Johann Baptist Rovelasco

Giovanni Battista Rovelasco (dates unknown) was an Italian merchant and speculator , who was mainly active in the overseas trade of spices , sugar, etc. from the Netherlands and Portugal at the end of the 16th century and who gained greater importance.

Life

Little is known about his life. Rovelasco came from a Milanese merchant family who initially worked in Milan, and later in Antwerp and Seville, both for their own account and in commission business for other dealers.

Rovelasco had business relationships with the Portuguese royal family . With Philip I of Portugal (= Philip II of Spain) he concluded a treaty on this. Rovelasco temporarily formed a consortium with the Augsburg patrician, wholesale merchant and Lisbon consul Konrad Rott . Further business relationships existed u. a. with the trading houses Fugger , Giacomo dei Bardi & Co., Giovanni Battista Lita, and Giraldo (Gerhard) Paris. When Rovelasco's trading partner Rott had to file for bankruptcy in 1580, Rovalasco took over his shares. Around 1591, however, he himself ran into financial difficulties at times, but was apparently able to avert bankruptcy.

Rovelasco was involved in the “Asia contract” (contract period 1586–91) and “Europe contract” (contract period 1591–1593) introduced in 1575 The "India Contract" concluded with the Crown, which the Welsers and Fuggers later joined.

Rovelasco had overseas trading offices, e.g. B. in Goa , and employed several servants (including Gabriel Holzschuher, Markus Wolspunter, Felipe Magrera, Horatio Nereti, Filipo Sassetti).

JB Rovelásco was the builder and first resident of a palace in Lisbon in the second half of the 16th century. King Philip II of Spain confiscated this building in 1580 when he also became king of Portugal, and turned it into the Royal Palace of Alcântara ( Palácio Real de Alcântara , also known as Palácio do Calvário / Calvary Palace ). The palace building served as the summer residence of the Portuguese kings John IV and Peter II and their families until 1662 ; Peter II died there in 1706. The palace was destroyed except for a few remains in the great earthquake in Lisbon in 1755 . It was rebuilt in a simplified manner within a few years and served as the residence of various aristocrats of the Braganza house until it was acquired by the industrialist Eduardo Conceição e Silva in 1878 and later bequeathed to Augusto Serra e Costa. The building now houses a municipal video library for the city of Lisbon.

See also

• Trading Company , East India Company , Golden Age (Netherlands) , Portuguese India , Casa da Índia

literature

• Friedrich Dobel: About a pepper trade of the Fugger and Welser 1586-91 . In: Journal of the Historical Association for Swabia and Neuburg (ZHVSN) . Volume 13, 1886, pp. 125-38.
• Reinhard Hildebrandt: The "Georg Fuggerian heirs". Commercial activity and social status 1555–1600 . (Writings on economic and social history, Volume 6), Berlin 1966.
• Hermann Kellenbenz : The pepper market around 1600 and the Hanseatic cities. In: Hansische Geschichtsblätter. Volume 74, 1956, pp. 28-49.
• Hermann Kellenbenz (ed.): Foreign merchants on the Iberian peninsula . (Cologne Colloquia on International Social and Economic History, Volume 1), Cologne 1970
• Mark Häberlein: The Fuggers. History of an Augsburg family (1367–1650) . Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 2006, ISBN 3170184725
• Om Prakash: International Consortiums, Merchant Networks and Portuguese Trade with Asia in the Early Modern Period . Paper presented at Session 37 of the XIV International Economic History Congress, Helsinki, 21. – 25. August 2006 (available as an online document as a PDF file here (PDF; 101 kB)).

Remarks

1. ↑ Spelling of the family name also Rovalesca , German: Johann Baptist Rovelasco , Portuguese: João Baptista Rovelásco
2. ↑ Members of the Rovelasco family were also active in the gold mining business. Archive link ( Memento of the original from December 15, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . 
3. ↑ He is sometimes referred to in the literature as a "pepper dealer", although it should be noted that at that time the term "pepper" generally stood for spices (see also pepper sack ).
4. ↑ The "Europe Contract" was an agreement between the Portuguese-Spanish crown and a consortium of merchants that legally regulated the distribution of spices imported from East India in Europe for a limited period of time. The agreement was intended to restrict imports in order to keep sales prices high.
5. ↑ Website of the Videoteca municipal ( Memento des original from August 10, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 

Web links

• Plan from the 17th century with the Palácio Real de Alcântara drawn in , from: Natália Sofia Cunha, Manuela Raposo Magalhães: "Tapada da Ajuda", website of the Universidade Técnica de Lisboa, Instituto Superior de Agronomia
• Website for Giovanni Battista Rovelasco , histcross - the Semantic Database for Historians