Insuring Slavery, Extending Credit: Genoese Financial Networks and the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1569-1575

This article reconstructs a Genoese financial infrastructure of Atlantic slavery by tracing two rare slave-insurance policies of 1569 and 1571 into the commercial relationships that preceded and outlived them. Using a connected microhistorical approach, it combines the Libro di carico della gabella sulle assicurazioni marittime (Register of Charges for the Maritime Insurance Tax), preserved in the San Giorgio fund of the Archivio di Stato di Genova, with insurance records from the Consulado de Burgos, bills of exchange in the Archivo Simon Ruiz, judicial files from Valladolid and Simancas, and records from the Archivo General de Indias. The dossier connects Centurione, Spinola, and Pinello merchants across Genoa, Seville, Castilian fairs, Cabo Verde, and New Spain. It shows that the policies mattered not only because they insured enslaved people, but because they belonged to ordinary systems of credit, consignment, debt recovery, and jurisdiction through which financial obligations could survive an Atlantic voyage.