Code Noir

Timeline

1. 1681–1683Versailles · Île-de-FranceLouis XIV and Colbert required Antillean governors and intendants to report local customs of slave management, so that colonial regulations distinct from metropolitan customary law could be drawn up. Colbert incorporated this into the codification of naval and colonial law; after his death in 1683, the Marquis de Seignelay oversaw its completion.
2. 1685Palace of Versailles · VersaillesLouis XIV issued at Versailles an edict of about sixty articles, applicable to the American islands of Martinique, Guadeloupe, and Saint Christopher. The articles forced slaves to be baptized into Catholicism, forbade Jewish residents from residing there, and specified slaves' incapacity to hold property, grades of punishment, and conditions for limited manumission. Signed by the king, countersigned "Colbert" (Seignelay).
3. 1685–1724Martinique · MartiniqueThe edict was read and registered by the sovereign councils of Martinique, Guadeloupe, and elsewhere, becoming the everyday legal source of plantation society; in 1687 it was extended to French Saint-Domingue. In 1723 it was applied by charter to Île-de-France and Bourbon, and in 1724 Louisiana issued a revised version, so that French slave law covered Atlantic and Indian Ocean plantations.
4. 1794–1848Paris · ParisThe National Convention abolished colonial slavery in 1794; Napoleon restored it in 1802, and the Code's order was again enforced. On April 27, 1848, the provisional government issued Schœlcher's decree, finally abolishing slavery in the French colonies, freeing some 250,000 people. Slave law thereby lost its effect, and the conflict between colonial law and republican constitutional principles was institutionally resolved.