Reinstatement of slavery by Napoleon

The reinstatement of slavery by Napoleon refers to a series of texts and military events between 1802 and 1804 that restored slavery in French colonies and France's involvement in the Atlantic slave trade during the early years of Napoleon's rule, thus repealing the decree of 4 February 1794 that had abolished slavery in all colonies during the French Revolution.

Among the notable texts signed by Napoleon were the law of 20 May 1802, which maintained slavery in the colonies of Martinique, Tobago, and Saint Lucia. These colonies, returned to France by Britain under the terms of the Treaty of Amiens, had not applied the 1794 abolition decree due to the refusal of local French colonists, who signed the Whitehall Accord with Britain instead. Napoleon also issued the consular decrees of 16 July 1802 and 7 December 1802, which reinstated slavery in Guadeloupe and Cayenne respectively (previously two of the three territories where abolition was effective). In Réunion and Isle de France, Napoleon had already reassured planters of his support for the continuation of slavery there as early as March 1801.

From his coup d'état in late 1799, Napoleon was influenced by the colonial circles surrounding his wife Joséphine, a Creole from a family of slave-owning planters, but especially by his advisors, often drawn from the teams of Marshal de Castries, former Secretary of State for the Navy. Hesitating for two years, like his advisors, due to political and military risks, Napoleon gradually decreed slavery in all colonies, including the three returned by the British. In Guadeloupe and Saint-Domingue, this reinstatement was enforced through three expeditions, two to Saint-Domingue, mobilizing two-thirds of the French fleet and several tens of thousands of soldiers. The armed resistance of former slaves was thus defeated in Guadeloupe after several thousand deaths but was victorious in Saint-Domingue, where nearly half of the French slaves lived, and which became Haiti in 1804, the second independent former colony after the United States. France was the only country in the world to reinstate slavery in all its colonies eight years after voting for its abolition, also in all its colonies.

This slaveholding policy of Napoleon is the subject of debate regarding its true ideological motivations. For Yves Benot in 1992, it was deliberate, while for others in the 21st century, it resulted from hesitations and opportunistic calculations.

This reinstatement of slavery was accompanied by the establishment of a policy of segregation and discrimination against free people of color harsher than under the Ancien Régime. In the colonies, this return to the pre-1789 system abolished the Decree of 4 April 1792 granting citizenship to freed slaves. In mainland France, the consular decree of 2 July 1802 (13 Messidor Year X) renewed the ban on French territory for them (and slaves), initially enacted in 1763 and 1777. The Civil Code was also amended to institutionalize a racial hierarchy, separating three classes: Whites, free people of color from before 1789, and slaves. Finally, interracial marriages were banned, fulfilling a long-standing demand of the colonial lobby that the Ancien Régime had previously denied.

During the Hundred Days, under British pressure and the Congress of Vienna, Napoleon officially banned the slave trade (but not slavery) through the decree of 29 March 1815. However, this abolition of the slave trade was not enforced as he was defeated two and a half months later at the Battle of Waterloo, then abdicated before his exile to Saint Helena, where he attributed his 1802 decisions to pressures from the colonial lobby. After him, Louis XVIII, Charles X, and Louis-Philippe officially confirmed the ban on the slave trade, though it persisted clandestinely. Slavery itself was not definitively abolished in the French colonies until the decree of 27 April 1848, adopted by the Provisional Government of the Second Republic under the impetus of Deputy Victor Schœlcher.