The forgotten story of abolition in revolutionary France – the first emancipation |
On Aug. 21, 1789, just a month after the storming of the Bastille that launched the French Revolution, France’s new governing body, the National Assembly, approved the first article of its historic Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen.
The French document proclaimed that “Men are born and remain free and equal in rights,” echoing the most famous line of the American Declaration of Independence that marks its 250th anniversary on July 4, 2026.
Yet while the American revolutionaries famously stated that all men were entitled to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” they avoided any reference to the fact that nearly a fifth of the population of what was to become the United States were enslaved Black people.
In revolutionary France, however, Count Mirabeau, the most prominent member of the National Assembly, immediately wrote in his newspaper that if the words of the French declaration were to have any meaning, then there could not be, “either in France, or in any other territory under France’s laws, any men except free men, except men equal to one another.”
As a longtime expert on French history, I believe the role of revolutionary France in confronting slavery has long been overshadowed by subsequent trans-Atlantic movements for abolitionism. But as I show in my new book, “The First Emancipation,” it is in France where a national government first outlawed slavery – and indeed made steps toward racial equality.
What is also striking about this period beyond the remarkably swift achievements for Black people living under French rule, however, is the fragility of the nature of progress. Within a decade, Napoleon would reimpose slavery in French colonies – and shut the door on abolitionism for several decades.
Revolutionary impulses – but for whom?
Mirabeau’s words in support of universal equality were addressed to the plantation owners in France’s overseas colonies who had fought vigorously to be allowed to have deputies in the National Assembly.
In 1789 there were more enslaved people in those........