There Are No Slaves in France

Sue Peabody’s book on the death of the “free soil principle” in France is a milestone in legal history. Beginning in 1315, when Louis X signed the letters patent that forever associated the words French and France with the eradication of slavery, anyone who was bonded or a serf was supposedly “free” when stepping foot in France. This tenet began to fall apart in 1716, when the then Regent created a loophole for slaveowners returning to France with their enslaved servants. Peabody takes us deep into the legality (and illegality) of slavery on French soil as well as several illustrative… show more.

Sue Peabody’s “There Are No Slaves in France” examines the politics and culture of race and slavery in eighteenth-century France. In the early modern period, France prided itself on the notion that slavery was unlawful on French soil – the so-called “freedom principle”. Any slave who touched French territory would immediately be free. Nonetheless, hundreds of thousands of Africans worked as enslaved laborers in the French colonies. Within France, one could count numerous enslaved people at any given time. Exploring court cases brought by enslaved people in France against their owners, the book reveals with impressive clarity, the place of… show more.