Code Noir

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The code noir .

The code noir is a decree issued by France's King Louis XIV in 1685 to regulate the handling of black slaves and which was in force until 1848 (code: French for statute book , noir: French for black ).

background

Before the individual articles regulated the lot of the blacks , it was initially determined that all Jews had to leave the French colonies . However, this was withdrawn in 1688 due to its indispensability there. With the exception of the Roman Catholic, no other religion was allowed to be practiced. In fact, this law only applied to slaves, since Protestants as well as Jews could not be dispensed with as slave owners. Then it came to the restriction of the activities of free blacks and the definition of the conditions for the slavery of blacks, who through the Atlantic triangular trade into the French colonial empireu. a. reached the islands of the Caribbean. Blacks made up the majority of the population there.

The code noir is one of the many laws that go back to Jean-Baptiste Colbert . It is a collection, standardization and rationalization of already existing customs of the plantation owners in the Caribbean, who from 1635 on abducted black Africans to the Antilles and used them without any legal regulations to enable the industrial cultivation of sugar cane. The legislative process was launched with the consultation of Charles de Courbon, Governor of the Caribbean ( Gouverneur générale des iles d'Amérique ) and the Intendant Jean-Baptiste Patoulet in 1681, who were given the task of collecting local jurisprudence and the opinion of the members of the Conseils sovverains ( Island parliaments) of Martinique , Guadeloupe and Saint-Christophe ( St. Kitts and Nevis ). Colbert died in September 1683 after a first draft with largely final text had been presented in February 1683; only two years later the legal text was passed by Louis XIV. The validity was later extended to Saint-Domingue ( Haiti ), Louisiana and Guyana, and to the colonies in the Indian Ocean, Bourbon ( Mauritius ) and La Réunion , with a few changes

content

The law consists of 60 articles. Among other things, it was determined in 1685:

  • Jews are not allowed to live in the French colonies.
  • Slaves must be baptized Roman Catholics.
  • Every religion except Roman Catholic is banned.
  • Slave owners must be Roman Catholic.
  • Non-Catholic subjects are not allowed to interfere in the religious practice of Catholic subjects.
  • All subjects and slaves must observe the Catholic holidays.
  • No slave markets may be held on Catholic holidays.
  • Only Catholic weddings are recognized.
  • Married free men who have a child with a slave are fined 2,000 pounds of sugar, as is the slave's owner. If the man owns the slave himself, the slave and child are taken away from him. If the man is not married, he should marry the slave and thus free the slave and child from slavery.
  • Weddings among the slaves may only take place with the permission of the owner. Slaves are only married off with their own consent.
  • Children of married slaves are slaves too, they belong to the mother's master.
  • Children of a male slave and a free woman are free.
  • Slaves are not allowed to carry weapons except with the permission of their master when hunting.
  • Slaves belonging to different masters are not allowed to assemble at any time or under any circumstances.
  • Slaves are not allowed to sell sugar cane, even with the permission of their master.
  • They are only allowed to sell other goods with the permission of their master.
  • The owner has to take care of sick slaves. Owners who fail to do so will be fined.
  • Slaves are not allowed to appear as a party in court.
  • A slave who beats his master, his wife or children is executed.
  • Escaped slaves who have disappeared for more than a month have their ears cut off and branded. The second time, your Achilles tendon is cut and you are branded again. The third time they will be executed.
  • Masters of released slaves who give shelter to refugees are fined.
  • A master who falsely accuses a slave of a crime is fined.
  • Masters are allowed to chain and beat slaves, but they are not allowed to torture them.
  • Masters who kill a slave will be punished.
  • Slaves cannot be pledged; if a master dies, they are divided equally among the heirs.
  • Married slave couples and their prepubescent children may not be sold separately.
  • Slave owners who are at least 20 years old (25 years without parental permission) can release their slaves.
  • Freed slaves are French subjects no matter where they were born.
  • Freed slaves have the same rights as French subjects in the colonies.

Validity of the Code Noir

The Catholic religion as a rule applied exclusively to the slaves. As the archives and literature show, there were numerous Jews and Protestants on the French islands, and both of them were involved in the slave trade and the keeping of slaves, so that the command of Catholicism as the only permitted religion was dealt with flexibly. A change could have been pending
with the French Revolution : on February 4, 1794, a decree resolved the abolition of slavery in all French colonies. However, the decree was never implemented and applied. Under Napoleon , who was also responsible for dealing with Toussaint Louverture and the renewed bloody submission of Saint-Domingue under Charles Victoire Emmanuel Leclerc , the abolition decrees were repealed in 1802 and in 1805 the further application of the Code Noir was expressly confirmed, so that it was up to Abolition of slavery in the French colonies in 1848 lasted for a total of 163 years.

With the Code de l'indigénat , the inhabitants of the French colonies continued to be denied elementary rights until after the Second World War.

classification

Louis Sala-Molins , Professor of Political Philosophy at the Sorbonne (1966-2000), who first drew attention to the existence of the forgotten Code Noir in 1987 in preparation for the bicentenary celebrations of the beginning of the French Revolution , emphasizes that in the Age of Enlightenment nobody - neither Montesquieu , Diderot , Rousseau , Voltaire nor Condorcet - asked for the immediate abolition of the Code Noir. According to his comment, the law is “the most monstrous legal text of the modern age”.

Remarks

  1. It was not necessary to do without Jewish slave owners, as they had important knowledge of sugar cane cultivation and its use for the production of rum (see: Rosa Amelia Plumelle-Uribe : Victimes des esclavagistes musulmans, chrétiens et juifs. Racialisation et banalisation d'un crime contre l'humanité . Anibwé, Paris 2012, chap. 2; 3; 4; 5, p. 51 f.)
  2. Plumelle Uribe (2008), p. 112.
  3. Marc Lee Raphael, Jews and Judaism in the United States: a Documentary History , New York 1983. Eric Saugera, Bordeaux, port négrier XVIIe-XIXe siècles , Paris 2002.
  4. Sala-Molins (2008), p. 12.
  5. Sala-Molins (2007), p. 17.
  6. See the two works by Louis Sala-Molins, reissued in 2007 and 2008.
  7. Sala-Molins (2007), p. VIII.

literature

  • Rosa A. Plumelle-Uribe: White barbarism. From colonial racism to the racial politics of the Nazis (“La férocité blanche”). Rotpunktverlag, Zurich 2004, ISBN 3-85869-273-5 .
  • Rosa A. Plumelle-Uribe: Traite des Blancs, traite des Noirs. Aspects méconnus et conséquences actuelles . L'Harmattan, Paris 2008, ISBN 978-2-296-06443-0 .
  • Louis Sala-Molins: Le Code Noir ou le calvaire de Canaan . Quadrige-PUF, Paris 2007, ISBN 978-2-13-055802-6 (reprint of the 4th edition).
  • Louis Sala-Molins: Les misères des Lumières. Sous la raison l'outrage . Editions Homnisphères, Paris 2008, ISBN 978-2-915129-32-8 (reprint of the first edition Paris 1992).

See also

Web links