With the anti-racist movement “Black Lives Matter” which is gaining momentum all around the world, the question of statues of men linked to slavery or colonization, present in the public square, returns to the center of the news. Last Sunday, anti-racism activists debunked in Bristol, in the United Kingdom, a statue with the effigy of Edward Colston, an English merchant who was enriched in the 18th century thanks to the slave trade.
In France, the figure of the Minister of Louis XIV Jean-Baptiste Colbert - who gave his name to streets and many schools in France - has sparked debate for several years. The economist had undertaken at the end of the 17th century the drafting of a text that we now call the Black Code, a law which legislated slavery in the French colonies.
Last Saturday, demonstrators, notably belonging to the Black African Defense League, called to unbolt his statue placed in front of the National Assembly.
For Frédéric Régent, lecturers in modern history at Paris-I University, the controversy around this figure is explained by the fact that Jean-Baptiste Colbert embodies "an emblem", "the figure of the French slave" .