(Took some time to write this one, sorry!)
There have been Black people in France for centuries: in the early 12th century, in the city of Caen, Normandy, monk Raoul Tortaire saw on market day a parade of the menagerie of Henry I of England, Duke of Normandy, that included a lion, a leopard/cheetah on a horse, a lynx, a camel, an ostrich, and a "fierce Ethiopian" (Loisel, 1912). Other dark-skinned foreigners are occasionally mentioned, such as two India-born men, Bénard de Poux (hanged in Rouen in 1428, we have the executioner's bill) and Antoine de Neyn (who received 32 livres tournois from Louis XI in 1479, top of the right page). That said, the presence of Black (and generally non-European) people in the French territory before the 20th century has remained poorly documented. For the 17 to 19th centuries, most of the historiography focused either on court cases related to slavery, or on a handful of famous people: the General Thomas Alexandre Dumas (father of the novelist), the Chevalier Joseph Bologne de Saint-George (who has a movie coming out), or Abraham Petrovich Hanibal (great-grandfather of Russian poet Pushkin, who spent some time in France).
In the 2000s, a team of researchers - helped by amateur genealogists - started systematic investigations in the French archives - police, judiciary, military, navy, church, private companies, etc. The results of these investigations were compiled in the three-volume Dictionnaire des gens de couleurs dans la France moderne, published between 2011 and 2017, which provides individual notices for Black and mixed-race people whose presence has been recorded in France since the 15th century, though most of them have been identified in the 17th and 18th century. The dictionary contains entries for 3000 people in the Paris area, 7800 in Brittany, and 8000 in Southern France (including Bordeaux).
Those numbers are higher than those recorded previously: for a long time, historians believed their numbers to be low, 4000-5000 at best, much lower than the figure of 10-15,000 generally accepted for England, and wondered about the difference (Peabody, 1996). It is apparent that the slave trade, and more generally colonial-related activities, resulted in the arrival in mainland France of tens of thousands of people of African descent, and that many of them stayed there.
1. The Freedom Principle
France, like other European countries, had a principle called the "Freedom principle" or "priviledge of the French land". An edict of Louis X from 1315 linked the name of the country (the kingdom of the Francs) to the condition of freedom. While the actual extent of the edict has been debated (see Boulle and Peabody, 2014), a similar principle was upheld - but only at local level - in the 15th century, when slaves who had escaped from Perpignan to Toulouse were declared free by the courts of the latter city (La Faille, 1687). The full principle was applied in 1571, when slaves brought in Bordeaux by Norman vessel were all freed by the Court, which had put as a reason that "France, land of freedom, does not admit any slaves" (Mathorez, 1919; Noël, 2013).
In the 17th century, the development of the labour-intensive sugar production in the French Caribbean resulted in the establishment of plantations and in the development of the slave trade. Soon, plantation owners and traders travelling to France for business or leisure were accompanied by their Black slaves, who were also status symbols. These men and women were not the expendable slaves who were worked to death in the fields and sugar mills, but typically valued servants such as valets, cooks, nannies, or wig-makers, who may even know to read and write. This resulted in a growing and visible presence of Black people in the mainland, whose official status was slavery though they were treated like domestics. This was found to be problematic: if slavery was accepted in the colonies, this was a different matter in France, where the freedom principle was applicable.
In 1691, two stowaways made it safely to France from Martinique, and were declared free on arrival. When asked for his opinion about this, Louis XIV agreed: there were no slaves in France. But what to do with the enslaved persons who came with their masters? Legally, they had to be freed as soon as they set foot in France. But the sugar industry was a booming business... It took a a few decades, and the death of Louis XIV, for the French state to come up with a solution: the Edict of 1716 allowed masters to bring their slaves legally, provided that they were given religious instruction or taught a trade, and were registered with the authorities. If a master failed to comply with the rules, the slave could be freed. This allowed the presence of enslaved persons on the French soil, and the application of the edict rule was quite lax: "to be instructed in religion and to be taught a trade" became a stock phrase, and probably a fiction in many cases. But the Edict also provided enslaved persons with a legal way to challenge their status, which was impossible in the Colonies. And there was another loophole: the Edict was never registered with the Parliament of Paris. In 1738, an enslaved man named Jean Boucaux escaped his master in Paris and petitioned for his freedom: the Admiralty Court and the King's prosecutor sided with him. Boucaux was declared a free man and his master sentenced to pay nine and a half years of wages plus interest, damages, and court costs (he appealed and never paid, but Boucaux remained free) (Noël, 2011).
In 1738, a new edict tried to close up some of the loopholes, by limiting the duration of the presence of a slave in France to three years, and by forbidding the marriage, gifting, or sale of slaves on the mainland. Like the previous one, however, it was not registered in Paris. In the 1750s, enslaved people started sueing for freedom with the Admiralty Court of Paris, and they always won - with the help of specialized lawyers! From then to the Revolution, 154 persons won their freedom in Paris through the Court. Enslaved people who tried to sue for freedom in other regions (where the Edicts had been registered with the Courts) were less lucky, as shown by the case of Catherine Morgan in 1747, whose freedom was refused by the Admiralty Court of Nantes: she was "confiscated" by the State and sent back to Saint-Domingue.
These edicts did not fully prevent colonials from bringing to France their slaves or their mixed-race families. In 1748, when Georges Bologne de Saint-Georges, planter of Guadeloupe had to leave the island escape a death sentence, he fled to Bordeaux and had his whole family join him later: his wife and their legitimate son, and his Black mistress (and slave) Nanon, and their illegitimate son Joseph, future Chevalier de Saint-George. In the 1760s, the prosecutor for the Admiralty Court, Poncet de la Grave, voiced his concern for the large number of Black people now living in France - he even called it a "deluge" (cited by Peabody, 1996):
The introduction of too great a quantity of negroes in France – whether in the quality of slaves, or in any other respect – is a dangerous consequence. We will soon see the French nation disfigured if a similar abuse is tolerated. Moreover, the negroes are, in general, dangerous men. Almost none of those to whom you have rendered freedom have refrained from abusing it,... [they] have been carried to excesses dangerous for society.
We can see here that Poncet was expressing his concern in racial terms. He would later become obsessed with the question of interracial sex. Black and mixed-race people were seen as dangerous, prone to laziness and libertinage. The question was not so much the presence of slaves than the presence of Black people, free or not. In 1762, a new ordinance required the registration of all "negroes and mulattoes" in Paris. Masters registered their slaves, and free Blacks registered themselves, putting "free" in the written record, thus making it official.
In August 1777, Louis XVI created the Police des Noirs, a new set of regulations ("police" as in "policing", and not a "special unit" like writes Otele, 2021!) that attempted to control the presence in France of Black people - not just slaves. By then, Poncet was not the only official who thought that there were too many Blacks in France, notably in Paris. For Minister of Marine Sartine, the successful and well publicized lawsuits that turned slaves into free people gave Blacks wrong ideas about equality. Also, bringing slaves in France could only cause degeneration of the blood thanks to interracial mixing. The aim of the new policy, formulated in an earlier draft, was nothing less than the elimination of Black people, not by physical extermination, but by preventing their arrival and prohibiting them to have children with white people: "In the end, the race of negroes will be extinguished in the kingdom." The new policy included more registration, prohibition of new arrivals, and the establishment of "depots" - prisons to hold Blacks brought in France or found to live there illegally. In 1778, it became mandatory for Blacks to carry an ID card, and interracial marriages were banned.
Poor implementation and bickering between administrations resulted in the Police des Noirs regulations being inefficient. Free coloured people and enslaved people still arrived as local authorities looked the other way (James and Sally Hemings came with Thomas Jefferson in 1784 for instance). The interracial ban was never enforced. Depots were more effective and people were deported, but they were plagued by administrative problems. Petitions for freedom resumed and were granted like before. Manumissions exceeded them, possibly because masters were more willing to retain their Black domestics voluntarily than by force.
> 2. Racial discrimination in the Colonies