<\/p>\n
A statue is photographed by French artist Didier Audrat in Paris, Wednesday, May 27, 2026, honoring the memory of the abolition of slavery, depicting Solitude, the daughter of an African slave who was raped by a sailor aboard the ship transporting her to the Caribbean, holding the proclamation of Louis Delgres, an anti-slavery resistance leader calling for resistance and struggle.<\/p>\n
Thomas Padilla\/AP Photo\/Thomas Padilla<\/p>\n
PARIS (AP) \u2014 France\u2019s powerful lower house voted finally to scrub a fundamental slavery-era edict from French law on Thursday.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
After the National Assembly voted 254-0 to adopt the bill to repeal Code Noir, it now goes to the Senate, where supporters expect it to be approved as well.<\/p>\n
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Code Noir \u2014 or Black Code \u2014 was signed by King Louis XIV at Versailles Palace in 1685 to set the rules for slavery across France\u2019s colonial empire. The code quietly remained on the books even after it lost any authority when France abolished slavery in 1848.<\/p>\n
It was described as \u201cthe most monstrous legal text of modern times\u201d by French philosopher Louis Sala\u2011Molins.<\/p>\n
Its 60 articles first governed the French Caribbean \u2014 Martinique, Guadeloupe and Saint-Domingue, today\u2019s Haiti \u2014 and were later extended to French Guiana, Louisiana, and the Indian Ocean islands of R\u00e9union and Mauritius.<\/p>\n
Deaths outpaced births<\/p>\n
France shipped about 1.4 million Africans across the Atlantic in chains \u2014 the third-largest slave trade of any European power, after Portugal and Britain.<\/p>\n
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Most were put to cutting sugar cane and feeding the boiling houses, where the syrup was reduced over open fires, alongside coffee, cotton and indigo.<\/p>\n
The work was so deadly that deaths surpassed births. Planters simply replaced the dead with fresh shiploads of Africans.<\/p>\n
By 1789, Saint-Domingue \u2014 now Haiti \u2014 held around 500,000 enslaved people, more than any other Caribbean colony. It produced much of the world\u2019s sugar and coffee, and was fabled to be the richest colony on earth.<\/p>\n
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Code Noir became toothless when France abolished slavery in 1848, but no one ever formally struck it from the books.<\/p>\n
It made people into property<\/p>\n
Article 44 called the enslaved \u201cmovable property.\u201d<\/p>\n
A master could buy them, sell them, mortgage them, or leave them to his children \u2014 like land or furniture.<\/p>\n
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Article 28 said that they could \u201cown nothing that does not belong to their master.\u201d<\/p>\n
Anything they earned, and anything they were given, was his.<\/p>\n
From 1839, each enslaved person in the colonies was given a number, and a registration code.<\/p>\n
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Only at abolition were the freed given last names.<\/p>\n
It branded those who ran<\/p>\n
Article 38 punished people who tried to escape.<\/p>\n
The first time, their ears were cut off and one shoulder was branded with a fleur-de-lis \u2014 the symbol of the French crown.<\/p>\n
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The second time, a leg tendon was cut and they were branded again.<\/p>\n
The third time, they were put to death.<\/p>\n
It killed those who fought back<\/p>\n
Article 33 ordered death for any enslaved person who struck a master, his wife or their children hard enough to leave a mark or draw blood \u2014 or who struck them in the face.<\/p>\n
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Such a slave, the article said, \u201cshall be punished by death.\u201d<\/p>\n
Its shocking first line was about Jewish people<\/p>\n
Before it said a word about the enslaved, the code\u2019s first article expelled every Jew from France\u2019s colonies within three months.<\/p>\n
It called them \u201cdeclared enemies of the Christian name.\u201d<\/p>\n
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It forced a religion<\/p>\n
Articles 2 and 3 ordered all enslaved people baptized and raised Catholic.<\/p>\n
No other religion could be practiced in public.<\/p>\n
It passed slavery down by birth<\/p>\n
A child took the mother\u2019s status.<\/p>\n
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The child of an enslaved woman was born enslaved \u2014 even if the father was free.<\/p>\n
Children were enslaved from birth.<\/p>\n
Code Noir set their food rations at half an adult\u2019s.<\/p>\n
Its \u2018protections\u2019 were most<\/p>\n
ly ignored<\/p>\n
A few articles read like rules to \u201cprotect\u201d the enslaved.<\/p>\n
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Masters were meant to feed and clothe them, not to torture them, and not to sell a husband, wife and small children apart.<\/p>\n
Historians say these were widely ignored.<\/p>\n
Owners who killed the people they enslaved were almost never punished.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A statue is photographed by French artist Didier Audrat in Paris, Wednesday, May 27, 2026, honoring the memory…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":312634,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[6736,112574,112573,23681,59373,84874,59371,84875,86159,61262,82,84,83,112572],"class_list":["post-312633","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-antonio","tag-france","tag-louis-sala-molins","tag-louis-xiv-of-france","tag-package-100024-ap-online","tag-package-100373-mc-complete-state-national","tag-product-30597-ap-business-news-f-wire","tag-product-30598-ap-national-news-report-a-wire","tag-product-31995-ap-online-general-financial-business-news","tag-product-32502-ap-online-europe-news","tag-product-46986-ap-online-top-stories","tag-san-antonio","tag-san-antonio-headlines","tag-san-antonio-news","tag-what-to-know-code-noir-slavery-france"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312633","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=312633"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312633\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/312634"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=312633"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=312633"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=312633"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}