French lawmakers were moved to tears in parliament on Thursday as France inched towards repealing outdated legislation that defines people enslaved in its colonies as "moveable goods," in a symbolic move as the country grapples with its colonial legacy.
The French were the third largest slave traders in Europe, after the British and the Portuguese.
Ships departing from French ports between the 17th and 19th centuries forcibly transported more than 1 million men, women and children from Africa into slavery, many in plantations in its overseas colonies in the Caribbean, according to expert estimates.
France abolished enslaving humans more than 170 years ago and in 2001 recognised slavery and the slave trade as "crimes against humanity."
But a series of royal decrees from the 17th and 18th centuries that established the legal status of enslaved people in its colonies, called the "Code noir" or "Black Code", were never explicitly overturned.
