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How Did Enslaved People Resist the Rules of the Code Noir? - Movable Property and Sugar: The French Black Code of 1685 | Sleepy Facts About History
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When we hear the phrase "code of laws," we usually expect a document that sets standards and offers some protection to those governed by it. The French Code Noir of 1685, however, was not a humanitarian document or a reform. It was the legal architecture that made slavery systematic, inheritable, and manageable for the French state. This episode examines how the royal ordinance, drafted in Paris under King Louis XIV, defined human beings as movable property—meubles—that could be mortgaged…
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