France's National Assembly voted unanimously on Thursday to repeal the Code Noir (Black Code), a 17th-century law that classified enslaved people as property and permitted their beating, rape, and killing. The vote, passed 254-0, ends a legal relic that had remained on the books for 178 years after France abolished slavery in 1848.
The Code Noir, signed by King Louis XIV in 1685, codified the treatment of enslaved people in France's colonies. Its 60 articles included declarations that enslaved individuals were 'movable property' and that those who fled could be mutilated. President Emmanuel Macron stated that the code 'should never have survived the abolition of slavery' and acknowledged that its continued existence had become 'a form of offence.'
MP Steevy Gustave, from the Caribbean island of Martinique, whose ancestors were enslaved, told the assembly: 'We are not descendants of slaves, we are descendants of human beings born free, then reduced to the worst – reduced to slavery.' Max Mathiasin, the MP from Guadeloupe who tabled the repeal motion, said the vote was 'a way of restoring our ancestors, restoring our humanity.'
France was the third-largest slave trading nation, shipping an estimated 1.4 million Africans to its colonies. The wealth generated built cities like Nantes and Bordeaux. After abolishing slavery, France maintained colonies; the four oldest—Guadeloupe, Martinique, French Guiana, and Réunion—became overseas departments in 1946, but remain among France's poorest territories with high unemployment.
The repeal opens the possibility of reparations, a topic Macron recently said 'we must not refuse,' though he cautioned against 'false promises.' Pierre-Yves Bocquet, deputy director of France's Foundation for the Remembrance of Slavery, argued the code was at the root of a 'colonial exception' that still allows people in overseas territories to have fewer rights than in mainland France.
