Louis XIV Promulgates the Code Noir

Date

March 1685

Category

Politics & governance

Region

Europe

Era

Early Modern

Significance

In March 1685, King Louis XIV of France promulgated the Code Noir (Black Code), a royal edict of sixty articles that codified the legal status and treatment of enslaved Africans across France's American colonies, beginning with the Antilles and later extended to Louisiana and other territories.

Drafted by the Naval Minister, the Marquis de Seignelay, and attributed in spirit to the late Jean-Baptiste Colbert, the code defined the enslaved as movable property while also holding them criminally liable, fixed slave status as heritable through the mother, and imposed harsh disciplinary and punitive controls on the enslaved population. It mandated Catholic baptism and instruction for all enslaved people, prohibited labour on Sundays and feast days, regulated marriage and manumission, sharply restricted the rights of free people of colour, and ordered the expulsion of Jews from the colonies. Historian Tyler Stovall described it as one of the most extensive official documents on race, slavery, and freedom ever produced in Europe. Though some of its nominally protective clauses were widely ignored in practice, the Code Noir framed French colonial slave law and remained substantially in force until the definitive abolition of slavery in 1848.

Empires active in March 1685

• Portuguese Empire
  1415 CE – 1999 CE
• Spanish Empire
  1492 CE – 1976 CE
• British Empire
  1583 CE – 1997 CE
• Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth
  1569 CE – 1795 CE
• French Colonial Empire (First)
  1534 CE – 1814 CE
• Dutch Empire
  1581 CE – 1975 CE

Related politics & governance events

• Peace of Westphalia ends the Thirty Years' War
  October 1648
• The Declaration of Independence
  4 July 1776
• The United States Constitution drafted and ratified
  17 September 1787
• The storming of the Bastille and the outbreak of the French Revolution
  14 July 1789
• Louis XIV moves the royal court to Versailles
  6 May 1682
• The Glorious Revolution and the English Bill of Rights
  1688–1689

Also relevant

• Coronation of Shivaji and the founding of the Maratha Empire
  6 June 1674

Further reading

Conquerors: How Portugal Forged the First Global Empire

The wider story

Conquerors: How Portugal Forged the First Global Empire

Roger Crowley

Fast-paced narrative of Portugal's seaborne empire.

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