Code Noir

Timeline

1. 1681–1685Versailles · VersaillesAs sugar plantations expanded in Martinique, Guadeloupe, and Saint-Domingue, France needed a unified slave law to replace local custom and governors' ordinances. Colbert had ordered a survey of colonial law before his death; his son, the Marquis de Seignelay, taking charge of naval and colonial affairs, turned the reports into a draft royal edict, writing forced labor, Catholicization, and masters' property rights into a single text.
2. 1685Palace of Versailles · VersaillesLouis XIV signed the Code Noir in March 1685; its opening expelled Jews and recognized Catholicism alone, then required slaves to be baptized, banned non-Catholic worship, and detailed rules for sale, marriage, punishment, runaways, and manumission. The enslaved were treated as chattel in civil law, with masters holding dominion over their labor and persons; the so-called "protection" clauses did not change the Code's nature as a charter of plantation slavery.
3. 1685–1700Saint-Pierre, Martinique · MartiniqueAfter the edict arrived, sovereign councils (Conseil souverain) in Martinique and elsewhere registered it and began citing its articles in cases of runaways, assaults, and manumission, letting planters strengthen legal dominion over slaves of African origin. The Code did not abolish local customs but provided a uniform language of royal authority, allowing the slave order to expand into newly opened western Saint-Domingue, and was copied and revised in the 18th century to become the legal source of slavery in French America.