05/25/2026
"In May 2025, François Bayrou, then the prime minister of France, fielded an unusual question from a member of Parliament: Why hadn’t France formally revoked the Code Noir, the notorious set of laws that had been used to enforce slavery in French colonies?... Now, a year later, a cross-party bill written by Max Mathiasin, a lawmaker from Guadeloupe, will come before the National Assembly on May 28 to formally annul the slave laws — 341 years after King Louis XIV signed them into existence. This is undoubtedly the right thing to do. But what the Code Noir, or Black Code, reveals about the architecture of France’s colonial slavery deserves far more attention than a symbolic vote."
Andrew S. Curran, author of “Biography of a Dangerous Idea: A New History of Race from Louis XIV to Thomas Jefferson.”
Three centuries late and not a moment too soon.
