Addressing Racism: When Napoleon reinstated slavery

Amid 150 exhibits embodying the dazzling imperial grandeur of the former French emperor — “a figure who is at once fascinating and controversial,” as the show’s trailer says — one section of the exhibition focuses on a darker side of his legacy. 

It features the original copies of laws signed by Napoleon in 1802, which reversed the abolition of slavery that had been declared eight years previously, in the wake of the French Revolution. It made France the only country to have brought back slavery after outlawing it. 

“When they hear of Napoleon, most people think of the great empire, France’s many victories during the wars of that era. There is this glory about Napoleon which has eclipsed everything else he did,” Dominique Taffin, director of the Foundation for the Remembrance of Slavery, told DW. The foundation was responsible for that section of the exhibition: “We decided it was necessary to raise awareness about this dark part of his deeds to a wider audience,” added Taffin. 

“The decision to reestablish slavery isn’t just a stain on Napoleon’s legacy, it’s a crime,” Louis-Georges Tin, campaigner and honorary president of the Representative Council of Black Associations (CRAN), told DW. Napoleon’s decision in 1802 to reinstate slavery not only betrayed the ideals of the French Revolution, it also condemned an estimated 300,000 people into a life of bondage for several more years, before France definitively abolished slavery in 1848. 

Tin, who is from Martinique, a former colony and now an overseas French territory, said these aspects of Napoleon’s policies need to be taught more in France. “As somebody whose ancestors were enslaved, I can’t understand why we continue to celebrate Napoleon’s memory as if nothing happened,” he said. The activist pointed out that the bicentenary of Napoleon’s death on May 5 comes just days before France marks the 20th anniversary of the so-called Taubira law, which made the former colonial power the first country to recognize slavery and the slave trade as crimes against humanity. “France cannot be the country of human rights and celebrate someone who committed crimes against humanity. It makes no sense,” Tin added. 

Not everyone agrees. Historian and Napoleon specialist Peter Hicks, from the Paris-based Fondation Napoleon, said Bonaparte was a complex figure who presided over periods of “hyper-violence” in Europe and couldn’t be reduced to his colonial positions. 

“The slavery part of the Napoleonic story, as ghastly as it was, is minimal and peripheral compared to the big stories in Europe like the Civil Code and Treaty of Amiens [an agreement that achieved peace in Europe for 14 months during the Napoleonic Wars], which is much more important to Germans, the French, Britons and Italians,” Hicks said. Seen from the perspective of the Caribbean, the story of Napoleon’s reestablishment of slavery is anything but marginal. 

But things have changed. Starting in the late 1990s, France has seen demonstrations, laws and changes in the school curriculum to push for a better inclusion of its sprawling history. 

In recent years, a vocal and diverse French population, many of whose ancestors came from former colonies, have mobilized around issues of racial discrimination and identity. Jean-Marc Ayrault, a former Prime Minister of France who now serves as the president of the Foundation for the Remembrance of Slavery, said the Napoleon bicentenary is an opportunity to face up to France’s long colonial past as well as to acknowledge recent demands for racial justice.