178 Years After Banning Slavery, France Scraps ‘Code Noir’ Rules That Governed It

01Summary

1. 01The French Senate voted to repeal regulations from the 1685 Code Noir, which had remained in law after slavery was banned in 1848.
2. 02The move is purely symbolic, as the Code Noir had no legal force for decades.
3. 03The Code Noir originally set rules for the treatment of enslaved people in French colonies.
4. 04The repeal was approved by the Senate in a vote on an unspecified recent date.