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France votes unanimously to abolish the Black Code of slavery

2026-05-28 16:43:00, Kosova & Bota CNA

For nearly 180 years after France abolished slavery, the “Code Noir” (Black Code) that allowed enslaved people to be treated as property and to be worked, beaten, sold, raped, or killed, remained in force.

On Thursday, the country's divided national assembly voted unanimously to repeal it, in a rare show of political unity.

The vote, passed by 254 votes to 0, ends a 17th-century law, signed by King Louis XIV in 1685, which codified the treatment of slaves in France's colonies.

It is an important step in recognizing Paris' role in slavery and will pave the way for possible reparations, an idea proposed by President Emmanuel Macron last week.

The French leader said the code "should never have survived the abolition of slavery" in 1848.

"The silence, even indifference, that we have maintained for almost two centuries towards this Black Code is no longer an oversight. It has become a form of insult," he added.

Macron added that the issue of reparations was an issue that "we should not reject," but the country "should not make false promises."

Emotions were high in the lower house of parliament during the debate on the vote, with many people surprised that the law still existed.

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Steevy Gustave, a lawmaker from the French Caribbean island of Martinique, whose ancestors were enslaved, broke down in tears as he told the national assembly: “No single vote can repair centuries of lives destroyed.”

"We are not descendants of slaves, we are descendants of human beings born free, then reduced to the worst - reduced to slavery."

The 60 articles within the code covered every aspect of a slave's life. Article 44 declared a person "movable property," while other clauses stipulated that those who ran away would be mutilated and that a slave's word had no value.

Max Mathiasin, a French MP from Guadeloupe in the southern Caribbean who introduced the motion to repeal the law, said he had bought copies of the original text but had never gotten around to reading them.

"As a great-grandson of people who were enslaved, I had never been able to read it in full. This was done by human beings, against human beings," he told MPs.

He said voting was “a way to restore our ancestors, to restore our humanity.” It meant fulfilling the French republic’s promise of liberty, equality and fraternity, he added.

France was the third largest slave-trading nation, after Britain and Portugal. It sent an estimated 1.4 million Africans to work on sugar plantations in its colonies. The wealth it produced built the cities of Nantes and Bordeaux.

The richest of those plantations were in Saint-Domingue, a French colony on the western third of the Caribbean island of Hispaniola, founded in 1687. In 1804, slaves in the colony revolted, securing independence for the territory that became Haiti. However, Paris forced the freed slaves to pay reparations to cover their owners' losses, a debt they were still paying as of 1947.

After the abolition of slavery, France retained a number of its colonies. The four oldest - Guadeloupe, Martinique, French Guiana on the northeastern coast of South America, and the island of Réunion in the Indian Ocean - became French overseas departments in 1946. Their population of 1.9 million, most of whom are descended from slaves, are French citizens and are governed from Paris.

Although considered part of France, they remain some of its poorest territories with unemployment almost double the rate in mainland France, with many families living below the national poverty line.

"In Guadeloupe, the most important positions in state structures are held by whites," Mathiasin said.

Pierre-Yves Bocquet, deputy director of the French Foundation for the Remembrance of Slavery, said the code was at the root of the country's "colonial exclusion," installing the idea that the founding motto of the French republic did not apply to certain people under its rule.

"Even today, we recognize that people in overseas territories may have fewer rights than in mainland France," he said.