When did France abolish slavery in its colonies?
38894#2
France abolished slavery within the French Kingdom (continental France) in 1315. In May 1787 the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade was formed in London to end the British slave trade. Revolutionary France abolished slavery in France's colonies in 1794, although it was restored by Napoleon with the Law of 20 May 1802 as part of a program to ensure French sovereignty over its colonies. Haiti formally declared independence from France in 1804 and brought an end to slavery in its territory. The northern states in the U.S. all abolished slavery by 1804. Great Britain and Ireland and the United States outlawed the international slave trade in 1807, after which Britain led efforts to block slave ships. Britain abolished slavery throughout the British Empire with the Slavery Abolition Act 1833, the French colonies re-abolished it in 1848 and the U.S. abolished slavery in 1865 with the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Abolitionism
1978042#12
Slavery was first abolished by the French Republic in 1794, but Napoleon revoked that decree in 1802. In 1815, the Republic abolished the slave trade but the decree did not come into effect until 1826. France re-abolished slavery in her colonies in 1848 with a general and unconditional emancipation.
William Wilberforce's Slave Trade Act 1807 abolished the slave trade in the British Empire. It was not until the Slavery Abolition Act 1833 that the institution finally was abolished, but on a gradual basis. Since slave owners in the various colonies (not only the Caribbean) were losing their unpaid labourers, the government set aside £20 million for compensation but it did not offer the former slaves reparations.
Slavery in the British and French Caribbean
6585135#115
Slavery in the French Republic was abolished on 4 February 1794, including in its colonies. The lengthy Haitian Revolution by its slaves and free people of color established Haiti as a free republic in 1804 ruled by blacks, the first of its kind. At the time of the revolution, Haiti was known as Saint-Domingue and was a colony of France. Napoleon Bonaparte gave up on Haiti in 1803, but re-established slavery in Guadeloupe and Martinique in 1804, at the request of planters of the Caribbean colonies. Slavery was permanently abolished in the French empire during the French Revolution of 1848.
History of slavery
38894#11
The Convention, the first elected Assembly of the First Republic (1792–1804), on 4 February 1794, under the leadership of Maximilien Robespierre, abolished slavery in law in France and its colonies. Abbé Grégoire and the Society of the Friends of the Blacks were part of the abolitionist movement, which had laid important groundwork in building anti-slavery sentiment in the metropole. The first article of the law stated that "Slavery was abolished" in the French colonies, while the second article stated that "slave-owners would be indemnified" with financial compensation for the value of their slaves. The French constitution passed in 1795 included in the declaration of the Rights of Man that slavery was abolished.
Abolitionism
13374#16
On 29 August 1793, Sonthonax took the radical step of proclaiming the freedom of the slaves in the north province (with severe limits on their freedom). In September and October, emancipation was extended throughout the colony. The French National Convention, the first elected Assembly of the First Republic (1792–1804), on 4 February 1794, under the leadership of Maximilien de Robespierre, abolished slavery by law in France and all its colonies. The constitution of 1793, which was never applied, and the constitution of 1795, which was put into effect, did both contain an explicit ban on slavery.
History of Haiti
201973#59
The monarchy made a distinction between French soil on the mainland and soil under French control such as the colonies. This distinction allowed for slavery to be illegal in France but continue in the colonies. Colonists in Saint Domingue wanted to have representation, 21 members due to their population size and contribution to the economy. This was shot down by the National Convention as the majority of their population were slaves and thus had no rights as citizens and contributed nothing to representative population. The Société des amis des Noirs in France originally did oppose slavery during the 1780s, however much of this opposition was ignored as a result of the French Revolution breaking out. The French showed a much greater willingness to act on the issue of slavery when the threat of a war with Spain seemed imminent. In 1792 the National Convention agreed to delegate 3 commissaries for Saint Domingue. Two of the commissaires, Léger-Félicité Sonthonax and Étienne Polverel, implemented rights for free men of color that were equal to their white counterparts. On May 5, 1793, Sonthonax and Polverel, first attacked the plantation system and forced the owners to treat the slaves better and care more for their well-being. Sonthonax then attacked slavery itself by freeing any slave Huzards, Latin for hazards, who had been armed by their masters since they could not return to peaceful plantation life. Polverel issued a proclamation in Cap Francais on June 21, 1793 which freed all slaves who agreed to fight for the French Republic from both internal and external threats. The commissaires then ruled that the Republic would pay an indemnity to the owners of female slaves marrying free men and that all children of that union would be free. The National Convention eventually allowed for 6 representative members for the colony. When pressured by the Friends of the Blacks to end the slave trade in the colonies, the National Convention refused on the grounds of slavery being too core to the French economic wealth. The committee felt “six million French people relied on the colonies to survive” and continued to stand by this argument. On October 12, 1790 the National Convention declared the only body of power who could control the status of people in the colonies were committees in the colonies themselves--this meant although free blacks met the requirement for active citizenship the white colonists would not allow it. This was done in an attempt to please the white colonists and convince them not to join forces with the British. This also gave the colonies the power to control their own laws regarding slavery and allowed for the National Convention to wash their hands of the issue. Three deputies from Saint Domingue traveled to France to attempt to persuade the National Convention to abolish slavery. The National Convention abolished slavery after hearing speeches from the deputies on February 4, 1794. However, the Committee of Public Safety delayed sending the proclamation to the colonies for two months. This was due to the apparent opposition of Robespierre to the abolition of slavery. The issue was eventually resolved following the Committee circumventing Robespierre and ordering the abolition decree to be sent to Saint Domingue. However, Napoleon's attempt to return to slavery in 1801 removed France's state of being the first to abolish slavery and led to the loss of the most prosperous French colony.
National Convention
57736445#11
On 4 February 1794, during the French Revolution, the National Assembly of the First Republic abolished slavery in France and its colonies. The military successes of the French Republic and Napoleon carried across Europe the ideals of egalitarianism and brought into question the practice of slavery in the colonies of other European powers.
Planter class
38325766#10
When the French took over the region in the early 1900s they had a policy banning the existence of slavery. However local French administrators usually resisted pressure to abolish slavery from the colonial and metropolitan governments. French administrators would take credit for abolishing slavery by simply ignoring its continued existence or claiming that the bonds were voluntary. One local administrator justified such a policy by saying, “I do
not think it is presently possible to eliminate slavery. Our civilization has not penetrated deeply enough for the natives, both masters and slaves, to understand and accept any measures towards the outright elimination of slavery.” The local colonial administrators did however carry out policies to put a stop to slave trafficking and slave markets. During World War I, in order to meet quotas of troops to the French army, traditional chiefs supplied slaves to the colonial administration. In urban areas and settled communities with a strong French administrative presence, slavery and forced servitude were gradually ended, but in the rest of the country the practices remained active.
Slavery in Niger
49005#84
William Wilberforce was a driving force in the British Parliament in the fight against the slave trade in the British Empire. On 22 February 1807, the House of Commons passed a motion 283 votes to 16 to abolish the Atlantic slave trade. The United States abolished the slave trade the same year, but not its internal slave trade which became the dominant character in American slavery until the 1860s. In 1805 the British Order-in-Council had restricted the importation of slaves into colonies that had been captured from France and the Netherlands. Britain continued to press other nations to end its trade; in 1810 an Anglo-Portuguese treaty was signed whereby Portugal agreed to restrict its trade into its colonies; an 1813 Anglo-Swedish treaty whereby Sweden outlawed its slave trade; the Treaty of Paris 1814 where France agreed with Britain that the trade is "repugnant to the principles of natural justice" and agreed to abolish the slave trade in five years; the 1814 Anglo-Netherlands treaty where the Dutch outlawed its slave trade.
The Royal Navy's West Africa Squadron, established in 1808, grew by 1850 to a force of some 25 vessels, which were tasked with combating slavery along the African coast. Between 1807 and 1860, the Royal Navy's Squadron seized approximately 1,600 ships involved in the slave trade and freed 150,000 Africans who were aboard these vessels. Several hundred slaves a year were transported by the navy to the British colony of Sierra Leone, where they were made to serve as "apprentices" in the colonial economy until the Slavery Abolition Act 1833.
The last recorded slave ship to land on U.S. soil was the "Clotilde", which in 1859 illegally smuggled a number of Africans into the town of Mobile, Alabama. The Africans on board were sold as slaves; however, slavery in the U.S. was abolished five years later following the end of the American Civil War in 1865. The last survivor of the voyage was Cudjoe Lewis, who died in 1935.
The last country to ban the Atlantic slave trade was Brazil in 1831. However, a vibrant illegal trade continued to ship large numbers of enslaved people to Brazil and also to Cuba until the 1860s, when British enforcement and further diplomacy finally ended the Atlantic slave trade. In 1870 Portugal ended the last trade route with the Americas where the last country to import slaves was Brazil. In Brazil, however, slavery itself was not ended until 1888, making it the last country in the Americas to end involuntary servitude.
Atlantic slave trade
9329483#10
The decrease in trade indirectly led to the collapse of states like the Edo Empire. Britain withdrew from the slave trade when it was the major transporter of slaves to the Americas. The French had abolished slavery following the French Revolution, although it briefly re-established it in its Caribbean colonies under Napoleon. France sold Louisiana to the United States in 1803, the same year that it gave up on trying to regain Saint-Domingue. By the end of the Napoleonic Wars, it ended slavery in its possessions. Between them, the French and the British had purchased a majority of the slaves sold from the ports of Edo. The economy suffered from the decline in the slave trade, although considerable smuggling of slaves to the Americas continued for years afterwards.
Colonial Nigeria