5.1.2 Turks and the Freedom Principle: An Unspoken Exception?
All this is relevant for one simple reason that, except for one recent article, has almost been fully neglected by scholars. How did this issue intersect with the freedom principle of France? We know that slaves were on the galleys, and we also know that most of them must have touched the soil of France at various moments.
The oarsmen spent spring and summer at sea, but during fall and winter, the galleys remained docked in several French ports, most importantly Marseille. During this period, the Turks slept in docked galleys or, by the eighteenth century, in barracks. Many of them worked in local factories during the day or had small shops.15 If we were to follow the logic of the sixteenth century freedom principle precedents, one would presume that these Turks became free upon setting foot on French soil. However, this was not the case. There were no acts regulating their status whilst in France, and no author has reported a case involving one of these slaves so far. No scholar has attempted to systematically evaluate whether and what seventeenth century jurists had to say about this issue. The few references in secondary literature that do mention the thoughts of scholars on this issue often refer to eighteenth century sources, and are mostly derived from articles in the great encyclopĂ©dies of that era.16The administration’s views on the issue are visible in a 1694 letter of then Minister of the Marine Louis PhĂ©lypeaux, the Count of Maurepas.17 He asserted that “Tout homme qui a une fois touchĂ© les terres du royaume est libre”. However, there was one exception, namely for “Turcs et mores qui sont envoyĂ©s à Marseille pour le service des galères, parce que, avant d’y arriver, ils sont achetĂ©s dans les pays estrangers où cette espèce de commerce est establi”.18 As we will see, the Count of Maurepas came to a different conclusion when he discussed whether blacks who arrived in France became free upon touching the French soil, notwithstanding the fact that black people were also bought in countries where this kind of trade was established.
Next to that, the Count of Maurepas’ statement also does not take note of those Turks who were captured during war, and thus not bought. The letter can best be understood as a means of trying to explain away the anomaly between the freedom principle and Turkish slavery for the sake of the importance that the galleys had to Louis XIV, but it did not succeed in offering an adequate legal explanation for the enslavement of Turks.19Another way to explain the anomaly could be to give it a religious spin. As noted, Antoine Loisel held that France’s soil only rendered freedom to slaves who were baptised.20 This requirement can be supported by a 1698 decision of the Cour de Conscience. This was not a regular court, but part of the faculty of theology of the Sorbonne, and moral issues could be discussed with its theologians.21 In 1698, such a question was posed regarding the legality of the Atlantic slave trade. The Cour de Conscience decided that, under certain conditions, the Atlantic slave trade did not go against Christian conscience. One sentence in the decision mentioned that the French king “ne fait point difficultĂ© d’acheter des Esclaves Turcs, quoiqu’il y’ en ait très peu qui embrassent le Christianisme”.22 Again, this might show that the idea of baptism giving freedom was also more widespread in France and subsequently explains the lack of debate concerning these Muslim slaves. We know that baptism as a precondition for freedom eventually withered away, certainly so after the Edict of 1685 required black slaves to be baptised. However, we need more research on seventeenth century legal tracts to conclusively prove this hypothesis.
In the eighteenth century, when the galleys were already a thing of the past, we also find some scholars expounding on this exception to the freedom principle. How did they respond? In some encyclopĂ©dies, the issue was simply ignored. Only forçats were discussed, and these were not equated with slaves.23 Others did equate forçats with slaves and believed this showed that penal enslavement was an exception to the French freedom principle.
Again, this ignored the question of the Turks.24 Some scholars did make the distinction between the forçats and the Turks. Several means were then used to explain the anomaly between the freedom principle and the presence of slaves. Some seem to have found their legitimation in the right of reprisal. The idea was that the Turks were the ones who had committed some kind of “first fault” by capturing French subjects. In return, the French were then allowed to enslave the Turks as well, even if some would hold that they could only be kept as prisoners rather than slaves.25 Another means of legitimation solved the conundrum by claiming the Turks were no “real slaves”. The idea was that the French did not have the right of life and death over them, and that their children were considered as being personally free as well. Consequently, one could claim that this was no “real exception” to the French freedom principle.26What is clear, is that we cannot explain this anomaly by solely looking at the legal side of the story. That is why Weiss has also looked at other factors to explain why this issue did not arouse much suspicion in France. Besides the aforementioned legal explanations, she points at various factors: the rise of France’s naval ambitions in the Mediterranean, the propaganda value of Muslim slaves for a “most Christian king” such as Louis XIV, and the fact that the Turks’ unfreedom must have come less to the fore in a multi-ethnic city such as Marseille, to name but a few.27
Given the foregoing, I believe any conclusion on the issue of galley slavery is rather tentative. Until the latter part of the eighteenth century, part of the oarsmen of the French galleys were Turkish slaves, and most of these Turks must have reached the French soil at some moment. There is no indication that any of them were successful in appealing to the freedom principle of France, and they thus remained in a condition of slavery.
How do we explain the anomaly? Socio-politically speaking, there were arguments why the issue did not arise much suspicion. However, we are still faced with the legal anomaly between the freedom principle and Turkish enslavement. Pending further research, I would dare say the problem was approached by lawyers and administrative officials in various ways.
One way to solve the problem was to simply ignore it. Broadly speaking, this seems to have been the approach of the administration. When a double standard started to appear at the end of the seventeenth century, with freedom for black slaves but slavery for the Turks, the administration engaged in weak sophistry to try and explain the difference. Given that the number of Turkish galley slaves went down just when the number of black slaves went up, the administration did not have to deal with the issue later on. Another means to explain the anomaly would be by pointing out that the French soil was only regarded to be “free” for Christians, not the infidel in the seventeenth century. This extra condition to acquire liberty disappeared soon after the promulgation of the Edict of 1685 and could help to explain why there was no reaction from lawyers and scholars to Turkish enslavement. This hypothesis also helps to understand why eighteenth century scholars did feel the need to explain the anomaly, as by their time, baptism was much less linked to attaining freedom. Those scholars could then choose to ignore the issue when discussing the galères, could posit penal enslavement as an exception to the French freedom principle, make vague references to a right of reprisal, or claim that the Turks were simply “no real slaves”.