“The most brutal legal text in the modern era.” This is how the “Code Noir” or “Black Law” slavery law was described, which turned humans into property in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and the French House of Representatives voted yesterday, Thursday, to abolish it.
The French representatives unanimously agreed to repeal the law and all of its 60 articles that regulated the affairs of slaves in all French colonies, which were not officially repealed after 1848, as the law remained in effect, even after it lost any authority, when France abolished slavery 178 years ago.
This law turned human beings into commodities, allowing them to be exploited for labor, beaten, sold, raped, and killed. The realization that France had not officially repealed this law sparked widespread discontent in the French National Assembly (the first chamber of Parliament), where debate raged.
What is black slavery law?
A law signed by King Louis XIV at the Palace of Versailles in 1685, establishing the rules of slavery throughout the French colonial empire.
The texts of the law precisely define enslaved people as “movable property” that the master can obtain in the same way as other goods. It also specifies penalties for escape, such as cutting off the ear, branding with a lily flower, and execution.
The main architect of the “Black Law” is the French statesman Jean-Baptiste Colbert, whose statue is located in Parliament Square in the capital, Paris.
What is the reality of slavery colonies now?
The Slavery Acts initially governed the French Caribbean, Martinique, Guadeloupe, and Saint-Domingue (today’s Haiti), and were later expanded to include French Guiana, Louisiana, and the Indian Ocean islands of Reunion and Mauritius.
The National Convention (the Constituent Assembly elected during the French Revolution) announced the abolition of slavery on February 4, 1794, about 4 years after the adoption of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, but this measure was not applied in practice to all colonies.
France did not abandon all of its colonies in which slavery was practiced. The 4 oldest colonies, Guadeloupe, Martinique, French Guiana, Reunion, and French overseas departments, became complete in 1946, meaning that they were administered from Paris like any other department.
The population of these colonies is about 1.9 million people, most of whom are descendants of enslaved people and are French citizens. Despite being an integral part of France, the overseas departments are still among its poorest territories, as their unemployment rate is almost twice that of the mainland, and more than three-quarters of families on the island of Mayotte live below the national poverty line.
Deadly working conditions.. What about the victims?
Under the law, France transported approximately 1.4 million Africans across the Atlantic in chains, which was the third largest slave trade of any European power, after Portugal and Britain.
Most of the enslaved Africans were employed in cutting sugar cane, before condensing its juice in “boiling houses,” where it was boiled over an open fire, along with coffee, cotton, and the indigo plant.
The work was so deadly that the number of deaths exceeded the number of births, while the victimized farmers were replaced by ships loaded with new Africans.
By 1789, Saint Domingue, now known as Haiti, had about 500,000 enslaved people, more than any other colony in the Caribbean, produced a large portion of the world’s sugar and coffee, and was known as the richest colony on Earth.
Interesting provisions in the law
Articles 2 and 3 of the law stipulated that all enslaved people be baptized and raised in the Catholic doctrine, while prohibiting the public practice of any other religion.
- The enslaved and what they earned belonged to their master
Article 44 of the Code Noir described enslaved people as “movable property,” which the master could buy, sell, mortgage, or leave to his children, such as land or furniture.
While Article 28 states that enslaved people may not “own anything that does not belong to their master,” everything they earned, and everything that was given to them, was his property.
Enslaved people had no legal name, and in 1839, every enslaved person in the colonies was given a number and registration code, while freed people were not given family surnames until slavery was abolished.
- How were enslaved people who tried to escape punished?
Article 38 of the Black Code punished people who tried to escape inhumanely. In the first attempt to escape, their ears would be cut off and one of their shoulders would be cauterized and branded with a fleur-de-lis, “the symbol of the French crown.”
In the second escape attempt, the leg tendon is cut, and the cauterization and branding process is repeated again.
If the enslaved people escaped a third time, they were executed, according to the aforementioned law.
- Death penalty for anyone who hits his master
As for Article 33, it stipulates the death penalty for any enslaved person who strikes his master, his wife, or their children in a way that leaves marks or blood, or strikes them in the face.
- Slavery was inherited by birth
Under the law, children were enslaved from birth. If a child was born to a enslaved woman, he automatically became enslaved from birth, even if the father was free.
The food portion of this enslaved child was half that of the enslaved adults.
- Ignoring provisions protecting enslaved people
Some texts were supposed to protect the enslaved, as they stipulated that the masters should feed and clothe them, not torture them, or sell the husband, wife, and young children separately.
However, historians have confirmed that these texts were widely ignored, and masters were rarely punished for killing enslaved people.
The grandson of enslaved people… Who started the movement to abolish the law?
Before he discovered the truth, the French MP who proposed the repeal of the law did not know that it was still in effect, and Max Mathiassen, from Guadeloupe, had bought copies of the text of the law over the years and left them on the shelf.
“As a descendant of enslaved ancestors, I have never been able to read it in its entirety,” the proposer says. “This law was made by humans, against humans.”
For him, voting represents “a means to restore our ancestors and restore our humanity” before France, whose motto is freedom, equality and fraternity. “It means fulfilling the republican promise, considering that this promise is still absent in the homeland.”
Mathiassen said: “In Guadeloupe, whites hold the most important positions in state institutions, considering this a colonial exception that never ended. The Slavery Memory Foundation is headed by former Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault, and Pierre-Yves Bouquet is the deputy director, and both are white men.”
Bouquet describes the “Noir Code” as the cradle of “colonial exceptionalism in France, the principle that allows the constitutional rights of the French Republic to be suspended for those subject to its rule.”
He says this principle continued after the empire’s demise: “Even today, we accept that the inhabitants of the overseas territories have fewer rights than the inhabitants of mother France.”
What are the most prominent provisions of the proposed draft law?
On the other hand, the first article of the law proposed by Max Matthiassen seeks to abolish the “Black Law”, and all its provisions, in its various forms, versions or editions.
While Article Two requires the government to submit a report on colonial law and its long-term effects, especially with regard to racism.
Most of the discussions in the French Parliament revolved around France’s history of slavery and colonialism, and the effects of that that are still visible today, between the overseas territories and mother France, and the discrimination that blacks face.
However, the draft ignores the sensitive issue of reparations, which overseas territories regularly demand, and during the review a number of members of parliament pointed out that following the abolition of slavery, France paid reparations to former slave owners, not to enslaved people who were left landless.
