‘Into speyne to selle for slavys’: English, Spanish, and Genoese Merchant Networks and their Involvement with the ‘Cost of Gwynea’ Trade before 1550

Abstract

In 1541, Roger Barlow, an English merchant who had traded with Spain's Atlantic settlements from Seville in the 1520s, presented Henry VIII with a cosmography containing his personal account of the Rio de la Plata, inserted into an English translation of the 1519 edition of the Suma de Geographia by Martin Fernandez de Enciso. Despite the fact that both men had been involved in the buying and selling of West African slaves, Barlow translated Enciso's short description of the slave markets in Guinea without comment. This chapter explores how the trading network of English, Spanish and Genoese merchants Barlow belonged to had traded in slaves and associated products, such as pearls and sugar, since the 1480s. In doing so, they were instrumental in linking the ‘Guinea of Cape Verde’ to the wider Atlantic world.

Materializing the Global: Textiles, Color, and Race in a Genoese Portrait by Anthony van Dyck

“…Genoese merchants regularly engaged in business activities with Portuguese, English, and Jewish traders. See Pike, 1962 and1966;Dalton. cochineal, logwood, and indigo-rivaled, if not outstripped, their Old World counterparts. Skins, pelts, shells, and feathers also reached European shores, and were welcomed with wonder and delight.…”