When did France abolish slavery in its colonies?
History of Haiti
On 29 August 1793, Sonthonax took the radical step of proclaiming the freedom of the slaves in the north province (with severe limits on their freedom). In September and October, emancipation was extended throughout the colony. The French National Convention, the first elected Assembly of the First Republic (1792–1804), on 4 February 1794, under the leadership of Maximilien de Robespierre, abolished slavery by law in France and all its colonies. The constitution of 1793, which was never applied, and the constitution of 1795, which was put into effect, did both contain an explicit ban on slavery.
Haitian Revolution
The decision was confirmed and extended by the National Convention, the first elected Assembly of the First Republic (1792–1804), on the 4th of February 1794, under the leadership of Maximilien Robespierre. It abolished slavery by law in France and all its colonies, and granted civil and political rights to all black men in the colonies. The French constitutions of 1793 and 1795 both included the abolition of slavery. The constitution of 1793 was never applied, but that of 1795 was implemented and lasted until replaced by the consular and imperial constitutions under Napoleon Bonaparte. Despite racial tensions in Saint Domingue, the French revolutionary government at the time welcomed abolition with a show of idealism and optimism. The emancipation of slaves was viewed as an example of liberty for other countries, much as the American Revolution was meant to serve as the first of many liberation movements. Danton, one of the Frenchmen present at the meeting of the National Convention, expressed this sentiment:
Slavery in the colonial United States
Implemented in colonial Louisiana in 1724, Louis XIV of France's "Code Noir" regulated the slave trade and the institution of slavery in the French colonies. As a result, Louisiana and the Mobile area developed very different patterns of slavery compared to the British colonies. As written, the "Code Noir" gave some rights to slaves, including the right to marry. Although it authorized and codified cruel corporal punishment against slaves under certain conditions, it forbade slave owners to torture slaves, to separate married couples (and to separate young children from their mothers). It required owners to instruct slaves in the Catholic faith, implying that Africans were human beings endowed with a soul, an idea that had not been acknowledged until then.
First Nations
The citizens of New France received slaves as gifts from their allies among First Nations peoples. Slaves were prisoners taken in raids against the villages of the Fox nation, a tribe that was an ancient rival of the Miami people and their Algonquian allies.
Native (or "pani", a corruption of Pawnee) slaves were much easier to obtain and thus more numerous than African slaves in New France, but were less valued. The average native slave died at 18, and the average African slave died at 25 (the average European could expect to live until the age of 35). By 1790 the abolition movement was gaining ground in Canada and the ill intent of slavery was evidenced by an incident involving a slave woman being violently abused by her slave owner on her way to being sold in the United States. The Act Against Slavery of 1793 legislated the gradual abolition of slavery: no slaves could be imported; slaves already in the province would remain enslaved until death, no new slaves could be brought into Upper Canada, and children born to female slaves would be slaves but must be freed at age 25. The Act remained in force until 1833 when the British Parliament's Slavery Abolition Act finally abolished slavery in all parts of the British Empire. Historian Marcel Trudel has documented 4,092 recorded slaves throughout Canadian history, of which 2,692 were Aboriginal people, owned by the French, and 1,400 blacks owned by the British, together owned by approximately 1,400 masters. Trudel also noted 31 marriages took place between French colonists and Aboriginal slaves.
Abolitionism
At about the same time, France started colonizing Africa and gained possession of much of West Africa by 1900. In 1905, the French abolished slavery in most of French West Africa. The French also attempted to abolish Tuareg slavery following the Kaocen Revolt. In the region of the Sahel, slavery has however long persisted.
Slavery in Canada (New France)
A side effect of the Treaty of Paris was that Panis enslavement in North America greatly diminished and eventually disappeared at the turn of the century, most likely due to harsh economic conditions. In 1793, importing black slaves became prohibited in Upper Canada, but it was not until the Slavery Abolition Act 1833 that the institution finally was abolished in the entire British Empire, though on a gradual basis.
Slavery in the Spanish New World colonies
Support for abolitionism rose in Great Britain. Slavery was abolished under the French Revolution, for the French Caribbean colonies, (the slavery was abolished in European part of France in 1315 by Louis X) but was restored under Napoleon I. Slaves in Saint-Domingue established independence, founding the republic of Haiti in 1804.
Mauritius
Slavery was abolished in 1835, and the planters ultimately received two million pounds sterling in compensation for the loss of their slaves who had been imported from Africa and Madagascar during the French occupation. The abolition of slavery had important impacts on Mauritius's society, economy and population. The planters brought a large number of indentured labourers from India to work in the sugar cane fields. Between 1834 and 1921, around half a million indentured labourers were present on the island. They worked on sugar estates, factories, in transport and on construction sites. Additionally, the British brought 8,740 Indian soldiers to the island. Aapravasi Ghat, in the bay at Port Louis and now a UNESCO site, was the first British colony to serve as a major reception centre for indentured servants.
Abolitionism
The slave revolt, in the largest Caribbean French colony of Saint-Domingue in 1791, was the beginning of what became the Haitian Revolution led by formerly enslaved people like Georges Biassou, Toussaint Louverture, and Jean-Jacques Dessalines. The rebellion swept through the north of the colony, and with it came freedom to thousands of enslaved blacks, but also violence and death. In 1793, French Civil Commissioners in St. Domingue and abolitionists, Léger-Félicité Sonthonax and Étienne Polverel, issued the first emancipation proclamation of the modern world (Decree of 16 Pluviôse An II). The Convention sent them to safeguard the allegiance of the population to revolutionary France. The proclamation resulted in crucial military strategy as it gradually brought most of the black troops into the French fold and kept the colony under the French flag for most of the conflict. The connection with France lasted until blacks and free people of colour formed L'armée indigène in 1802 to resist Napoleon's Expédition de Saint-Domingue. Victory over the French in the decisive battle of Battle of Vertières finally led to independence and the creation of present Haiti in 1804.
Slavery
The Haitian Revolution of 1804, the only successful slave revolt in human history, precipitated the end of slavery in all French colonies.
Slave codes
The French colonies were the only portion of the Americas to have an effective slave code applied from the center of the empire. King Louis XIV applied the Code Noir in 1685, and it was adopted by Saint-Domingue in 1687 and the West Indies in 1687, Guyana in 1704, Reunion in 1723, and Louisiana in 1724. It was never applied in Canada, which had very few slaves. The Code Noir was developed in part to combat the spread of Protestantism and thus focuses more on religious restrictions than other slave codes. The Code was significantly updated in 1724.
Étienne Polverel
By this time, Spain and Britain had declared war on France. White colonists in Saint-Domingue had already signed an alliance with the British who would aid them in putting down the slave insurrection. Both of these empires wanted Saint-Domingue, especially Spain, which had a colony on the same island. To combat the French and Spanish threat, Polverel needed to gather even more support to preserve French rule in Saint-Domingue. In August 1793, Polverel and Sonthonax issued general emancipation for all blacks born in France's colonies, including for their families. Polverel followed that proclamation with another in October, which stated that all blacks were to be French citizens and enjoy full and complete equality. Following emancipation, though, Polverel hoped to provide one more incentive for the blacks to fight for the French Republic. He therefore decreed that blacks were to be given exclusive rights over land in a year's time. He also passed other laws on post-slave labor, including a requirement that freed slaves continue to work on their plantations for one year following the decree. This finally won over the remaining blacks who were not loyal to the Republican government, and they joined together to repel the incoming British and Spanish troops. The blacks of Haiti were not just freed but legally equal to whites.
Abolitionism in the United Kingdom
The Slave Trade Act was passed by the British Parliament on 25 March 1807, making the slave trade illegal throughout the British Empire. The Act imposed a fine of £100 for every slave found aboard a British ship. At a time when Napoleon decided to revive slavery, which had been abolished during the French Revolution and to send his troops to re-enslave the people of Haiti, Guadeloupe and the other French Caribbean possessions, the British took the moral high ground with their prohibition of the slave trade.
Atlantic World
The French colony of Saint-Domingue was one of the first American jurisdictions to end slavery, in 1794. Brazil was last nation in the Western Hemisphere to end slavery, in 1888.
Slavery in Malta
Slavery was abolished during the French occupation of Malta and confirmed later during the Crown Colony of Malta.
Active and passive citizens
Slavery in France, throughout the Revolution, remained common in the colonies. The abolition of slavery in the colonies would have affected planters who were represented in the assemblies by deputies, particularly the Lameths. The coloured free saw that their rights were being taken from them and finally on this date in 1791 the assembly decided to withdraw their civil rights. However, after the Haitian Revolution and new freedom of blacks in French colonies, in 1794 radical Jacobins reinstated the rights of blacks. Furthermore, slavery was abolished in all French colonies, and free blacks of those colonies were made electable to the French government as colonial representatives. Along with this the rights for free association for workers and the right to strike were also taken away. After a series of strikes on June 14, 1791, in workshops located in Paris, the Loi Le Chapelier was passed. The intention was to establish a free labour market by forbidding associations by workers and also the formation of trade unions.
French colonial empire
The French colonial empire constituted the overseas colonies, protectorates and mandate territories that came under French rule from the 16th century onward. A distinction is generally made between the "first colonial empire," that existed until 1814, by which time most of it had been lost, and the "second colonial empire", which began with the conquest of Algiers in 1830. The second colonial empire came to an end after the loss in later wars of Indochina (1954) and Algeria (1962), and relatively peaceful decolonizations elsewhere after 1960.
French colonial empire
At the beginning of Napoleon III's reign, the presence of France in Senegal was limited to a trading post on the island of Goree, a narrow strip on the coast, the town of Saint-Louis, and a handful of trading posts in the interior. The economy had largely been based on the slave trade, carried out by the rulers of the small kingdoms of the interior, until France abolished slavery in its colonies in 1848. In 1854, Napoleon III named an enterprising French officer, Louis Faidherbe, to govern and expand the colony, and to give it the beginning of a modern economy. Faidherbe built a series of forts along the Senegal River, formed alliances with leaders in the interior, and sent expeditions against those who resisted French rule. He built a new port at Dakar, established and protected telegraph lines and roads, followed these with a rail line between Dakar and Saint-Louis and another into the interior. He built schools, bridges, and systems to supply fresh water to the towns. He also introduced the large-scale cultivation of Bambara groundnuts and peanuts as a commercial crop. Reaching into the Niger valley, Senegal became the primary French base in West Africa and a model colony. Dakar became one of the most important cities of the French Empire and of Africa.
France
Also in March 1793, the civil war of the Vendée against Paris started, evoked by both the Civil Constitution of the Clergy of 1790 and the nationwide army conscription early 1793; elsewhere in France rebellion was brewing too.
A factionalist feud in the National Convention, smoldering ever since October 1791, came to a climax with the group of the 'Girondins' on 2 June 1793 being forced to resign and leave the Convention.
The counter-revolution, begun in March 1793 in the Vendée, by July had spread to Brittany, Normandy, Bordeaux, Marseilles, Toulon, Lyon. Paris' Convention government between October and December 1793 with brutal measures managed to subdue most internal uprisings, at the cost of tens of thousands of lives. Some historians consider the civil war to have lasted until 1796 with a toll of possibly 450,000 lives.
France in February 1794 abolished slavery in its American colonies, but would reintroduce it later.
United States Virgin Islands
The Danish were able to defeat the enslaved Africans with help from the French in Martinique. Instead of allowing themselves to be recaptured, more than a dozen of the ringleaders shot themselves before the French forces could capture them and call them to account for their activities during the period of rebel control. It is estimated that by 1775, slaves outnumbered the Danish settlers by a ratio of 5:1. The indigenous Caribs and Arawaks were also used as slave labor to the point of the entire native population being absorbed into the larger groups. Slavery was abolished in the Virgin Islands on July 3, 1848.
Hinduism in French Guiana
The abolition of slavery by France in 1848 created a labor crisis in its three colonies in the Caribbean. A large number of Indian laborers were brought into French Guiana from neighboring British Guiana, and while some of those had been converted to Protestantism most were Hindu, with perhaps 20% Muslim.
French colonial empire
In 1905, the French abolished slavery in most of French West Africa. David P. Forsythe wrote: "From Senegal and Mauritania in the west to Niger in the east (what became French Africa), there was a parallel series of ruinous wars, resulting in tremendous numbers of people being violently enslaved. At the beginning of the twentieth century there may have been between 3 and 3.5 million slaves, representing over 30 percent of the total population, within this sparsely populated region."
Ikelan
When French colonial governments were established, they passed legislation to abolish slavery, but did not enforce it. Some commentators believe the French interest was directed more at dismantling the traditional Tuareg political economy, which depended on slave labor for herding, than at freeing the slaves. Historian Martin Klein reports that there was a large scale attempt by French West African authorities to liberate slaves and other bonded castes in Tuareg areas following the 1914–1916 Firouan revolt.
Abolitionism
Abolitionism (or the abolitionist movement) was the movement to end slavery. This term can be used both formally and informally. In Western Europe and the Americas, abolitionism was a historic movement that sought to end the Atlantic and Indian slave trades and set slaves free. King Charles I of Spain, usually known as Emperor Charles V, was following the example of Louis X of France who abolished slavery within the Kingdom of France in 1315. He passed a law which would have abolished colonial slavery in 1542, although this law was not passed in the largest colonial states, and it was not enforced as a result. In the late 17th century, the Roman Catholic Church officially condemned the slave trade in response to a plea by Lourenço da Silva de Mendouça, and it was also vehemently condemned by Pope Gregory XVI in 1839. The abolitionist movement only started in the late 18th century, however, when English and American Quakers began to question the morality of slavery. James Oglethorpe was among the first to articulate the Enlightenment case against slavery, banning it in the Province of Georgia on humanitarian grounds, and arguing against it in Parliament, and eventually encouraging his friends Granville Sharp and Hannah More to vigorously pursue the cause. Soon after his death in 1785, Sharp and More united with William Wilberforce and others in forming the Clapham Sect.
Jean-François Delacroix
Before having to make serious statements, he still could, with his friend Danton, propose and vote on 16 Pluviose Year II (4 February 1794) the abolition of slavery of blacks in the colonies; and to decree on 19 Ventose Year II (9 March 1794), the arrest of slave-owning white settlers present in France who were intriguing against the execution of the decree.
Racism in France
During the period of Enlightenment in France, however, slavery and the trade of slaves were more and more criticized by philosophers of the Enlightenment. For instance, Montesquieu, in "The Spirit of the Laws" (1748) criticized those who called themselves Christians yet practiced slavery. Also, Voltaire, in "Candide" (1759), denounced the difficult conditions faced by African slaves. In 1788, Société des Amis Noirs ("Society of the Friends of the Blacks") was founded with the goal of abolishing the slave trade using the argument that slavery was in fact not economically profitable.
West Indies Campaign 1804–10
The fall of Guadeloupe marked the end of the final French territory in the Caribbean; the entire region was now in the hands of either the British or the Spanish, except the independent state of Haiti. The lack of French privateers and warships sparked a boom in trade operations, and the economies of the Caribbean islands experienced a resurgence. It also made a significant reduction in French international trade and had a corresponding effect on the French economy. Finally, the capture of the last French colony struck a decisive blow to the Atlantic slave trade, which had been made illegal by the British government in 1807 and was actively persecuted by the Royal Navy. Without French colonies in the Caribbean, there was no ready market for slaves in the region and the slave trade consequently dried up.
Slavery in Africa
The final major transformation of slave relationships came with the inconsistent emancipation efforts starting in the mid-19th century. As European authorities began to take over large parts of inland Africa starting in the 1870s, the colonial policies were often confusing on the issue. For example, even when slavery was deemed illegal, colonial authorities would return escaped slaves to their masters. Slavery persisted in some countries under colonial rule and in some instances it was not until independence that slavery practices were significantly transformed. Anti-colonial struggles in Africa often brought slaves and former slaves together with masters and former masters to fight for independence; however, this cooperation was short-lived and following independence political parties would often form based upon the stratifications of slaves and masters. In some parts of Africa, slavery and slavery-like practices continue to this day and the problem has proven to be difficult for governments and civil society to eliminate.
Efforts by Europeans against slavery and the slave trade began in the late 18th century and had a large impact on slavery in Africa. Portugal was the first country in the continent to abolish slavery in metropolitan Portugal and Portuguese India by a bill issued on 12 February 1761, but this did not affect their colonies of Brazil and Portuguese Africa. France abolished slavery in 1794. However, slavery was again allowed by Napoleon in 1802 and not abolished for good until 1848. In 1803, Denmark-Norway became the first country from Europe to implement a ban on the slave trade. Slavery itself was not banned until 1848. Britain followed in 1807 with the passage of the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act by Parliament. This law allowed stiff fines, increasing with the number of slaves transported, for captains of slave ships. Britain followed this with the Slavery Abolition Act 1833 which freed all slaves in the British Empire. British pressure on other countries resulted in them agreeing to end the slave trade from Africa. For example, the 1820 U.S. Law on Slave Trade made slave trading piracy, punishable by death. In addition, the Ottoman Empire abolished slave trade from Africa in 1847 under British pressure.
Saint-Domingue
In 1791, the slaves and some free people of color of Saint-Domingue began waging a rebellion against French authority. The rebels became reconciled to French rule following the abolition of slavery in the colony in 1793, although this alienated the island's dominant slave-holding class. France controlled the entirety of Hispaniola from 1795 to 1802, when a renewed rebellion began. The last French troops withdrew from the western portion of the island in late 1803, and the colony later declared its independence as Haiti, its indigenous name, the following year.
Dakar
The slave trade was abolished by France in February 1794. However, Napoleon reinstated it in May 1802, then finally abolished it permanently in March 1815. Despite Napoleon's abolition, a clandestine slave trade continued at Gorée until 1848, when it was abolished throughout all French territories. To replace trade in slaves, the French promoted peanut cultivation on the mainland. As the peanut trade boomed, tiny Gorée Island, whose population had grown to 6,000 residents, proved ineffectual as a port. Traders from Gorée decided to move to the mainland and a "factory" with warehouses was established in Rufisque in 1840.
Large public expenditure for infrastructure was allocated by the colonial authorities to Dakar's development. The port facilities were improved with jetties, a telegraph line was established along the coast to Saint-Louis and the Dakar-Saint-Louis railway was completed in 1885, at which point the city became an important base for the conquest of the western Sudan.
Mauritania
Slavery persists in Mauritania. In 1905, the French colonial administration declared an end of slavery in Mauritania, with very little success. Although nominally abolished in 1981, it was not illegal to own slaves until 2007.
Battle of Martinique (1794)
During 1794 the British were in negotiations with a French planter, Louis-François Dubuc, who wished to gain British protection, as the then French Constitutional Assembly of the 1st Republic was busy passing a law abolishing slavery, which had actually took place in Paris on 4 February of 1794. However the Whitehall Accord of 19 February, 1794, between counter-revolutionary French colonists and Great Britain, which allowed colonial French slave-owners to maintain slavery, was not signed until after the British had landed.
Economic history of France
The slaving interest was based in Nantes, La Rochelle, Bordeaux, and Le Havre during the years 1763 to 1792. The 'négriers' were merchants who specialized in funding and directing cargoes of black captives to the Caribbean colonies, which had high death rates and needed a continuous fresh supply. The négriers intermarried with each other's families; most were Protestants. Their derogatory and patronizing approach toward blacks immunized them from moral criticism. They strongly opposed to the application of the Declaration of Rights of Man to blacks. While they ridiculed the slaves as dirty and savage, they often took a black mistress The French government paid a bounty on each captive sold to the colonies, which made the business profitable and patriotic. They vigorously defended their business against the abolition movement of 1789.
Abolitionism
On 27 April 1848, under the Second Republic (1848–52), the decree-law of Schœlcher abolished slavery in the remaining colonies. The state bought the slaves from the "colons" (white colonists; "" in Creole), and then freed them.
Name of France
This decree served as the basis for a group of crusading lawyers at the parlement of Paris, many of whom were members of the Society of the Friends of the Blacks, winning unprecedented emancipation rights in a series of cases before the French revolution, which (temporarily) led to the complete abolition of slavery on French territories and colonies in 1794 until Napoleon, propped up by the plantation lobbies, re-introduced slavery in sugarcane-growing colonies.
Slavery in Africa
The continuing anti-slavery movement in Europe became an excuse and a casus belli for the European conquest and colonization of much of the African continent. It was the central theme of the Brussels Anti-Slavery Conference 1889-90. In the late 19th century, the Scramble for Africa saw the continent rapidly divided between Imperialistic European powers, and an early but secondary focus of all colonial regimes was the suppression of slavery and the slave trade. Following conquest and abolition by the French, over a million slaves in French West Africa fled from their masters to earlier homes between 1906 and 1911. In Madagascar over 500,000 slaves were freed following French abolition in 1896. In response to this pressure, Ethiopia officially abolished slavery in 1932, Sokoto Caliphate abolished slavery in 1900, and the rest of the Sahel in 1911. Colonial nations were mostly successful in this aim, though slavery is still very active in Africa even though it has gradually moved to a wage economy. Independent nations attempting to westernize or impress Europe sometimes cultivated an image of slavery suppression, even as they, in the case of Egypt, hired European soldiers like Samuel White Baker's expedition up the Nile. Slavery has never been eradicated in Africa, and it commonly appears in African states, such as Chad, Ethiopia, Mali, Niger, and Sudan, in places where law and order have collapsed.
Sweatshop
Some of the earliest sweatshop critics were found in the 19th century abolitionist movement that had originally coalesced in opposition to chattel slavery, and many abolitionists saw similarities between slavery and sweatshop work. As slavery was successively outlawed in industrial countries between 1794 (in France) and 1865 (in the United States), some abolitionists sought to broaden the anti-slavery consensus to include other forms of harsh labor, including sweatshops. As it happened, the first significant law to address sweatshops (the Factory Act of 1833) was passed in the United Kingdom several years after the slave trade (1807) and ownership of slaves (1833) were made illegal.
Louisiana Purchase
In January 1802, France sent General Charles Leclerc to Saint-Domingue (present-day Haiti) to re-establish slavery, which had been abolished by the constitution of the French Republic of 1795, as well as to reduce the rights of free people of color and take back control of the island from Toussaint Louverture. Louverture had fended off invasions of St. Domingue by the Spanish and British empires, but had also begun to consolidate power for himself on the island. Before the Revolution, France had derived enormous wealth from St. Domingue at the cost of the lives and freedom of the slaves. Napoleon wanted its revenues and productivity for France restored. Alarmed over the French actions and its intention to re-establish an empire in North America, Jefferson declared neutrality in relation to the Caribbean, refusing credit and other assistance to the French, but allowing war contraband to get through to the rebels to prevent France from regaining a foothold.
Slavery in Portugal
The abolition of all forms of slavery occurred in 1761 on mainland Portugal and Portuguese India through a decree by the Marquis of Pombal, followed, in 1777, by Madeira. The transatlantic slave trade was definitely outlawed altogether by Portugal in 1836, at the same time as other European powers, as a result of British pressure. Slavery within the African Portuguese colonies, however, would only be definitely abolished in 1869, following a treaty between United States and Britain for the suppression of the slave trade. In Brazil, which had become independent from Portugal in 1822, slavery was finally abolished in 1888.
History of slavery
There were slaves in mainland France (especially in trade ports such as Nantes or Bordeaux)., but the institution was never officially authorized there. The legal case of Jean Boucaux in 1739 clarified the unclear legal position of possible slaves in France, and was followed by laws that established registers for slaves in mainland France, who were limited to a three-year stay, for visits or learning a trade. Unregistered "slaves" in France were regarded as free. However, slavery was of vital importance in France's Caribbean possessions, especially Saint-Domingue.
French corvette Moineau (1794)
In June 1796, the French Directory's executive agents Baco and Burnel, arrived at Mauritius with the naval division under Sercey and set out to abolish slavery, in application of the decree of 16 Pluviose Year II on the abolition of slavery. This alienated the colonists and Governor Malartic; a militia stormed Baco and Burnel's quarters and forcibly put them aboard "Moineau".
Reign of Terror
On 16 Pluviôse (4 February 1794), the National Convention decreed that slavery be abolished in all of France and French colonies.
Saint John, U.S. Virgin Islands
The Danish defeated the enslaved Africans with help from French colonists of Martinique. Instead of submitting to captivity and slavery, more than a dozen men and women, including Breffu, one of the leaders, shot and killed themselves before the French forces reached them. It is estimated that by 1775, slaves outnumbered the Danish settlers on Saint John by a ratio of 5:1. Denmark finally abolished slavery in Saint John and its other islands on July 3, 1848.
Racism in North America
There are records of slavery in Canada from the 17th century. The majority of Canadian slaves were Aboriginal, and United Empire Loyalists brought slaves with them after leaving the United States. Marie-Joseph Angélique was one of New France's best-known slaves. While pregnant, she set her mistress' house on fire for revenge or to divert the attention away from her escape. She ran away with the father of her child, who was also a black slave and belonged to another owner. The fire that she started ended up burning part of Montreal and a large portion of the Hôtel-Dieu. Later on, she was caught and sentenced to death. In 1793 the Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada, John Graves Simcoe, passed the Act Against Slavery making it illegal to bring slaves into the colony, and mandating the gradual emancipation of all slaves in Upper Canada. Slavery was abolished in Upper Canada in 1793 by the Act Against Slavery and fully abolished in all provinces as a result of the Slavery Abolition Act which abolished slavery throughout the British Empire.
Abolitionism
In 1315, Louis X, king of France, published a decree proclaiming that "France signifies freedom" and that any slave setting foot on the French ground should be freed. This prompted subsequent governments to circumscribe slavery in the overseas colonies.
Abolitionism
During the Age of Enlightenment, many philosophers wrote pamphlets against slavery and its moral and economical justifications, including Montesquieu in "The Spirit of the Laws" (1748) and Denis Diderot in the "Encyclopédie". In 1788, Jacques Pierre Brissot founded the Society of the Friends of the Blacks ("Société des Amis des Noirs") to work for the abolition of slavery. After the Revolution, on 4 April 1792, France granted free people of colour full citizenship.
Slavery in Mauritania
In 1905, an end of slavery in Mauritania was declared by the colonial French administration but the vastness of Mauritania mostly gave the law very few successes. In 1981, Mauritania became the last country in the world to abolish slavery, when a presidential decree abolished the practice. However, no criminal laws were passed to enforce the ban. In 2007, "under international pressure", the government passed a law allowing slaveholders to be prosecuted. Despite this, the number of slaves in the country has been estimated by Global Slavery Index to be 43,000 (or 1.058% of the population) in 2015 and by the organization SOS Slavery to be up to 600,000 (or 17% of the population). Sociologist Kevin Bales and Global Slavery Index estimate that Mauritania has the highest proportion of people in slavery of any country in the world. While other countries in the region have people in "slavelike conditions", the situation in Mauritania is "unusually severe", according to African history professor Bruce Hall.
Abolition of feudalism in France
The August Decrees were nineteen decrees made on 4–11 August 1789 by the National Constituent Assembly during the French Revolution. There were 18 decrees or articles adopted concerning the abolition of feudalism, other privileges of the nobility, and seigneurial rights.
The Slave Route Project
The destruction of the slave systems began in the French colony of Saint-Domingue (today Haiti) on the island of Hispaniola towards the end of the eighteenth century. The slave rebellion in Saint-Domingue in August 1791 profoundly weakened the Caribbean colonial system, sparking a general insurrection that lead to the abolition of slavery and the independence of Haiti. It marked the beginning of a triple process of destruction of the slavery system, the slave trade and colonialism. Slavery was abolished in 1886 in Cuba and 1888 in Brazil.
Slavery in the colonial United States
The French introduced legalized slavery into their colonies in New France both near the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River. (They also used slave labor on their island colonies in the Caribbean: Guadeloupe and especially Saint-Domingue.) After the port of New Orleans was founded in 1718 with access to the Gulf Coast, French colonists imported more African slaves to the Illinois Country for use as agricultural or mining laborers. By the mid-eighteenth century, slaves accounted for as many as a third of the limited population in that rural area.
Assimilation (French colonialism)
Examples of assimilation in practice in the colonies were in Senegal's Four Communes, they were: Gorée, Dakar, Rufisque and Saint-Louis. The purpose of the theory of assimilation was to turn African natives into "French" men by educating them in the language and French culture and hence become French citizens or equals. During the French Revolution of 1848, slavery was abolished and the four communes were given voting rights and they were also granted the right to elect a Deputy to the Assembly in Paris. In the 1880s France expanded their rule to other colonies at which point there was opposition from the French locals and so the universal law did not apply to the new colonies.
Marie Rose Cavelan
The appointment of the ultra-Protestant planter, Ninian Home, as Lieutenant Governor in 1793, ensured that none of the colonists of French descent would be allowed to participate in the Legislative Assembly. The following year, the French National Convention abolished slavery and extended citizenship to all former slaves in all of the French colonies. The Convention sent out emissaries to make contact with those colonies, which had long-standing ties to France, to regain loyalties in the eastern Caribbean. By the time the agents reached Grenada, a revolt was already well-organized, with Fédon as the leader of the insurgents, which included free coloureds, slaves and maroons. The French agents offered to provide military assistance and guidance, which included the use of Jacobin terror tactics.
Slavery in Canada
By 1688, New France's population was 11,562 people, made up primarily of fur traders, missionaries, and farmers settled along the St. Lawrence Valley. To help overcome its severe shortage of servants and labourers, King Louis XIV granted New France's petition to import black slaves from West Africa. While slavery was prohibited in France, it was permitted in its colonies as a means of providing the massive labour force needed to clear land, construct buildings and (in the Caribbean colonies) work on sugar plantations. New France soon established its own "Code Noir", defining the control and management of slaves. The 1685 Code Noir set the pattern for policing slavery. It required that all slaves be instructed as Catholics and not as Protestants. It concentrated on defining the condition of slavery, and established harsh controls. Slaves had virtually no rights, though the Code did enjoin masters to take care of the sick and old. The blacks were usually called "servants", and the harsh gang system was not used. Death rates among slaves were high.
Emancipation Day
The Slavery Abolition Act 1833 ended slavery in the British Empire on August 1, 1834, and thus also in Canada. However, the first colony in the British Empire to abolish slavery was Upper Canada, now Ontario. John Graves Simcoe, the first Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada (1791–1796), passed an Act Against Slavery in 1793, which led to the abolition of slavery in Upper Canada by 1810. It was superseded by the Slavery Abolition Act 1833.
Free people of color
When slavery was ended in the colony in 1793, by action of the French government, there were approximately 28,000 "anciens libres" ("free before") in Saint-Domingue. The term was used to distinguish those who were already free, compared to those liberated by the general emancipation of 1793. About 16,000 of these "anciens libres" were gens de couleur libres. Another 12,000 were "affranchis", black slaves who had either purchased their freedom or had been given it by their masters for various reasons.
Sophie Doin
Sophie Doin (née Mamy), 1800 – 1846, was a French novelist and essayist whose writings contributed to the renewal of abolitionism in France during the 1820s. She targeted abuses in the French colonies, most notably Guadeloupe and Martinique, where slavery continued for decades after the declaration of Haitian independence in 1804. In her various antislavery writings, notably the novel La Famille noire, ou la Traite de l’esclavage [The Black Family, or the Slave Trade], she drew the French public's attention to the injustices committed by the slave system. She called for a more humane treatment of Blacks, for the abolition of the slave trade, and for religious and practical education that would prepare slaves for eventual emancipation.
Slavery
In the 1860s, David Livingstone's reports of atrocities within the Arab slave trade in Africa stirred up the interest of the British public, reviving the flagging abolitionist movement. The Royal Navy throughout the 1870s attempted to suppress "this abominable Eastern trade", at Zanzibar in particular. In 1905, the French abolished indigenous slavery in most of French West Africa.
Nantes
Outlawed by the French Revolution, the slave trade re-established itself as Nantes' major source of income in the first decades of the 19th century. It was the last French port to conduct the illegal Atlantic trade, continuing it until about 1827. The 19th-century slave trade may have been as extensive as that of the previous century, with about 400,000 slaves deported to the colonies. Businessmen took advantage of local vegetable production and Breton fishing to develop a canning industry during the 1820s, but canning was eclipsed by sugar imported from Réunion in the 1840s and 1850s. Nantes tradesmen received a tax rebate on Réunion sugar, which was lucrative until disease devastated the cane plantations in 1863. By the mid-19th century, Le Havre and Marseilles were the two main French ports; the former traded with America and the latter with Asia. They had embraced the Industrial Revolution, thanks to Parisian investments; Nantes lagged behind, struggling to find profitable activities. Nostalgic for the pre-revolutionary golden age, the local elite had been suspicious of political and technological progress during the first half of the 19th century. In 1851, after much debate and opposition, Nantes was connected to Paris by the Tours–Saint-Nazaire railway.
Samuel de Missy
The slave trade of La Rochelle ended with the event of the French Revolution and the war with England in the 1790s, the last La Rochelle slave ship, the "Saint-Jacques" was captured in 1793 in the Gulf of Guinea. In February 1794, the National Assembly legislated the Universal Emancipation decree, which effectively freed all colonial slaves.
Jewish views on slavery
A significant number of Jews gave their energies to the antislavery movement. Many 19th century Jews, such as Adolphe Crémieux, participated in the moral outcry against slavery. In 1849, Crémieux announced the abolition of slavery throughout the French possessions.
Guadeloupe
Slavery was finally abolished on the island (and in all French possessions) on 28 May 1848 at the initiative of Victor Schoelcher.
Victor Schœlcher
He was responsible for the publication of many articles regarding slavery between 1833 and 1847 in which he focused on positive aspects of abolishing slavery. Schœlcher was also intent on social, economic, and political changes being made in the Caribbean colonies. He thought that the production of sugar should continue in the colonies but large central factories should be constructed rather than using slave labor. Schœlcher was the first European abolitionist to visit Haiti and had a large influence on the abolitionist movements in all of the French West Indies. He was actively against the debt collected from the Haitians as French slave owners sought reparations for their lost property after the Haitian Revolution.
On 3 March 1848, he was appointed under-secretary of the navy, and caused a decree to be issued by the provisional government which acknowledged the principle of the enfranchisement of the slaves through the French possessions. As president of a commission, Schœlcher prepared and wrote the decree of 27 April 1848 in which the French government announced that slavery was abolished in all of its colonies.
Léger-Félicité Sonthonax
On August 29,1793, with rumors of emancipation rampant, Sonthonax took the radical step of proclaiming the freedom of the slaves in the north province (with severe limits on their freedom). It was during this time, and due to the new trend of conceding rights to blacks, that Toussaint Louverture began reforming his political philosophy to embrace France rather than Spain; however, he was cautious and awaited French ratification of emancipation before officially changing sides. In September and October, emancipation was extended throughout the colony. On February 4, 1794, the French National Convention ratified this act, applying it to all French colonies, including Guadeloupe. Emancipation was one of the most momentous events in the history of the Americas.
Haitian Revolution
There never again was such a large-scale slave rebellion. Napoleon reversed the French abolition of slavery in law, constitution, and practice, which had occurred between 1793 and 1801, and reinstated slavery in the French colonies in 1801–1803—which lasted until 1848.
Racism in France
In 1789, the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen abolished slavery. However, it was only truly abolished in the colonies in 1794 thanks to the Society of the Friends of the Blacks’ efforts. In 1802, Napoleon, encouraged by wife Josephine who originated from and owned many assets in Martinique, reestablished slavery, the slave trade and the Black Code. This sparked a rebellion. He sent military expeditions in Saint-Domingue and Guadeloupe to contain the rebellion. The rebels of Saint-Domingue ended up being victorious and proclaimed their independence after what is commonly known as the Haitian Revolution. In January 1803, this first black republic was founded and took the name of Haiti. In 1815, after the Napoleon's Hundred Days, Napoleon aligned himself with Congress and decreed the abolition of slavery. However, slavery continued all the way up to the 1840s on Gorée Island, Senegal. In 1848 King Louis-Phillippe abdicated and the provisional government of the Republic was founded, proclaiming that “No French territory can hold slaves”. Finally, on April 27, 1848, the provisional Government abolished slavery in all French colonies. The government abolished slavery on May 23 for Martinique, May 27 for Guadeloupe, August 10 for Guyana and December 20th for Reunion. An illegal slave commerce persisted for a short time after but was quickly transformed into a commerce of Chinese or Indian “engagés” workers.
Slavery in India
France prohibited slavey, in French India, via the Proclamation of the Abolition of Slavery in the French Colonies, 27 April 1848.
Bury the Chains
Hochschild explains how the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act 1807 came about not just through activism alone, but also as a result of national rhetoric and economic warfare against France who had renewed slavery under Napoleon. Hochschild explains that the Slavery Abolition Act 1833, which banned slavery in Britain and its colonies, only became possible thanks to the Reform Act 1832 which saw many long-held seats in the House of Commons replaced. Hochschild notes that the Abolition Act upset many abolitionists as it provided compensation for slave-owners. The Abolition Act took legal effect on August 1, 1838, granting full emancipation for all British slaves.
Haitian Revolution
The end of the Haitian Revolution in 1804 marked the end of colonialism on the island. However, the social conflict cultivated under slavery continued to affect the population for years to come. The revolution left in place the "affranchi" élite, who continued to rule Haiti while the formidable Haitian army kept them in power. France continued the slavery system in French Guiana, Martinique, and Guadeloupe.
Slave Trade Act 1807
By its Act Against Slavery of 1793, the Parliament of Upper Canada in British North America had abolished the slave trade, and in 1805 a British Order-in-Council had restricted the importation of slaves into colonies that had been captured from France and the Netherlands. Following adoption of the 1807 Act, Britain used its influence to pressure other nations to end their own slave trades. By the 1810 Anglo-Portuguese treaty Portugal agreed to restrict its trade into its colonies; in the 1813 Anglo-Swedish treaty Sweden outlawed its slave trade; and in the 1814 Treaty of Paris whereby France agreed with Britain that the slave trade was "repugnant to the principles of natural justice" and agreed to abolish the slave trade in five years. In the 1814 Anglo-Dutch treaty the Netherlands outlawed its slave trade, and the 1817 Anglo-Spanish treaty called for Spain to suppress its trade by 1820.
History of slavery
In 1794 slavery was abolished in the French Empire. After seizing Lower Egypt in 1798, Napoleon Bonaparte issued a proclamation in arabic, declaring all men to be free and equal. However, the French bought males as soldiers and females as concubines. Napoleon personally opposed the abolition and restored colonial slavery in 1802, a year after the capitulation of his troops in Egypt.
Racism in France
On May 10, 2001, the French Senate adopted a law that recognized the trade of slaves as a crime against humanity. In 2006, May 10 was held to be a national date of commemoration of the abolition of slavery.
History of slavery
Although there were numerous slave revolts in the Caribbean, the only successful uprising came in the French colony of Haiti in the 1790s, where the slaves rose up, killed the mulattoes and whites, and established the independent Republic of Haiti. Europe recoiled in horror.
Indian indenture system
Following the abolition of slavery throughout the British Empire, it was again abolished in the French colonial empire in 1848, and the U.S. abolished slavery in 1865 with the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Français Tirailleur
The first West African soldiers were enrolled in the French colonial army in 1820 and the company of the Tirailleur Sénégalais was formed in 1857. They fought for France in both World Wars. The last company of West African soldiers in the French army was disbanded in 1964 and the last Tirailleur who served in WW1 died in 1998. It is important to keep in mind that while slavery was abolished in France and her colonies in 1848, this does not mean the situation changed totally over night. There is an inter-departmental report from 1950 suggesting that the recruitment was not necessary voluntary from that point forward. The French military was to go "up-country to enroll captives, to whom the sum needed to purchase their freedom is given as enrollment bounty (Hargreaves, 1969: 100 as cited in Wilson )). In other words, they more or less bought captives and turned them into soldiers.
Cyrille Bissette
Bissette was a leader of efforts to abolish slavery in the French Colonies. He was involved in the so-called "Bissette affaire," whose anti-slavery activities begin to be radicalized about this time.
History of Saint Martin
Although the Spanish had been the first to import slaves to the island, their numbers had been few. But with the new cultivation of cotton, tobacco, and sugar, mass numbers of slaves were imported to work on the plantations. The slave population quickly grew larger than that of the land owners. Subjected to cruel treatment, slaves staged rebellions, and their overwhelming numbers made them impossible to ignore. In 1848, the French abolished slavery in their colonies including the French side of St. Martin. Slaves on the Dutch side of the island protested and threatened to flee to the French side to seek asylum. The local Dutch authorities relented and emancipated the colonies' slaves. While this decree was respected locally, it was not until 1863 when the Dutch abolished slavery in all of their island colonies that the slaves became legally free.
History of slavery in the Muslim world
The Arab slave trade was most active in West Asia, North Africa, and Southeast Africa. In the early 20th century (post-World War I), slavery was gradually outlawed and suppressed in Muslim lands, largely due to pressure exerted by Western nations such as Britain and France. Slavery in the Ottoman Empire was abolished in 1924 when the new Turkish Constitution disbanded the Imperial Harem and made the last concubines and eunuchs free citizens of the newly proclaimed republic. Slavery in Iran was abolished in 1929. Among the last states to abolish slavery were Saudi Arabia and Yemen, which abolished slavery in 1962 under pressure from Britain; Oman in 1970; and Mauritania in 1905, 1981, and again in August 2007. However, slavery claiming the sanction of Islam is documented at present in the predominantly Islamic countries of the Sahel, and is also practiced in territories controlled by Islamist rebel groups, as in Libya.
Racism in France
In 1315, King Louis X stated that “French ground frees any slave that touches it”. Although the Portuguese had been involved in slavery since 1441, it was only in 1594 that the first French slave expedition occurred and it was only in the middle of the 17th century that the Caribbean island colonies of Martinique, Guadeloupe, Grenada, Saint-Domingue (Haiti), Saint-Martin and Saint Barthélemy were occupied by French powers. Although the deportation of slaves to French colonies had been legalized in 1626 and the trade of slaves had been made legal by Louis XIII in 1642, transatlantic expeditions had only been transporting goods and “engagés” (European workers who paid for their travel by working for 36 months in tobacco plantations upon their arrival in the New World). However, the year 1674 portrayed a shift in France’s position in the trade of African slaves.
Slavery in Niger
When the French took over the region in the early 1900s they had a policy banning the existence of slavery. However local French administrators usually resisted pressure to abolish slavery from the colonial and metropolitan governments. French administrators would take credit for abolishing slavery by simply ignoring its continued existence or claiming that the bonds were voluntary. One local administrator justified such a policy by saying, “I do
not think it is presently possible to eliminate slavery. Our civilization has not penetrated deeply enough for the natives, both masters and slaves, to understand and accept any measures towards the outright elimination of slavery.” The local colonial administrators did however carry out policies to put a stop to slave trafficking and slave markets. During World War I, in order to meet quotas of troops to the French army, traditional chiefs supplied slaves to the colonial administration. In urban areas and settled communities with a strong French administrative presence, slavery and forced servitude were gradually ended, but in the rest of the country the practices remained active.
History of slavery
In 1793, influenced by the French Declaration of the Rights of Man of August 1789 and alarmed as the massive slave revolt of August 1791 that had become the Haitian Revolution threatened to ally itself with the British, the French Revolutionary commissioners Sonthonax and Polverel declared general emancipation to reconcile them with France. In Paris, on 4 February 1794, Abbé Grégoire and the Convention ratified this action by officially abolishing slavery in all French territories outside mainland France, freeing all the slaves both for moral and security reasons.
Ivory Coast
France's imposition of a head tax in 1900 to support the colony's public works program provoked unexpected protests. Many Ivoirians saw the tax as a violation of the protectorate treaties because they felt that France was demanding the equivalent of a "coutume" from the local kings, rather than the reverse. Many, especially in the interior, also considered the tax a humiliating symbol of submission. In 1905, the French officially abolished slavery in most of French West Africa. From 1904 to 1958, Ivory Coast was part of the Federation of French West Africa. It was a colony and an overseas territory under the Third Republic. In World War I, France organized regiments from Ivory Coast to fight in France, and colony resources were rationed from 1917–1919. Some 150,000 men from Ivory Coast died in World War I. Until the period following World War II, governmental affairs in French West Africa were administered from Paris. France's policy in West Africa was reflected mainly in its philosophy of "association", meaning that all Africans in Ivory Coast were officially French "subjects", but without rights to representation in Africa or France.
French colonial policy incorporated concepts of assimilation and association. Based on the assumed superiority of French culture, in practice the assimilation policy meant the extension of French language, institutions, laws, and customs to the colonies. The policy of association also affirmed the superiority of the French in the colonies, but it entailed different institutions and systems of laws for the colonizer and the colonized. Under this policy, the Africans in Ivory Coast were allowed to preserve their own customs insofar as they were compatible with French interests, such as the recent abolition of the slave trade.
Southern Victory
In return for British and French governments' assistance, President Longstreet proposes the nominal manumission ("emancipation") of the country's slaves, which proceeds throughout the 1880s. Britain and France have already abolished slavery, and their vital alliance with the Confederacy will not continue unless slavery is abolished, at least in theory. Moreover, even President Longstreet realizes that as the Confederacy builds up its own industrial base, it will increasingly become less reliant on manual slave labor in a predominately agricultural society, looking ahead to the 20th century. Despite being technically freed, the Confederacy's black population continues to live in Apartheid-like conditions not even being allowed to have surnames.
Colonial Nigeria
The decrease in trade indirectly led to the collapse of states like the Edo Empire. Britain withdrew from the slave trade when it was the major transporter of slaves to the Americas. The French had abolished slavery following the French Revolution, although it briefly re-established it in its Caribbean colonies under Napoleon. France sold Louisiana to the United States in 1803, the same year that it gave up on trying to regain Saint-Domingue. By the end of the Napoleonic Wars, it ended slavery in its possessions. Between them, the French and the British had purchased a majority of the slaves sold from the ports of Edo. The economy suffered from the decline in the slave trade, although considerable smuggling of slaves to the Americas continued for years afterwards.
Slavery in international law
Abolitionism has its roots in the 1807 Abolition of Slavery Act of Great Britain. Many academics in the field perceive this as the beginning of the end of the traditional form of slavery: chattel slavery. In the 19th century, Britain controlled the majority of the world through its colonies. Consequently, in passing this law to abolish slavery, the British Parliament abolished slavery in the vast majority of its colonies.
Scramble for Africa
The continuing anti-slavery movement in Europe became a reason and an excuse for the conquest and colonization of the Africa. It was the central theme of the Brussels Anti-Slavery Conference 1889–90. During the Scramble for Africa, an early but secondary focus of all colonial regimes was the suppression of slavery and the slave trade. In French West Africa, following conquest and abolition by the French, over a million slaves fled from their masters to earlier homes between 1906 and 1911. In Madagascar, the French abolished slavery in 1896 and approximately 500,000 slaves were freed. Slavery was abolished in the French controlled Sahel by 1911. Independent nations attempting to westernize or impress Europe sometimes cultivated an image of slavery suppression. In response to European pressure, the Sokoto Caliphate abolished slavery in 1900 and Ethiopia officially abolished slavery in 1932. Colonial powers were mostly successful in abolishing slavery, though slavery remained active in Africa even though it has gradually moved to a wage economy. Slavery was never fully eradicated in Africa.
Anarchism in French Guiana
These communities of free escaped slaves often waged war against the French colonial settlements. Additionally, slave revolts were relatively frequent. A prominent was one in 1796, when riots broke out after plantation owners refused to obey the abolition of slavery enacted by the French First Republic. After the execution of the same man that had carried out said abolition, Maximilien de Robespierre, in 1794, 193 Jacobin supporters - political radicals whose involvement in the French Revolution and one-time alliance with the revolutionary "sans-culottes" had an immense impact on the later development of revolutionary and libertarian thought - were deported to Guiana. They were the first of many political prisoners to come. When in 1797 Jean-Charles Pichegru and others were sent to the colony as prisoners, they found that only 54 of the deportees were still alive, the rest had either succumbed to tropical diseases or escaped.
Another slave revolt came in 1804, when Napoleon reintroduced slavery in France's American colonies. After the French Revolution of 1848, in which early anarchists like Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and Joseph Déjacque participated, slavery was again abolished, leading to a massive increase in the maroon population.
French Sudan
Like much of the rest of French West Africa, authorities enforced explicit rules in an attempt to end slavery in the region. In 1903, the government instructed French administrators to not use "slave" as an administrative category anymore. This was followed in 1905 by a formal French decree that ended slavery throughout French West Africa.
Catholic Church and slavery
Legal cases such as the French case of Jean Boucaux v. Verdelin of 1738 and the English Somersett's Case (1772) essentially ended the status of slave in the home countries, but without affecting the colonies. The French Revolution, in which Raynal and Gregoire were notable figures, did not initially have emancipation as a goal, but after failing to stamp out the Haitian Revolution, led by the devout Catholic ex-slave Toussaint L'Overture, and alarmed by British attempts to link up with the slave rebels, in 1794 the French entirely abolished slavery in all French territories.
Slavery in Mauritania
Slavery persists in Mauritania. In 1905, the French colonial administration declared an end of slavery in Mauritania, with very little success. Although nominally abolished in 1981, it was not illegal to own slaves until 2007. According to the US State Department "2010 Human Rights Report", abuses in Mauritania include:
Jules Lechevalier
In 1838–1839 he returned to the Antilles on behalf of the French Ministry of the Marine and the Colonies and carried out a study on the status of slavery in the French colonies. He became an advocate of the abolition of slavery, advancing plans for slave emancipation that invoked the Fourierist idea of association, although some historians have seen his activities as overly conciliatory to the colonial planters' interests. Lechevalier also explored the prospects of setting up model Fourierist settlements, or phalansteries, in the French colonies (such as French Guyana) and in the United States. Back in France, he was active in the co-operative movement and the early trade union movement. In 1848, he supported the February Revolution and the creation of the Second French Republic and was very active in the republican club led by Armand Barbès. He collaborated with the republican socialists, or "social democrats" as they were beginning to call themselves, such as Louis Blanc and Pierre Leroux. He also contributed to various journals, including "La Tribune des Peuples" edited by the Polish poet and nationalist Adam Mickiewicz.
Charles Cordier
His first success was a bust in plaster of a Sudanese man "Saïd Abdullah of the Mayac, Kingdom of the Darfur" (Sudan). This was exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1848, the same year that slavery was abolished in all French colonies. It is now housed at The Walters Art Museum.
Slavery in Canada
Some slaves were of African descent, but many were Aboriginal (typically called "panis", from the French term for Pawnee). Slavery within what is now Canada was practised by Aboriginal groups and European settlers. While there was Canadian trade in African slaves, native nations also enslaved their rivals, but most were purchased by colonial administrators and sold to native nations until 1833, when the British Parliament abolished slavery across the British Empire. (There is often confusion over the date at which this occurred; Britain had abolished the slave trade in 1807, but did not abolish slavery itself until 1833, in an act of Parliament that came into effect on 1 August 1834.) Prior to this, however, courts had, to varying degrees, rendered slavery unenforceable: for example, in Lower Canada after court decisions in the late 1790s, the "slave could not be compelled to serve longer than he would, and ... might leave his master at will."
Slavery
One of the first protests against slavery came from German and Dutch Quakers in Pennsylvania in 1688. One of the most significant milestones in the campaign to abolish slavery throughout the world occurred in England in 1772, with British judge Lord Mansfield, whose opinion in Somersett's Case was widely taken to have held that slavery was illegal in England. This judgement also laid down the principle that slavery contracted in other jurisdictions could not be enforced in England. In 1777, Vermont, at the time an independent nation, became the first portion of what would become the United States to abolish slavery. France abolished slavery in 1794. All the Northern states abolished slavery; New Jersey in 1804 was the last to act. None of the Southern or border states abolished slavery before the American Civil War.
Proclamation of the Abolition of Slavery in the French Colonies, 27 April 1848
Proclamation of the Abolition of Slavery in the French Colonies, 27 April 1848 is an 1849 painting by French artist François-Auguste Biard which is kept in the Palace of Versailles, France.
Mackau Law
The Laws of 18 and 19 July 1845, commonly known as Mackau Law (French: "Lois Mackau") are a set of laws which paved the way towards the abolition of slavery in France. They were instigated by Ange de Mackau, then Minister of the Navy and of Colonies. Effective abolition was enacted with the Decree abolishing Slavery of 27 April 1848.
East Indies theatre of the French Revolutionary Wars
Until 1796 there had been no reaction from the French Convention to the operations in the East Indies, and they were eventually inspired to reinforce the region not by British actions but by French ones. In 1795 orders had arrived at Île de France formally abolishing slavery. The Colonial Assembly on the island, whose wealth relied on slave labour, simply ignored the order. The matter was taken up by the Committee of Public Safety, who ordered two agents, Baco and Burnel, to enforce the ruling. These agents were escorted by a squadron of frigates sailing from Rochefort on 4 March under the command of Île de France-born Contre-amiral Pierre César Charles de Sercey, comprising "Régénérée", "Cocarde", "Forte" and with corvettes and . On board were 800 soldiers and two companies of artillery under General .
Role of Nantes in the slave trade
The re-establishment of slavery by Napoléon Bonaparte in 1802, revived slave trade activity for 15 years (accounting for 70% of national trade, with more than 300 expeditions), however, this was achieved illegally, as the French Royal Navy fought successfully against illegal traffickers throughout the 1820s until the prohibition of the trade in 1831 which eventually lead to the definitive abolition of slavery instigated by Victor Schlœlcher on 27 April 1848.
Edmond Albius
In 1848, France outlawed slavery in its colonies, and Albius left the plantation for St. Denis, where he worked as a kitchen servant. He was convicted of stealing jewellery and sentenced to ten years in prison, but the sentence was commuted after five years when the governor granted him clemency in light of his enormous contribution to vanilla production in Réunion.
History of Senegal
Slavery was abolished by the National Convention in 1794, then reinstated by Bonaparte in 1802. The British Empire abolished slavery in 1833; in France it was finally abolished in the Second Republic in 1848, under the leadership of Victor Schoelcher.
Slavery in Mali
When the area came under French colonial control in 1898, as French Sudan, the French authorities formally abolished slavery in 1905. Despite this declaration, traditional patterns of servitude persisted. Although some slaves left their positions of servitude following the declaration of 1905, many remained and in much of the country, slavery continued more or less unimpeded. With the political opening of the creation of the French Fourth Republic in 1946, large number of slaves left their positions and the slavery issue became a key political issue for the Sudanese Union – African Democratic Rally (US-RDA) party.
History of Ivory Coast
From 1904 to 1958, Ivory Coast was a constituent unit of the Federation of French West Africa. It was a colony and an overseas territory under the Third Republic. Until the period following World War II, governmental affairs in French West Africa were administered from Paris. France's policy in West Africa was reflected mainly in its philosophy of "association", meaning that all Africans in Ivory Coast were officially French "subjects" without rights to representation in Africa or France. In 1905, the French officially abolished slavery in most of French West Africa.