The Code noir (, Black Code) was a decree originally passed by France's King Louis XIV in 1685.The Code Noir defined the conditions of slavery in the French colonial empire, restricted the activities of free Negroes, forbade the exercise of any religion other than Roman Catholicism (it included a provision that all slaves must be baptized and instructed in the Roman Catholic religion), and ordered all Jews out of France's colonies. The Code Noir also gave plantation owners extreme disciplinary power over their slaves, including legitimizing corporal punishment as a method of maintaining control. The code has been described by Tyler Stovall as "one of the most extensive official documents on race, slavery, and freedom ever drawn up in Europe."
Famous quotes containing the words code and/or noir:
“Motion or change, and identity or rest, are the first and second secrets of nature: Motion and Rest. The whole code of her laws may be written on the thumbnail, or the signet of a ring.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“C’est à Paris que je me coiffe
Casque noir de jemenfoutiste.”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)