5.2.2 The Earliest Cases: Upholding the French Freedom Principle
The earliest instances of black slaves arriving in France all point to the same direction, namely a widely shared, but sometimes qualified, respect for the French freedom principle.46
In 1691, two nègres from Martinique arrived in France after having hidden themselves on the ship l’Oyseau.47 In an instruction sent by the Count of Maurepas to the governor-general of the French Antilles, Louis XIV had decided to grant freedom to these slaves (“La libertĂ© Ă©tant acquise par les lois du Royaume aux esclaves aussitôt qu’ils touchent la terre”).
At the same time, the inattentive captain of the ship had to pay 300 livres for each of those slaves to their former master.48 The king eventually decided to formalise the decisions in stowaway cases, reiterating in a 1694 ordonnance that captains who took slaves to France by accident had to pay 400 livres for each of them to their former masters.49With the issue of stowaways settled, the question soon arose as to whether colonial proprietors could bring their slaves with them to France and keep them. Again, the proprietors were to be disappointed. In a 1696 letter to the intendant of Martinique, Maurepas said that nègres brought to France gained their freedom, and this was repeated in correspondence of 1698 and 1710.50
Yet the government did allow for some partial exceptions. For example, the king ordered that some nègres who had participated and were captured by the enemy in a French military expedition in Cartagena, after which they were brought to France, would only be enfranchised if their part of the booty was given to their masters.51 Likewise, there was a case of an enslaved woman from the Antilles who had travelled to France in 1677, before returning voluntarily to the Antilles without having claimed her freedom. When her many children and grandchildren found out that their predecessor had been in France and tried to claim their freedom on the basis of this stay in 1707, the French administration made an exception to its freedom principle for slaves who had voluntarily returned to the colonies.52