French lawmakers vote to repeal colonial-era laws defining enslaved people as goods

French lawmakers were moved to tears in parliament on Thursday as France inched towards repealing outdated legislation that defines people enslaved in its colonies as “moveable goods,” in a symbolic move as the country grapples with its colonial legacy.

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 1 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 on Thursday voted unanimously to annul the royal edicts, but the Senate still has to hold a poll at an undetermined date before the law can pass.

‘Thinking of my great-grandmother’

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.

Speaking to parliament on Thursday, Greens lawmaker Steevy Gustave, whose father was born in the French former colony turned overseas territory of Martinique, said the vote was personal.

“I’m thinking of my great-grandmother, Mama Bebelle,” he said, barely holding back tears.

“She was the grand-daughter of Ambroise Zerambe, born in Africa, then reduced to slavery under the number 336.”

His voice breaking, he concluded: “We are not descendants of slaves. We are descendants of human beings who were born free, then reduced to slavery.”

Max Mathiasin, a lawmaker from the overseas territory of Guadeloupe who is championing the bill, was also moved to tears after a unanimous show of hands to support him.

“Allow me to thank my mother,” 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 announced no specific measures.

Dieudonne Boutrin, an activist from 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 suggested, 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 issue recommendations.