(ANSA) - PARIS, 12 MAR - `` Napoleon as a slave '': while France is preparing to celebrate the bicentenary of the emperor's death, on 5 May 1821 during his exile in Sant'Elena, the Fondation pour la Mémoire de l ' Esclavage accuses him of having restored slavery abolished by the French Revolution in 1802, leaving the establishment of a colonial regime that is more segregationist than under the monarchy.
"Napoleon acted as he did for everything else, without affection, without morals," the president of the Foundation, former premier Jean-Marc Ayrault, told the France Presse agency, based on historical research carried out for the occasion.
"This decision - continues the former mayor of Nantes - is not an accident of course but is part of the practice of power and its imperial ambition".
Entitled "Napoleon colonial - 1802, le rétablissement del'esclavage", the historical note transmitted to the FrancePresse agency and written by four historians - Marcel Dorigny, BernardGainot, Malick Ghachem and Frédéric Régent - shows how the restoration of slavery was inscribed in the American colonial politics of Napoleon, who dreamed of making the Golf of Mexico "a French sea".
For blacks, the measure provides for a return to an even harsher regime than that of the Ancien Régime.
"Napoleon wants to expand the French imperocolonial: it is his American dream. For him, the restoration of slavery is only a means at the service of this colonial dream."
In France, whether or not to celebrate the bicentenary of the emperor's death raises debate.
Napoleon is at the same time one of the favorite characters of the French and a controversial figure for his action during the fifteen years in which he exercised power, between 1799 and 1815.
(HANDLE).