Code Noir
코드 누아르
The ordinance of March 1685 by which Louis XIV defined the conditions of slavery in the French islands of the Americas. It required the baptism and Catholic instruction of slaves, Sunday rest and conditions for marriage, while treating slaves as property immune from seizure and prescribing graduated punishments for runaways (ears cut off, hamstringing, death), expelling the Jews and restricting the activities of free people of colour. Abolished in 1794, it was reinstated in 1802 and remained in force until the abolition of slavery in 1848.
In depth
In 1681 Louis XIV decided to create a statute for the Black population of the French Caribbean and entrusted its drafting to Colbert; the naval minister the Marquis de Seignelay wrote the text on the basis of memoranda from Patoulet, intendant of Martinique, and his successor Bégon. Promulgated in March 1685 as the "Ordinance or edict of March 1685 on the slaves of the islands of America", it was refused registration by the parlements of France, on the principle that anyone who set foot on French soil was free, and was instituted only in the colonies: Martinique on 6 August 1685, Guadeloupe on 10 December and Saint-Domingue on 6 May 1687. The title Code noir first appeared during the Regency of 1715–1723. Its 60 articles made the slave property immune from seizure (article 44) yet criminally liable (article 32), required baptism and Catholic instruction (article 2), forbade work and sales on Sundays and holy days (article 6), made marriage depend on the master's permission and the slave's consent (articles 10–11), made children follow the mother's status (articles 12–13) and forbade selling a couple and their young children separately (article 47). Slaves could not carry arms or gather; a slave who struck his master was executed, and a runaway absent for a month had his ears cut off and was branded, a second time was hamstrung, and a third time executed (article 38). Masters might chain and beat slaves but not torture or mutilate them (article 42), and a master who killed a slave was to be prosecuted (article 43).
In practice the protective clauses were not kept. The planters of Saint-Domingue openly and consistently broke the code, local legislation reversed parts of it during the eighteenth century, and on 5 May 1793 the civil commissioner Polverel had to issue a proclamation demanding its enforcement, translated into Creole and read aloud on every plantation. The Convention abolished slavery in 1794, but after the Treaty of Amiens returned the colonies, slavery and the provisions of the Code noir were put back in place by the law of 20 May 1802 in Martinique, Saint Lucia, Tobago and the Mascarenes, by consular decree of 16 July 1802 in Guadeloupe and of 7 December in Guiana. The code coexisted with the Napoleonic code for forty-three years until the abolition of slavery by the Second Republic in 1848. The indemnity of 150 million francs that France demanded of Haiti in 1825 was calculated on articles 44 and 48 of the Code noir, under which the enslaved labourers of an estate constituted 30 to 60 percent of its value.