1685, March: (The Code Noir and the Institutionalization of Abuse): To regulate the labor force in his island possessions, Louis XIV issued the Code Noir in …

1685, March: (The Code Noir and the Institutionalization of Abuse): To regulate the labor force in his island possessions, Louis XIV issued the Code Noir in March 1685, which nominally accorded certain human rights such as the right to marry and the right to a formal trial. While the code mandated that the enslaved be baptized and given religious instruction, it intentionally made no provision for education, as enslavers believed white security demanded keeping the enslaved in “profound ignorance”. The law established an intermediate class of mixed-blood affranchis through manumission, yet these freedmen faced systemic abuse from white colonists that would eventually fuel the revolutionary conflagration. In practice, the code was more often breached than observed by “greedy, insensitive” enslavers who sanctioned horrific atrocities that equaled the horrors of the Middle Passage. Such punishments included burying men alive, crushing them in mortars, or lashing them to stakes in swamps to be devoured by insects.