Abolition of slavery: May 10, a special day

Text by: Sabine Cessou Follow | Sabine Cessou Follow

May 10, the day of the 2001 adoption in France of the Taubira law recognizing the transatlantic slave trade and slavery as crimes against humanity, is officially commemorated in the Luxembourg garden, in Paris.

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Despite the confinement, the commemoration of the National Day of Memories of the slave trade and slavery and their abolitions will take place this Sunday, May 10, in the Jardin du Luxembourg, in a select committee. Prime Minister Édouard Philippe, the President of the Senate Gérard Larcher, the Minister for Overseas Annick Girardin and Dominique Taffin, Director of the brand new Foundation for the Memory of Slavery will be present .

This foundation will broadcast live from its Facebook page , from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m., a commemoration hosted by Claudy Siar and Bintou Simporé. In addition, the digital commemoration will last until June 10, the date of the abolition of slavery in Guyana. Its theme: "  The missing page, to symbolize the ignorance that still surrounds slavery and the memory of our colonial past in the general public," explains Jean-Marc Ayrault. A lack that is an injury to all those whose family history is thus denied.  "

A foundation to celebrate the diversity of French society

Wanted by François Hollande in 2016, ratified in 2017 by President Emmanuel Macron, this Foundation for the memory of slavery was created in November 2019. Half funded by the French State, with a still modest budget of 2 million d 'euros, it aims to educate, inform and reflect, by answering the basic question of knowing "  why there are blacks in France  " ..

His manifesto, which could not be clearer, is above controversy, to celebrate the diversity of French society today: "  The Foundation wants to help understand the French global identity stemming from four centuries of relations between France , Africa, America, the Caribbean and the Indian Ocean and thus participate in national cohesion by showing how the overseas have enriched the culture and how the resistance to oppression and the fight for abolition have shaped the values ​​of France.  "

Designed to be an open platform, this body headed by Dominique Taffin, general heritage curator, former director of the Archives of Martinique, calls for projects in culture, research and education. She is preparing a “big party” to celebrate in 2021 the twenty years of the Taubira law. In addition, the construction of a memorial to the victims of slavery is planned at the Tuileries and is being managed by the Ministry of Culture.

"Abolitions" in the plural

The emphasis is already on celebrating the “abolitions” of slavery in the plural. The reason ? France is the only former colonial power to have abolished slavery on February 4, 1794, before re-establishing it, and abolishing it again on April 27, 1848. The Foundation will also be housed at the Hôtel de la Marine, Place de la Concorde, where this second abolition was decreed by Victor Schoelcher.

An intranet network with teachers and a link with the Ministry of National Education are already active, to ensure that the school programs make good mention, for example, of the figure of Toussaint Louverture, a Haitian revolutionary, in history of the French Revolution.

The Foundation's scientific committee, chaired by Romuald Fonkua, professor of French-speaking literatures at the Sorbonne, includes well-known names such as the writers Maryse Condé and Alain Mabanckou, the historians Myriam Cottias, Achille Mbembe, Ibrahima Thioub, Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch and Pap Ndiaye, as well as political scientist Françoise Vergès. This committee will have a lot to do, to get out of more than 150 years of silence on slavery, a subject that remains difficult to broach in France. Will she be able to move the lines and change time? The future will tell.

"A partial and forgetful memory"

Political scientist of the French colonial past, Olivier Le Cour Grandmaison , believes that the day of May 10 "  endlessly maintains the national and republican myth of an abolition decreed in 1848, when it is nothing  ". When the Third Republic spreads in sub-Saharan Africa , explains this university, its leaders are confronted with a form of slavery from which they will take advantage: the domestic slavery or "of case", that describes Albert Londres in 1929 in Terre d 'ebony.

"  The official chronology turns out to be partial, partial and forgetful ," underlines Olivier Lecour Grandmaison  : this form of ancient slavery, before colonization, was perpetuated well after 1848 for political reasons - so as not to reach the prestige of local chiefs on whom the colony relied - but also economic. France has reused this slavery in the context of forced labor, applied to civilian populations regardless of the crimes committed, and used for the construction of infrastructure.  "

A thesis to which the foundation adheres, which is concerned with slavery and its legacies, which includes among other things "engagism", a colonial practice which made it possible to transfer Indian labor at low cost, Chinese and African in the Caribbean. A phenomenon still little known in France.

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• Slavery
• France
• Christiane Taubira