French lawmakers voted Thursday to formally repeal slavery-era laws that defined enslaved people’s legal status as “chattel” and justified abuse and corporal punishment.
While slavery was outlawed in France more than 170 years ago, making Thursday’s resolution a symbolic step to formally repeal an old royal order that had not been overturned, the vote comes as the country grapples with its colonial legacy.
France was the third largest European trader of enslaved people during the colonial era, after Britain and Portugal. Experts estimate that ships departing from French ports smuggled more than one million men, women and children from Africa, often to death, in the Caribbean colonies.
What is the purpose of the bill?
All 254 MPs present in the lower house voted in favor. The bill still has to be formally debated in the upper house, the Senate, which is seen as a formality.
If the bill is adopted, the government will be required to report to Parliament on the consequences of colonial law and the lasting effects of slavery on racism and discrimination in French society, as well as on how the history of slavery is taught in schools.
The Repeal Laws – a series of royal decrees issued between 1685 and 1724 known as the “Code Noir” or Black Codes – were never formally repealed when France abolished slavery for the second and final time in 1848, or when it recognized slavery and the slave trade as crimes against humanity in 2001.
“This proposal does not claim to erase history, nor to heal the wounds of history alone,” Max Mathiasin, a centrist member of parliament from the French Caribbean island of Guadeloupe, said when introducing the legislation. “It aims to take a new step forward by formally repudiating the Code Noir and all the texts originating from it, carrying out a powerful act of remembrance, justice and recognition.”
Speaking in parliament on Thursday, Greens lawmaker Stevie Gustave – whose father was born in the French former colony Martinique – said the vote was personal.
“I’m thinking about my great-aunt Mama Babele,” he said, barely holding back tears. “She was the granddaughter of Ambrose Zerambe, who was born in Africa, then enslaved under the number 336.”
Pressure for compensation is not included in the current bill
French President Emmanuel Macron gave his support to the proposal this month, even raising the topic of reparations but making no concrete proposals.
The question of some form of reparation is a long-standing one, with suggestions ranging from a formal apology to financial compensation. However, opponents argue that holding modern states or institutions responsible for historical crimes is problematic.
Mathiasin said he did not want this more controversial issue to “dilute” the much less controversial notion of removing Code Noir from the record, but others objected.
“In my opinion, we should fight on the issue of compensation, which is the essential question,” said Marceline Nadeau, a leftist member of parliament from the French Caribbean island of Martinique – one of more than half of the members of the Assemblée Nationale who did not vote for one reason or another.
Serge Lechimy, the former president of Martinique, wrote an open letter to Macron earlier this month calling for “a law that clearly establishes the principle that the crimes of trafficking and slavery have caused lasting historical, cultural, social, economic and psychological harm.”
He referred to a 10-point plan suggested by Caribbean countries, which includes international debt cancellation as well as support for health care and illiteracy eradication.
What was Code Noir?
The first of a series of royal orders known as the Code Noir was signed by King Louis XIV at the Palace of Versailles in 1685.
It set the rules for slavery in France’s colonial empire.
Article 44 designates people trafficked across the Atlantic to work in the Caribbean colonies as “chattel”. Masters were able to buy, sell, mortgage and leave them to their children.
Article 28 states that enslaved people “may not own anything that does not belong to their master.” This allowed them to have no name in law, only a number and registration code.
Articles 2 and 3 also required that all slaves be baptized and raised as Catholics.
The various orders dating back to 1724 became inactive with the second and definitive abolition of slavery in France in 1848, but the inactive royal orders remained on the books of the Republic.
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Edited by: Zack Crellin