Daily History Challenge · No. 31 · Wednesday 29 July 2026 · When?
Puzzle No. 31: When?
The event was Louis XIV Promulgates the Code Noir, in March 1685.
The answer
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.