Enquiry: The involvement of Genoan and Venetian merchants in the Atlantic slave trade
Dear list members,
I was wondering if you could indicate any references on the involvement of Genoan and Venetian slave merchants in the Atlantic trade from the 16th century onwards, especially due to the quasi-exclusive Ottoman control of the Black Sea and its markets.
There are only minute hints in William D. Phillips, Slavery from Roman Times to the Early Transatlantic Trade, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1985.
Thanks in advance,
HG Ozkoray (EPHE, Paris)
6 Replies
Post ReplyI'm eager to learn more about this myself since I just gave some course lectures on the early slave trade. Thanks in advance to our subscribers for any recommendations.
Best,
David Prior
Editor, H-Slavery
The Genoese continued to have access to Black Sea ports and slaves until the 1470s. As the supply of Black Sea slaves dried up in late fifteenth-century Italian markets, Italian slave traders turned first to Ottoman and Spanish sources. Captives taken in conflict with the Ottomans were sold as slaves, but Italians also purchased captives taken by the Ottomans in the Balkans (mainly Albanians). Spanish victories in the reconquest of Granada fed the Italian slave markets, and some Jewish and Muslim refugees expelled from Spain in the 1490s ended up as slaves in Italy. Italian traders also imported slaves from the Canary Islands via Spain. It's worth noting too that the overall slave population of Italy declined in the late fifteenth century. Unfortunately I don't have any references for Italian slave traders in the sixteenth century Atlantic, but these are some useful resources on the late fifteenth-century transition period.
Marian Malowist, "Kaffa: The Genoese Colony in the Crimea and the Eastern Question (1453-1475)" in Western Europe, Eastern Europe and World Development, 13th-18th Centuries, edited by Jean Batou and Henryk Szlajfer (Leiden: Brill, 2010): 101-132.
Domenico Gioffré, Il mercato degli schiavi a Genova nel secolo XV (Genoa: Fratelli Bozzi, 1971).
Sally McKee, "Domestic Slavery in Renaissance Italy" Slavery and Abolition 29 (2008), 305-326.
On the involvement of Genoan in the early Atlantic slave trade, see Toby Green, The Rise of the Atlantic Slave Trade in Africa.
I hope it helps.
Gustavo Acioli.
The work of Susan Mosher Stuard includes slavery in medieval Italy. I can recommend her article, "Ancillary Evidence for the Decline of Medieval Slavery." Past and Present, November, no. 149 (1995): 3-28.
There is also Steven Epstein "Speaking of Slavery: Color, Ethnicity and Human Bondage in Medieval Italy" published by Cornell University Press, 2001.
There is evidence of ships flying the Sardinian flag involved in the illegal slave trade of the 19th century. Here's an example from the British State Papers:
https://books.google.com/books?id=zXRbAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA184&lpg=PA184&dq=il…
For the 17th century, a good starting point may be the work of Luca Lo Basso (University of Genoa), especially his recent “Diaspora e armamento marittimo nelle strategie economiche dei genovesi nella seconda metà del XVII secolo: una storia globale,” Studi Storici, no. 1 (2015): 137–55; or the earlier work of Marisa Vega Franco, El tráfico de esclavos con América: asientos de Grillo y Lomélin, 1663-1674 (Sevilla: Escuela de Estudios Hispano Americanos, 1984).