Liberté, égalité et fraternité
In Sue Peabody’s Peabody’s book “There Are No Slaves in France”: The Political Culture of Race and Slavery in the Ancien Regime, the reader was introduced to the French policy that were no slaves present in France. According to a royal edit of 1315, King Louis X emphasized a tradition of no slavery amongst Frenchmen. King Louis X legislation was understood, but entirely appreciated. This remarkable legislation of the “freedom from slavery” would be revised in a 1716 ordinance, as a result, of court case revisions to this 1716 ordinance (Peabody, 234) Does Peabody’s claim that, in the third quarter of the eighteenth century, “members of France’s intellectual and judicial elite appropriated the symbol of the slave to criticize perceived excesses of royal authority” (p. 10). The author might have helped herself on this score had she considered how politically and ideologically the blacks’ struggle for freedom related to the growing contemporary debate on Louis X social and economic relations?
An instance of the cort case revision of the 1716 ordinance, was a case created by Verdelin vs. Boucauex. The Boucauex versus Verdelin case was between “slave” (Boucauex) and Verdelin(owner) was based upon the suit of false captivity and lack of wages for nine years of labor. Not just imprisonment, but captivity. Peabody summates the course of the case resulting in Boucauex’s freedom from Verdelin. But the reviewing court, named the Paris Admirality court, granted freedom but restitution for Monsieur Boucauex’s hard labor.
Peabody notes in her analysis, that this case was a moment of plain compromise of the clearly set legislation of the admirality court and the successive legislation of the French people since Louis X policies. This was not being enforce by the Frecnh legislation. The legistion by 1738 turned it legislative enforcement in the “Ploice de Noir” which enforced imprisonment for those were slaves and/ or interracially married without proper identification of their French citizenship . The enforcement of the “Police de Noir” came to a head upon the false imprisonment of 150 slaves. These slaves challenged the French admirality court and its statutes. The governing French Parliment released 150 initial slaves the case was based upon, and numerous that had been arrested since the beginnins of the case. Peabody argues, they fought their case based upon color distinctions not the coined term “slavery”. Their color distinctions granted freedom to proper registration for citizenship, marriage certificates, identification that will permit them to become eventual land owners.
In conclusion, these two court cases that were boldly and judiciously approached the Parisien admirality court enforce harsh legislation of the “Police de Noir” until 1777. Peabody concludes, the use of racial language and distinctions became
legal commonplace by the late eighteenth century, because it preserved the myth that all Frenchmen were free—to which all parties, the monarchy included, subscribed—while protecting society against the potentially costly impact of its universal application; even the advocates of slave emancipation used racial language when it was of benefit to clients for whom a case could be made that they were of nonblack ancestry. Thus, by 1782, “the notion of racial purity was firmly entrenched in the minds of even the staunchest defenders of freedom” (p. 135).However, after much bitterness and loss, the French peoples of the Second Republic would grant counsel and successfully filed and heard many instances where slaves who were living in France sued for their freedom . Thus the new legislation, based upon King Louis X compassionate legislation of the Middle Ages, permeated the people of France into a whole people outlawing slavery.
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