The French National Assembly erased the Code Noir, a 17th-century slave law, 178 years after the abolition of slavery. On the 28th, local time, based on reports by the Guardian and AP in the U.K., France 24, and U.S. political outlet Politico, the National Assembly, France's lower house, put the bill to repeal the Code Noir to a vote and passed it with all 254 lawmakers present voting in favor and none against. AP said some lawmakers shed tears during the vote. With unanimous support across the aisle, the bill moved to the Senate. Major outlets predicted that, by its nature, the bill would pass the Senate without difficulty.
The Code Noir is a 60-article set of slave regulations signed by Louis XIV at the Palace of Versailles in 1685. The text treated enslaved people as property, not as persons. Article 44 defined enslaved people as movable property (chattel), allowing owners to buy and sell them or bequeath them to their children. Article 38 ordered that, upon a first capture of a runaway, an ear be cut off and a brand bearing the French royal fleur-de-lis be burned into the shoulder; upon a second capture, the leg tendon be severed and the person branded again. A third offense carried the death penalty. Under the Code Noir, slave status was inherited through the mother. As a result, even if an enslaved child was born to a free father, the child was treated as enslaved at birth if the mother was enslaved. French philosopher Louis Sala-Molins called the law "the most horrifying modern code."
The law was first applied in Caribbean territories such as Martinique, Guadeloupe, and Saint-Domingue, which is present-day Haiti, where African enslaved people were forced to work on sugarcane plantations. It later expanded to French Guiana and Louisiana, and to Réunion and Mauritius in the Indian Ocean. France at the time was the third-largest slave-trading nation in Europe after Portugal and Britain. According to Reuters, about 1.4 million Africans were enslaved under this law by France. Most of those taken were put to work in sugarcane fields and sugar-boiling factories. Records show deaths among enslaved people outnumbered births due to the high intensity of labor and harsh weather. Plantation owners replaced those who died with newly transported Africans, and the port cities of Nantes and Bordeaux amassed great wealth and thrived through the slave trade from the 17th century to the early 19th century.
France abolished slavery in 1848 after the 1789 Revolution. But while the institution of slavery ended, the Code Noir provisions remained in the legal code as text without force for 178 years, with no one removing them. AP reported that "the fact that France had never officially erased from its own laws language defining human beings as property shocked many lawmakers during this vote."
Lawmaker Max Mathiasin, who introduced the bill, called the repeal "a strong act for memory, justice, and recognition." Still, he added, this alone "does not heal the wounds of history." Mathiasin was born in Guadeloupe, France's oldest colony. Guadeloupe, Martinique, French Guiana, and Réunion were incorporated in 1946 as official overseas departments (départements) of France, making them, in form, French territory governed by the central government in Paris just like the mainland. France 24 said, "Most of the roughly 1.9 million people there are descendants of enslaved people and French citizens," adding, "These regions remain the poorest in France, with high unemployment."
French President Emmanuel Macron backed the bill, saying the 60 articles of the Code Noir "should never have survived after the abolition of slavery." Macron added, "France can no longer overlook the silence and indifference it maintained toward the Code Noir for nearly two centuries," calling it "a kind of insult to France."
However, the French government again avoided addressing substantive reparations for slavery. Like his predecessors, Macron did not issue a formal apology for slavery. In his speech supporting the bill, he did not promise specific compensation payments. Instead, he defined reparations as prioritizing truth-telling, education, and historical research.
But from the outset, there has been no agreement within France on "to whom and how to repay" for the centuries-old harm of slavery. The current reparations debate largely splits in two. One path is compensating residents of overseas departments such as Guadeloupe and Martinique, where many descendants of enslaved people live. But in compensation lawsuits that began in Martinique in 2005, the Court of Cassation repeatedly dismissed the claims on grounds that "individuals failed to prove direct harm and the statute of limitations had expired." The other path is state-level reparations. Fourteen countries in the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) are pursuing a 10-point plan demanding apology and reparations from former European colonial powers, including France.