Controversy over Colbert: "It is not with picks that we decide on a memory policy"

During the demonstration in memory of Adama Traoré, Saturday June 13, demonstrators wanted to target the statue of Jean-Baptiste Colbert, installed in front of the National Assembly. The former minister of Louis XIV was at the initiative in 1685 of the Black Code, which legislated slavery in the French colonies.

Jean-Marc Ayrault, current president of the Foundation for the memory of slavery and ex-Prime Minister, also asked, on Saturday, to rename a Colbert hall in the National Assembly, as well as a building in Bercy bearing his name . In response, President Emmanuel Macron said on Sunday in a televised speech that "the republic would not erase any name or any trace of its history".

For France 24, the historian Frédéric Régent, doctor of history and lecturer at the University of Paris 1, returns to the genesis of the Black Code and the controversy surrounding the monuments linked to colonial history or the slave trade.

France 24: Jean-Baptiste Colbert is currently the target of anti-racist activists as the author of the Code Noir. Finance Minister Bruno Lemaire defended it by saying that he had not written it. What is it really ?

Frédéric Régent: As Secretary of State for the Navy and the Colonies, Jean-Baptiste Colbert asked the administrators of the colonies to answer a questionnaire at the time. He is preparing a text to govern slavery because it did not exist as such in the Kingdom of France. He wants to build on the practices that exist on the islands. Slavery indeed developed in the 1620s in the French West Indies. He therefore asks questions: how to punish a slave when he commits such a fault? How to manage children of which one of the parents is a slave and the other is free? How are postage managed?

The departments around Colbert are the authors of the questionnaire which are sent to the administrators, but when it comes to finalizing the text, he is already dead in 1683. He is signed two years later by his son who succeeds him.

The tension is palpable around the world over the statues of slavery characters in history, vandalized, after the wave of indignation aroused by the death of George Floyd. In France, voices are raised to withdraw the statue of Colbert before the National Assembly pic.twitter.com/bx11u31VME

But he still remained in the minds as the author of the Code noir ...

In the collective memory, he remained above all as the minister of Louis XIV, as the person in charge of the water and forest code, as the initiator of the Gobelins factories and others. This image has changed recently. It has evolved over the past decade or so. In particular, he has become the target of movements such as those calling for reparations for slavery through social networks. The Black Code was gradually erected into monstrous text. Its initiator Colbert has therefore become, through association, the symbol of slavery.

Why were statues erected in his honor?

Those who erected them wanted to inscribe the young Republic in a millennial history of France. For them, it was a question of having a Pantheon where the history of France did not begin with the beginnings of the Republic and went back to Vercingétorix. Registering the Republic before 1792 was a bit complicated. Those who wrote the History of France needed to give a story that spanned several centuries to show a form of continuity of the state and its servants. Figures were therefore put forward such as Saint Vincent de Paul, Bayard, Colbert, Richelieu, Sully, Henri IV etc ... As far as Colbert was concerned, this was a misinterpretation because he was a servant of the Absolute Monarchy. He did not only serve the state, he also served in the process.  

What do you think of those who today want to remove these statues or rename places in his name?

In the National Assembly, I find that the name of the great hall, where the majority parliamentary group meets, is debatable. We are no longer at the start of the Republic. We could think of giving another name. If only to give a little more meaning and show that at some point we reflect on our past. As for the destruction of the statues, I am against it. It reminds us of ancient Egypt when a pharaoh was dethroned, all his statues were destroyed. They are as such works of art, but we must especially take advantage of Colbert's inscription in the landscape to talk about the Black Code and slavery. The example of Bordeaux, where the street names worn by families of slave traders have been explained by plaques, seems to me more judicious than choosing to replace them with daisies or poppies.

Does this also involve better teaching of this period and of slavery?

Currently, its presence in the programs is quite satisfactory. But it is in practice that teachers must be given more tools to teach this question. It doesn't have to come down to the question of unseating statues or leaving them in place. Nor should slavery be taught in a purely moral way, but it must be recontextualized and explained the reasons for the enslavement of millions of people for several centuries. We must also read the Black Code in the text and not read it completely distorted or in terms of our principles. There is a lot of nonsense at the moment. There is, for example, an article which states that slaves were considered "furniture". Today, it is easy to say that this article objectifies the slaves, when in reality, it is a debate as to whether the slaves are attached to the plantation or not. If we take the text, he declares that they are men and that the masters are obliged to baptize them. They also have the opportunity to become free. When they are, they have the same rights as those born free. When people say that the Black Code is the birth of racism, it is therefore an absolute nonsense.

This is the whole problem of history when it passes into the hands of non-professionals or activists. Colbert does indeed have a busy file, but when it comes to knocking down statues of the abolitionist Victor Schoelcher as in Martinique, there is really cause for concern. One has the impression that everyone is a historian. It is not with a pickaxe that we decide on a memory policy. We must meet, discuss and weigh the pros and cons.

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