Emancipation gives freedpeople the right to leave plantation labor and seek livelihoods

Achille, assigned to the colonial domain’s river crossing at Kourou, left on 4 June 1844 and was reported to have returned on his own on 22 July. The record does not explain his decision to return;...

On 4 March 1848, the provisional government created a commission to prepare abolition. This political opening followed the February Revolution and decades of resistance by enslaved people,...

On 27 April 1848, the provisional government decreed the abolition of slavery in all French colonies and possessions. The decree prohibited corporal punishment and the sale of people, and provided for...

On 10 June 1848, Commissioner-General André-Aimé Pariset proclaimed the abolition decree in French Guiana. The proclamation made the decree public in the colony; it did not mean emancipation took...

On 10 August 1848, the April abolition decree took legal effect in French Guiana, freeing people still enslaved under colonial law. About 12,943 people were recorded as enslaved in the colony in 1847....

Article 6 of the Constitution of the Second Republic states that slavery cannot exist on any French territory. The constitutional guarantee followed emancipation in French Guiana and made abolition...

A law provides indemnities to colonial owners after abolition. The state compensated former enslavers for the loss of people it had treated as property; formerly enslaved people received no equivalent...

A decree fixes the modalities for paying indemnities to owners in former slave colonies, including French Guiana. The compensation system directed state resources to property claimants rather than...

A national law provides for colonial banks, including a bank in French Guiana. The scheme was tied to the post-emancipation economy and was discussed as a possible source of credit for freedpeople...

The 1851 colonial-bank law is promulgated in French Guiana. Although proponents described colonial banks as a possible source of loans for new freedpeople to acquire land, the banking framework also...