The Second Republic abolishes slavery in the French colonies
- Date
- 27 April 1848
- Category
- Politics & governance
- Region
- French Empire (Caribbean & Indian Ocean)
- Era
- Modern
- Significance
On 27 April 1848 the provisional government of the French Second Republic issued a decree abolishing slavery in all French colonies, freeing roughly 250,000 enslaved people in the Caribbean, Indian Ocean and elsewhere.
The decree was prepared by Victor Schœlcher, a committed abolitionist appointed to head the government's emancipation commission in the wake of the February 1848 revolution that toppled the July Monarchy. France had briefly abolished slavery during the Revolution in 1794, but Napoleon had restored it in 1802; the 1848 decree made abolition definitive and granted citizenship to the emancipated, who in the colonies promptly gained the right to vote. As in the British case, slaveholders received state compensation for their lost human 'property' while the freed received none, and former plantation owners increasingly turned to indentured labour. The 1848 emancipation was bound up with the broader democratic ferment sweeping Europe that year and stands as one of the major acts of abolition in the Atlantic and Indian Ocean worlds, remembered as a defining achievement of the short-lived Second Republic and a milestone in the global retreat of legalised slavery.
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Empires active in 27 April 1848
- Russian Empire1721 CE – 1917 CE
- French Colonial Empire (Second)1830 CE – 1962 CE
- British Empire1583 CE – 1997 CE
- Qing Dynasty1636 CE – 1912 CE
- Spanish Empire1492 CE – 1976 CE
- Portuguese Empire1415 CE – 1999 CE
Related politics & governance events
- The Revolutions of 1848 (the Springtime of Peoples)1848–1849
- Commodore Perry forces the opening of Japan1853–1854 (Treaty of Kanagawa, 31 March 1854)
- Indian Rebellion of 1857 and the birth of the British Raj1857–1858 (rebellion); Government of India Act 2 August 1858
- Garibaldi's Expedition of the Thousand and the Kingdom of ItalyMay–September 1860; Kingdom of Italy proclaimed 17 March 1861
- The Slavery Abolition Act ends slavery across the British Empire28 August 1833 (in force 1 August 1834)
- The Meiji Restoration1868 (proclamation 3 January 1868)
Further reading
The wider story
Conquerors: How Portugal Forged the First Global Empire
Fast-paced narrative of Portugal's seaborne empire.
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