 1539, he sailed for Santo Domingo aboard the Concepción. After a few weeks, the ship put in at Cape Verde to purchase enslaved people to be transported to the Antilles. A total of 250 people were embarked (Cei bought 40 of them) at a price of 36 ducats each. During the voyage, 12 people died of smallpox. Prior to departure, he entered into a two-year accomandita with Luigi Ricasoli, a fellow Florentine based in Seville. Under this agreement, Ricasoli would supply Cei with goods to sell. Cei began selling his merchandise, but Ricasoli's death interrupted the shipments from Spain. After concluding his business with the Ricasoli heirs, he embarked on a caravel bound for Venezuela and Cabo de la Vela. In the nearby pearl-fishing area, he purchased three indigenous people to work as fishermen, who earned him 400 ducats in about ten months. In September 1542, he returned to Santo Domingo, where he resumed living with Giovanni Soderini and Mauro Fantoni. Over the next few years, he participated in various colonisation expeditions in Venezuela and the New Kingdom of Granada, reaching as far as Bogotá. In 1553, he returned to Seville, where he resumed and expanded his commercial activities to include Italy, Germany, and France. He returned to Florence in 1560, where he held several public offices, and he died there in 1579.
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Centurione (Centurion) Gaspar
1514–1526Together with Francisco Grimaldi (or Grimaldo), he bought a licence to send a small group of enslaved people to Hispaniola. He also undertook to ship the enslaved people for the Genoese company (Forne, Vivaldo and Vazquez) that had purchased Gouvenot's licence.
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Centurione (Centurion) Melchor
1518–1526Brother of Gaspar, he was the agent of Forne, Vivaldo and Vazquez in Santo Domingo, where he exchanged enslaved people for sugar.
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Centurione Giorgio
1737–1745A Genoese nobleman, son of Lorenzo Centurione. His will, drawn up in Genoa in 1737, provided for the division of assets and bequests consisting of shares of the South Sea Company, the company holding the asiento for the slave trade. Those assets were encumbered with legacies in favour of family members, fellow confraternity members and Genoese charitable institutions.
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Centurione Ottavio
1617A Genoese financier active in Madrid, in 1617 he received from the Crown 3,750,000 maravedís secured on the renta de los esclavos negros, the fiscal revenue generated by the slave trade, and later resold the credit in lots.
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Cernezzi Pietro
1666A merchant originally from Como and partner in Venice of Aurelio Rezzonico, in 1666 he took part in a loan of 9,180 ducats intended to pay, on the Amsterdam market, for a cargo of enslaved people for the asiento. The transfer of the funds also passed through the house of Giovanni Battista Benzi and Giovanni Gabriele Voet.
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Owner, together with Claudio Picaluga and Giovanni Zangroni, 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.
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Cibo Carlo
1820–1860A Genoese, grocer in Regla, near Havana. His shop was a point of reference for the slave traders arriving on the island. He hosted in Cuba the slave trader of Franco-Italian origin Theodore Canot. He was also co-owner of the ship Areostatico, employed in the illegal slave trade, which in 1826 transported 108 enslaved people to Havana.
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Cipriani Cipriano
1770–1834He belonged to a family of Tuscan origin with commercial interests between Livorno and Corsica, in particular at Centuri. Brother of Matteo Cipriani and uncle of Leonetto Cipriani, he owned the Moka plantation in Trinidad, in the British West Indies, and was also linked to the Ortinola property, in the Maracas region. His name appears, together with that of his wife Amelia Caracciolo Cipriani, among the slave owners who received the compensation granted by Great Britain after the abolition of slavery in the British colonies, which came into force in 1834. For the Moka plantation (Trinidad compensation no. 997) he received £6,832 10s 5d; he also received the compensation awards Trinidad no. 1017 (£270 12s 0d) and Trinidad no. 1413 (£1,799 14s 7d).
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Cipriani Leonetto
1812–1888Born in Centuri, Corsica, on 16 October 1812, to Matteo Cipriani and Caterina Caracciolo, he died on 10 May 1888. Having moved with his family to Livorno in 1822, in 1831 he was sent by his father to Trinidad to look after the family's considerable commercial and financial interests in the Antilles. He made two stays in America (1831-1834 and 1835-1836), during which he operated in Trinidad, St. Thomas and Puerto Rico. In 1835, on news of the emancipation of enslaved people in the British colonies, he was sent to London and then to Trinidad to protect the family's mortgage claims on slave estates; the Cipriani family is among the beneficiaries of the compensation provided for by British law. On the death of his father, in 1837, he accepted the guardianship of his younger siblings and inherited agricultural estates in Tuscany and Corsica, in addition to the interests in the Antilles. An entrepreneur, soldier and politician, he took part in the wars of independence, was governor of Livorno, consul of the Kingdom of Sardinia in California (1852-1855), Governor General of the Romagna (1859) and senator of the Kingdom of Italy.
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Cipriani Matteo
1770–1837Born in Centuri, Corsica, on 30 November 1770, he settled in Livorno and died in Pisa on 16 April 1837. A Corsican-Livornese merchant, during the Napoleonic Wars he accumulated a large fortune in colonial trade in the Antilles together with his brother Domenico, with interests in St. Thomas, Puerto Rico and Trinidad. His relatives Sebastiano and Cipriano Cipriani owned plantations and enslaved people in Trinidad. He had lent large sums on slave estates in Trinidad; after the British emancipation of 1834 he obtained, through his son Leonetto, that the mortgages be extended to the enslaved people as well. The Cipriani family indeed figures among the beneficiaries of the compensation granted after abolition. Among his correspondents was the Venezuelan general Mariño, owner of the largest hacienda in the province of Caracas.
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Cipriani Sebastiano
until 1834Of the Tuscan Cipriani family, brother of Cipriano, Matteo and Domenico, all with interests in the British colony of Trinidad. His name figures among the beneficiaries of the compensation granted by Great Britain to slave owners after the abolition of slavery in the British colonies, in 1834: it appears in connection with the compensation awards Trinidad no. 434 (Port of Spain) and Trinidad no. 1334 & B (perhaps Valsayn). Award no. 434, registered on 28 March 1836, concerned 19 enslaved people and provided for £900 12s 1d. The colony's registers also show that in 1834 he registered 20 enslaved people in his own name and that of his wife.
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Colombo Cristoforo
1493He sent to Giannotto Berardi, partner of Bartolomeo Marchionni in Seville, the first known shipment of enslaved people from the Americas to Europe: Indigenous Taíno people.