T H E T A K E
On 28 May 2026, the French National Assembly voted 254 to 0 to repeal a 341-year-old law. Not a redundant administrative ordinance. A law that classified human beings as movable property.
The Code Noir, issued by Louis XIV in 1685, was the most comprehensive legal framework for slavery in European history. Its 60 articles governed every dimension of enslaved life across the French Caribbean, Louisiana and the Indian Ocean territories. Article 44 was the most chilling: it placed enslaved people in the same legal category as livestock and furniture, objects to be bought, sold, mortgaged and inherited.
France abolished slavery in 1848. But it never repealed the Code Noir. For 178 years, the law that turned human beings into property sat technically unrepealed in French legal history. That changes now, symbolically at least.
The vote's unanimity was striking. In a National Assembly fractured by political division, not one member voted against. The bill's sponsor, Max Mathiasin, a lawmaker from Guadeloupe and great great grandson of enslaved people, put the case plainly: "We are not descendants of slaves. We are descendants of human beings who were born free, then reduced to slavery."
That framing carries substantial legal and reputational weight. The distinction between being a descendant of a slave and a descendant of a human being who was enslaved is not semantic. It sits at the foundation of every reparations argument, every discrimination litigation, and every corporate accountability conversation now gaining traction globally.
France transported approximately 1.4 million Africans across the Atlantic, making it the third largest slave trading power in Europe. In 2001, it became the first country to legislate the slave trade as a crime against humanity under the Taubira Law. And yet even that act did not trigger repeal of the Code Noir. The law that defined the crime remained on the books for another quarter century.
This week's vote arrives at a charged moment. At the Taubira Law's 25th anniversary on 21 May, President Macron described reparations as "a question we must not refuse," but committed no money. In March 2026, France abstained from a UN resolution calling for reparatory measures for the transatlantic slave trade. A global reparatory justice summit is scheduled for Accra in June, where Macron has agreed to speak.
The gap between symbolic legal repair and structural change is precisely where institutional reputations are tested. France's overseas territories remain among the country's poorest regions, with populations disproportionately descended from enslaved people. Acknowledging those ancestors as human beings, not property, is necessary and overdue. It does not close a wealth gap compounded across four centuries.
The weight of this vote is also amplified by the moment in which it falls. In 2026, the dehumanisation of civilian populations is playing out in real time, in full public view, with states making calculated choices about where they stand. The distance between classifying people as property in a royal decree and denying their humanity through contemporary policy, narrative or silence is shorter than the 341 years separating us from Louis XIV might suggest.
For legal practitioners, international investors and institutions, the calculus is shifting fast. Historical injustice is no longer a fringe concern, it is a mainstream accountability question. The issue is not whether your organisation will face scrutiny. It is whether your response, when it comes, is principled or merely reactive.
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T H E S I G N A L
"France shipped approximately 1.4 million Africans across the Atlantic in chains, the third largest slave trade of any European power. The Code Noir that classified them as movable property was signed in 1685 and never formally repealed. Until 28 May 2026."
— Associated Press / France 24 / ABC News, 28 May 2026
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T H E Q U E S T I O N
When the law that made people property survives 178 years after the society it governed formally abandoned it, what does that tell us about the relationship between legal text, institutional memory, and the willingness to confront the past? And for the organisations and governments now watching, at what point does symbolic recognition become the floor, not the ceiling?
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SOURCES & FURTHER READING
— France 24: France votes unanimously to abolish Code Noir (28 May 2026)
— Euronews: France inches towards symbolic repeal of Code Noir (28 May 2026)
— US News / AP: France moves to repeal the slavery law it never abolished (28 May 2026)
— Human Rights Watch: France Acknowledges Need for Slavery Reparations (27 May 2026)
— UN News: Resolution urges reparations for slavery's historical wrongs (March 2026)
— ABC News: What to know about Code Noir (28 May 2026)
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The views expressed in this newsletter are Jonathan Ashton's own personal perspectives and do not represent the views of any organisation with which he is or has been affiliated.
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