Code Noir, the “Black Code” of French slavery
The lower house of the French Parliament voted on Thursday, finally, to definitively eliminate a fundamental edict from the slave era of the French legal system — considered the “most monstrous legal text of modern times”.
After the National Assembly approved, by 254 votes in favor and none against, the bill that repeals the infamous Code Blackthe text now goes to the Senate, where its supporters hope it will also be approved. It is not yet clear when the vote will take place in the Senate.
O Code Black, or Code Blackwas signed by King Louis XIV at the Palace of Versailles, in 1685, to define the rules of slavery throughout the French colonial empire.
It was described as “the most monstrous legal text of modern times” by French philosopher Louis Sala-Molins, recalls .
Yours 60 articles they first applied to the French Caribbean—Martinique, Guadeloupe, and Saint-Domingue, present-day Haiti—and were later extended to French Guiana, Louisiana, and the Indian Ocean islands of Réunion and Mauritius.
France transported around 1.4 million Africans in chains across the Atlantic, the third largest slave trade by a European power, after Portugal and the United Kingdom.
The majority were forced to cutting sugar cane and feeding homes cooking process, where the syrup was reduced in boilers over an open fire, in addition to working in the coffee, cotton and indigo.
The work was so deadly that deaths exceeded births. Plantation owners simply replaced the dead with new shipments of Africans.
In 1789, the island of Saint-Dominguecurrently Haiti, had around 500,000 enslaved people, more than any other colony in the Caribbean. It produced much of the world’s sugar and coffee and was considered the richest colony on Earth.
Code Noir lost strength when the France abolished slavery in 1848but was never formally removed from legislation.
Article 44 called enslaved people “movable property”.A lord could buy, sell, mortgage or leave them to his children, as if they were land or furniture.
Article 28 determined that “couldn’t own anythingthat did not belong to his master.” Everything they earned, and everything that was given to them, belonged to him. They had no name before the law.
From 1839 onwards, each enslaved person in the French colonies began to receive a registration number and code. Only with the abolition of slavery did freed former slaves receive nicknames.
Article 38 punished people who tried to escape. The first time, they cut off their ears and they marked one shoulder with a fleur-de-listhe symbol of the French crown. In the second, they cut a tendon in the leg and were branded again. To the third, were sentenced to death.
Article 33 ordered the death of any enslaved person who attacked a man, his wife or his children with enough force to leave a mark or draw blood — or hit them in the face. This enslaved person, the article said, “will be punished with death”.
Before saying a word about enslaved people, the first article of the code expelled all Jews from French coloniess within three months. He called them “declared enemies of the Christian name”.
Articles 2 and 3 ordered that all enslaved people be baptized and raised as Catholics. No other religion could be practiced in public.
A child inherited his mother’s condition. The son of an enslaved woman was born a slave, even if the father was freee.
The children were enslaved from birth. The Code Noir set their food rations at half that of an adult.
Some articles seem like rules designed to “protect” enslaved people. You gentlemen should feed and clothe them, not torture them and do not sell husband, wife and young children separately.
Historians say that These rules were ignored in a widespread way. Owners who killed the people they enslaved were almost never punished.
It was a “legislative fossil“But, 178 years after the abolition of slavery, the horrendous Black Code had not yet been explicitly repealed.
