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https://dnyuz.com/2026/05/28/frances-parliament-votes-to-repeal-slavery-era-black-code-with-tears-and-history-in-the-chamber/>
"PARIS — For nearly two centuries after France abolished slavery, the
colonial-era law that classified humans as property has remained quietly on the
books. On Thursday, the lower house of parliament voted to wipe it from French
law.
The National Assembly voted 254-0 — a rare show of unanimity — to adopt a bill
repealing
Code Noir, or Black Code, the 1685 decree King Louis XIV signed to
govern slaves across France’s colonies.
The law turned human beings into chattel, allowing them to be worked, beaten,
sold, raped and murdered.
And the realization that France never formally did away with it left many
aghast. Debate in the chamber turned raw on Thursday.
Steevy Gustave — a lawmaker descended from enslaved people on the Caribbean
island of Martinique, now a French overseas department — told colleagues that
the repeal was necessary, “but no vote alone can repair centuries of shattered
lives.”
“We are not descendants of slaves,” he said, bursting into tears. “We are
descendants of human beings born free, then reduced to the worst — reduced to
slavery.”
The code’s reach was total. Article 44 declared the enslaved “movable property”
— assets a master could acquire like real estate. Those who fled faced
branding, the amputation of their ears, and even death. The word of an enslaved
person counted for nothing.
Code Noir’s 60 articles “should never have survived the abolition of slavery”
in the 19th century, President Emmanuel Macron said last week.
“The silence, even the indifference, that we have maintained for nearly two
centuries toward this Black Code is no longer an oversight,” Macron said. “It
has become a form of offense.”
Like French presidents before him, Macron stopped short of an apology.
France ran the third-largest slave trade, shipping about 1.4 million Africans
to plantations whose sugar wealth built the French cities of Nantes and
Bordeaux. The French empire later spanned four continents.
Others see the repeal as something more telling — a symptom, they argue, of a
country that has yet to reckon fully with that past, one of many slow steps
along the way."
Via Frederick Wilson II.
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
