San Francisco Frontiers - France moves towards symbolic repealing of slavery legislation

The French were the third largest slave traders in Europe, after the British and the Portuguese.

Ships departing from French ports between the 17th and 19th centuries forcibly transported more than one million men, women and children from Africa into slavery, many in plantations in its overseas colonies in the Caribbean, according to expert estimates.

France abolished enslaving humans more than 170 years ago, and in 2001 recognised slavery and the slave trade as "crimes against humanity".

But a series of royal decrees from the 17th and 18th centuries that established the legal status of enslaved people in its colonies, called the "Code noir" or "Black Code", were never explicitly overturned.

President Emmanuel Macron, who is stepping down next year after his maximum two terms in office, last week threw his support behind repealing these laws.

Lawmakers in the lower house will on Thursday debate a bill to annul the royal edicts, and the Senate is then to have its say at an undetermined date before the law can pass.

- 'Denial of humanity' -

The decrees, the first of which were written under Louis XIV, ruled over the lives of enslaved people in the colonies.

They declared all enslaved people should be Catholics, and banned owners from making them work on Sundays, according to a copy on the French parliament's website.

But they also referred to them as "moveable goods" who could be inherited, outlined brutal punishment including mutilation of the ear for trying to escape, and condemned the children of enslaved people to the same fate as their parents.

Max Mathiasin, a lawmaker from the former colony turned overseas territory of Guadeloupe who is championing the bill, last week said repealing the decrees would be a "powerful symbolic and political gesture".

The Black Code "organised the denial of the humanity of women, men and children reduced to slavery because of their origin and the colour of their skin", he said.

France ended slavery in 1794 under the French Revolution, but Napoleon Bonaparte ordered troops to be sent to Guadeloupe in 1802 to restore the practice.

France then abolished it again in 1848.

But activists say the legacy of slavery endures through inequalities between mainland France and former colonies that are now overseas territories, as well as racism.

Macron last week said the issue of reparations should be addressed, but warned against making "false promises" and announced no specific measures.

Dieudonne Boutrin, an activist from the overseas territory of Martinique who is descended from enslaved people, said annulling the Black Code should have been done ages ago.

"It changes nothing. Black people are still looked at the same way," he said.

"Now we need to go beyond the symbolic," he said, urging a "real reparations programme", including for example more funds for educational projects to transmit history and help battle systemic racism.

- 'Lasting harm' -

Serge Letchimy, an official from Martinique, in an open letter to Macron earlier this month also demanded reparations.

He urged "a law that clearly establishes the principle that the crimes of trafficking and slavery have caused lasting historical, cultural, social, economic and psychological harm".

He referred to a 10-point plan that Caribbean nations have put to European nations, including international debt cancellation, as well as support for healthcare and illiteracy eradication.

Among France's former colonies, Haiti -- the poorest country in the Caribbean -- stands out as having particularly suffered.

Haiti became the first independent black nation in the Americas in 1804, after enslaved people rebelled against their French masters in what was then the colony of Saint-Domingue.

In 1825, it accepted to pay France a huge sum in "reparations" in exchange for recognising its independence, but it was forced to take out loans with high interest rates from French bankers in order to pay it.

It only managed to pay off this "double debt" in 1952.

Macron last year said that a joint commission of French and Haitian historians would examine this and issue recommendations.

K.Gray--SFF