As France commemorates the abolition of slavery, a historical anomaly reemerges: the Code Noir, the foundational text of colonial slavery, has never been formally repealed. Questioned in the National Assembly, François Bayrou promises to correct this symbolic oversight by initiating an official repeal. A powerful gesture to finally reconcile memory and legality.
Bayrou promises the end of the Code Noir: When the republic heals its omissions
May 3, 2025, National Assembly. In the tense atmosphere of Government Questions, a deputy raises a disturbing, almost surreal anomaly: the Code Noir, the 17th-century royal edict that legislated slavery in the French colonies, was never formally repealed.
Before the Assembly, Prime Minister François Bayrou stands. His usually calm voice reveals a hint of surprise:
“Thanks to your question, I discover this legal reality which I absolutely did not know.”
In a rare moment of gravity, he commits: a legislative text will be presented to finally, symbolically yet necessarily, abolish the Code Noir.
Thus, under the gilded ceilings of the Republic, a forgotten fragment of a painful history resurfaces. For behind the legislative technicality lies the memory of millions of men and women reduced to slavery, crying out for justice and recognition.
Why, in 2025, must France still settle the legal legacies of colonialism? How could such a violently charged text survive silently in the shadows of the nation’s grand narratives?
Nofi explores the history, the omission, and the political stakes surrounding the Code Noir — this ghost of the past that the Republic now seeks to exorcise.
Organizing colonial slavery
At the end of the 17th century, as France expanded its colonial empire in the Caribbean (Saint-Domingue, Martinique, Guadeloupe), the sugar economy created an urgent need for labor.
In response, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, Louis XIV’s minister, drafted in 1685 an ordinance to legally regulate slavery in the French colonies.¹
Known as the Code Noir, the ordinance officially aimed to:
- Regulate the slave trade and ownership of Black slaves,
- Standardize relations between colonists, slaves, and the royal administration,
- Maintain social order while ensuring the Catholic conversion of captives.
Slaves were explicitly defined as movable property: they could be bought, sold, and inherited just like objects or plots of land.
Article 44 is unambiguous:
“We declare slaves to be movable property.”
Physical violence was legalized and regulated:
- Masters were authorized to inflict corporal punishment, brandings, and mutilations (including ear-cutting for escape attempts),
- However, killing a slave was theoretically punishable — not out of humanism, but to protect the economic value of the “property.”
Religion also played a central role:
- Masters were required to baptize their slaves and enforce Catholic faith,
- All African religions or non-Catholic worship were strictly forbidden and repressed.
This set of sixty articles institutionalized slavery under the authority of the French state:
- It didn’t merely tolerate the slave trade; it legally legitimized it,
- It established an officially sanctioned racial hierarchy.
More than a colonial law, the Code Noir symbolizes the rational organization of a system of human exploitation at the heart of the French colonial project.
An incomplete abolition
The end of the 18th century disrupted the established order in Europe and its colonies. Driven by Enlightenment ideals and the French Revolution, the issue of slavery — long seen as a natural part of colonial economics — finally entered public debate.
In 1794², amidst revolutionary upheaval in mainland France and massive slave revolts in Saint-Domingue (notably the uprising led by Toussaint Louverture), the National Convention passed the decree of February 4:
“Slavery is abolished in all French colonies.”
For the first time, a Western nation legally abolished slavery across its entire colonial empire. However, the abolition was as fragile as the Revolution itself:
- Implementation was uneven: some colonies delayed applying the law,
- Abolition was seen more as a strategic move to retain control of the colonies than a true recognition of the slaves’ rights.
Just a few years later, Napoleon Bonaparte, now First Consul, reinstated slavery through the law of May 20, 1802.³
- The decision aimed to restore the economic prosperity of the sugar colonies, then in crisis,
- Napoleon declared that racial equality was incompatible with the colonial Empire’s economic interests.
The Code Noir regained force, reinforcing the slave order and sparking violent uprisings, notably in Guadeloupe and French Guiana.
Only under the Second Republic, in April 1848⁴, was slavery definitively abolished in the French colonies.
The text proclaimed:
The decree was led by Victor Schœlcher, abolitionist and Undersecretary of State for the Navy and Colonies,
“No French territory may bear slaves.”
Yet a paradox remained:
- Slavery was outlawed,
- But the Code Noir, as a legal text, was never formally repealed.
This legislative gap, left in the shadows, would persist for centuries until spectacularly resurfacing in 2025.
Why the lack of repeal is troubling
After the 1848 abolition, the priority was to rebuild the colonies and redefine free labor.
France abolished slavery but failed to cleanse its foundational texts.
As a result, the Code Noir, though rendered unenforceable by law, was never explicitly repealed.
This administrative silence — perhaps seen at the time as trivial — now carries major symbolic weight:
- That a text enslaving millions remains in the national legal corpus represents a form of forgetting, even denial,
- It reveals a historical reluctance to fully confront the colonial and slave-owning past.
In the 21st century, the continued presence of the Code Noir in French legal archives fuels growing memory-based demands:
- Descendants of enslaved people,
- Intellectuals,
- Anti-racist organizations,
- Historians working to acknowledge collective traumas.
To them, the lack of formal repeal is not a mere legal oddity:
- It’s a deep symptom of a delayed reckoning with memory,
- It reflects a Republic that celebrated ideals without always repairing its historical wounds.
Today, officially repealing the Code Noir, even if purely symbolic from a legal standpoint, carries tremendous weight:
- It affirms that France tolerates no remnants of inhuman systems in its foundational texts,
- It reconciles liberty, equality, and fraternity with historical truth.
Beyond legality, it’s a question of dignity, of reparative memory — and a political act to build a more lucid shared history.
François Bayrou’s promise
• © JULIEN MATTIA / LE PICTORIUM / MAXPPP
On May 13, 2025, in the National Assembly, Deputy Laurent Panifous⁵ (LIOT group) solemnly addresses Prime Minister François Bayrou.
In a tense atmosphere, he states a disturbing fact: despite the 1848 abolition of slavery, the Code Noir was never formally repealed.
In a rare gesture, Bayrou publicly acknowledges the oversight:
“If the Code Noir was not repealed in 1848, it must be.”⁶
At that moment, emotion transcends mere legal debate.
This is about moral reconciliation between the Republic and its colonial history.
Facing the Assembly, Bayrou commits:
- A legislative bill will be presented in the coming weeks,
- To formally abolish the Code Noir,
- And to reaffirm the Republic’s core values of human dignity.
The Prime Minister hopes for a unanimous vote, beyond political divisions.
It’s no longer just about amending an old law: it’s about purging French law of a historical stain — finally aligning memory and legislation.
By addressing the matter with urgency and solemnity, the French government sends:
- A long-overdue tribute to the millions of colonial slavery victims,
- A gesture of memory justice to their descendants,
- And a clear affirmation that the Republic can no longer tolerate even symbolic traces of codified oppression.
Thus, the formal repeal of the Code Noir will become a founding political act for a modern France, fully aware of its heritage — and ready to embrace it.
Abolishing a text Is not abolishing a past
By finally deciding to repeal the Code Noir, France is not merely correcting an administrative oversight; it is performing an essential symbolic gesture:
- Recognizing that the law itself can bear the scars of history.
This long-forgotten remnant, made visible in 2025, reminds us that memory is never definitively settled.
It demands vigilance, commitment — and sometimes, late but necessary actions to reconcile the Republic’s founding principles with the complex realities of its colonial past.
The Code Noir has not been applied in a long time, true.
But its lingering shadow illustrates how closely law and memory are intertwined: what is not erased in law continues to exist in the collective imagination.
Erasing an infamous text is to proclaim that human dignity tolerates no compromise — neither in fact, nor in word.
Because history cannot be erased — but it can be repaired, step by step, word by word.
Sources
- Public Archives: 1685 ordinance known as the Code Noir, consulted via Légifrance (historical version).
- Sala-Molins, Louis. Le Code noir ou le calvaire de Canaan. Presses Universitaires de France, 1987.
- Schœlcher, Victor. Abolition de l’esclavage: écrits historiques (1848). Paris, Librairie générale française, 1998.
- Parliamentary debates of the National Assembly, session of May 13, 2025, intervention by Laurent Panifous and response by Prime Minister François Bayrou.
Notes
- March 1685 ordinance, known as Code Noir, issued under Louis XIV to regulate slavery in the French colonies. Source: National Archives, Colonies section, Code Noir file.
- February 4, 1794 decree, National Convention: “The National Convention declares the abolition of slavery in all colonies.” Revolutionary debates and decrees, vol. XVII.
- May 20, 1802 law, under Napoleon Bonaparte: official restoration of slavery in the French colonies. Text available on Gallica (BnF).
- April 27, 1848 decree, signed by Victor Schœlcher: definitive abolition of slavery in French colonial territories. National Archives, 19th-century Colonies collection.
- Laurent Panifous intervention, National Assembly, May 13, 2025: “France has never formally repealed the Code Noir.” Official Journal of the National Assembly, QAG.
- Declaration by François Bayrou, Prime Minister, May 13, 2025 session: “If the Code Noir hasn’t been repealed, it must be — to reconcile the Republic with its history.” Official Journal of the National Assembly, QAG.
Summary
- Bayrou promises the end of the Code Noir: when the Republic heals its omissions
- Organizing colonial slavery
- An incomplete abolition
- Why the lack of repeal is troubling
- François Bayrou’s promise
- Abolishing a text is not abolishing a past
- Sources
- Notes
