France votes to end slavery-era law which classed people as property

France repealed the Code Noir, a 1685 law that codified enslaved people’s treatment in French colonies. The law had remained in place for nearly 180 years after slavery was abolished, allowing enslaved humans to be treated as property and subjected to violence, sale, rape, and killing. The repeal passed 254-0 in a national assembly vote, ending a 17th century legal framework. The repeal is presented as an important step in recognizing Paris’s role in slavery and may open the way to reparations. President Emmanuel Macron said the code should never have survived abolition in 1848 and called the long silence an offense. MPs described the emotional impact and noted the code’s provisions, including declaring enslaved people movable property and denying legal credibility to enslaved testimony.

"For almost 180 years after France abolished slavery, the Code Noir (Black Code) allowing enslaved humans to be treated as property and worked, beaten, sold, raped or killed, remained in place. On Thursday, the country's bitterly divided national assembly voted unanimously to repeal it, in a rare show of political unity. The vote, passed by 254-0, puts an end to a 17th century law, signed by King Louis XIV in 1685, which codified the treatment of enslaved people in France's colonies."

"The silence, even the indifference, that we have maintained for nearly two centuries towards this Code Noir is no longer an oversight. It has become a form of offence, he added. Macron added the issue of reparations was one we must not refuse, but the country must not make false promises. Emotions were high in the lower house of parliament in the debate on the vote, with many astonished the law still existed."

"The 60 articles within the code encompassed every aspect of a slave's life. Article 44 declared a person movable property, while other clauses decreed those who fled be mutilated and that the word of a slave counted for nothing. Steevy Gustave, an MP from the French island of Martinique in the Caribbean whose ancestors were enslaved, was tearful as he told the national assembly: No vote alone can repair centuries of shattered lives."

"We are not descendants of slaves, we are descendants of human beings born free, then reduced to the worst reduced to slavery. Max Mathiasin, a French MP from Guadeloupe in the southern Caribbean, who tabled the motion repealing the law said he had bought copies of the original text but had never got around to reading them. As the great-great-grandson of people who were enslaved, I had never been a"

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