French lawmakers have voted to repeal a 17th-century law that governed enslaved people in France's colonies.
A statue named"Chains," by French artist Driss Sans-Arcidet, honoring the memory of the abolition of slavery, is photographed in a park in Paris, Wednesday, May 27, 2026, as France's National Assembly examines a bill to formally repeal the Code Noir, or Black Code, the 17th-century royal edict that governed slavery in French colonies and treated enslaved people as property.
French lawmaker Max Mathiasin of the French Caribbean island Guadeloupe, poses at the entrance of the National Assembly in Paris, Wednesday, May 27, 2026, before lawmakers examine a bill to formally repeal the Code Noir, or Black Code, the 17th-century royal edict that governed slavery in French colonies and treated enslaved people as property. 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.
that classified humans as property has remained quietly on its books.
On Thursday, the lower house of Parliament voted to wipe it from French law. The National Assembly voted 254-0 — a rare show of unanimity — to adopt a bill repealing the Code Noir, or Black Code, the 1685 decree King Louis XIV signed to govern The law turned human beings into chattel, allowing them to be worked, beaten, sold, raped and murdered.
Steevy Gustave, a lawmaker descended from enslaved people on the Caribbean island of Martinique, told colleagues the repeal was necessary “but no vote alone can repair centuries of shattered lives. ” “We are not descendants of slaves,” he said, bursting into tears.
“We are descendants of human beings born free, then reduced to the worst — reduced to slavery. ” The code’s reach was total. Article 44 declared the enslaved “movable property” — assets a master could acquire like real estate. Those who fled faced branding, the amputation of their ears, even death.
The word of an enslaved person counted for nothing.
“The silence, even the indifference, that we have maintained for nearly two centuries toward this Black Code is no longer an oversight,” Macron said. “It has become a form of offense. ”France ran the third-largest slave trade, shipping about 1.4 million Africans to plantations whose sugar wealth built the French cities of Nantes and Bordeaux. The French empire later spanned four continents.
Others see the repeal as something more telling — a symptom, they argue, of a country that has yet to reckon fully with that past, one of many slow steps along the way. In law, officially eliminating it is the easy part, observers say. The Code Noir lost all authority in 1848, when France abolished slavery.
France didn't relinquish its slave colonies: the four oldest — Guadeloupe, Martinique, French Guiana and Réunion — were made full French overseas departments in 1946. That means they're governed from Paris like any other. Despite being fully part of France, the overseas departments remain among its poorest territories. Unemployment runs roughly double the mainland rate, and more than three-quarters of households in the Indian Ocean territory of Mayotte live below the national poverty line.
Before he discovered the truth, the French lawmaker who put forward the proposal to repeal the law didn't know it still existed. Max Mathiasin, from Guadeloupe, had bought copies of the text over the years and left them on his shelf.
“As the great-great-grandson of people who were enslaved, I had never been able to read it in full,” he said. “This was made by human beings — against human beings. ” For him, the vote is “a way of restoring our ancestors, restoring our humanity” before a France whose motto is liberty, equality, fraternity.
“It means living up to the Republican promise. ”The Foundation for the Memory of Slavery is chaired by a former prime minister, Jean-Marc Ayrault, and its deputy director is Pierre-Yves Bocquet — both white men. Bocquet calls the Code Noir the birthplace of France’s “colonial exception” — the principle that the French Republic’s founding rights could be suspended for those under its rule.
The principle outlived the empire, he said: “Even today, we accept that people in the overseas territories can have fewer rights than in mainland France. ” France is hardly the only country still holding fragments of empire — the United Kingdom, the United States and the Netherlands still have overseas territories. But what sets France apart, observers say, is that it made its slave colonies equal departments of the Republic, not dependencies it governs from afar.
The state insists that the overseas departments are France like anywhere else, even as the people who live there say they are treated as less. For Max Relouzat, 81, president of the Association for the Memory of Slaveries, the repeal matters, because so little else has.
His African ancestor had no name under the law, only a number and a registration code — the family that lived in Martinique was given the name Relouzat at emancipation, likely after Nelouzat, a village in the Auvergne region of central France.
“Under the cover of departmentalization, a colonial system was maintained,” Relouzat said. “If the overseas departments are part of France, why is there a ministry for the overseas? ”‘Racism is the legacy of slavery itself’For Florence Alexis, a slavery expert and daughter of the Haitian writer Jacques Stephen Alexis, the real turning point came 25 years ago. In 2001, the Taubira law made France the first country to call the slave trade, and slavery, crimes against humanity.
For her, racism is the legacy of slavery itself, not of one edict.
“When I was a child at school, they called me the little monkey,” she said. “People made animal cries when I walked past — as they still do in football stadiums today. ” Paris-born Élodie Léon, 29, whose family is from French Guiana, welcomes the repeal, but resents the delay.
"It shocks me,” said Muriel Jean-Baptiste, a Paris-born nurse whose parents are from Martinique. “A law that treated Black people as property was left sitting there,” she said. At the Taubira law’s 25th anniversary on May 21, Macron floated the idea of reparations — something that France has long stayed away from addressing. He committed no money, instead defining repair first as truth-telling, education and historical work.
The wealthiest of France's plantations were in Saint-Domingue, in the Caribbean, where the enslaved rose up and won independence in 1804 as Haiti. France then forced the freed to pay reparations for the loss of their masters — a debt cleared only in 1947. France isn't alone. In the United States, federal reparations legislation has stalled for decades.
California approved an apology, but no cash. But the timing of Macron's latest speech was awkward. Two months earlier, France abstained when the U.N. General Assembly voted 123-3, with 52 abstentions, to call the trans-Atlantic slave trade the gravest crime against humanity.
“As soon as he sets foot on the African continent,” French opposition lawmaker Danièle Obono said, “he can’t help but behave like a colonizer. ” The repeal of the nCode Noir, said Bocquet, “will have no direct effect. ” Whether it helps France fight racism and inequality in its overseas territories, he said, “remains to be seen. ” “It is easy for the French authorities, and for Macron, to do this,” Alexis added.
“Because it commits them to nothing. ” Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
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Jean Marc Ayrault Louis XIV Of France Business Emmanuel Macron Race Pierre Yves Bocquet Ethnicity Jacques Stephen Alexis Max Mathiasin Danièle Obono Muriel Jean-Baptiste World News Florence Alexis
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