Читать книгу Benjamin Drew. The Refugee. Narratives of Fugitive Slaves in Canada онлайн

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The Eighteenth Century and Black Canada: Widening the Routes of the Black Atlantic and Transnational Slavery

As mentioned earlier, the first recorded Black slave arrived in Canada in 1628, transported by a British convoy to New France. The boy was from Madagascar, and he was named by his captors as Olivier le Jeune. This was a rare case of a slave coming to the colony at the time ahead of the Black Code, also known as Code Noir or the Royal Edict of 1685, which restricted the activities of free people of color and prescribed the conversion of all enslaved people throughout the empire. The reason for King Louis XIV’s granting the petition from New France to import Black slaves from West Africa lies in the fact that there were 11. 562 people living in the colony, and most were fur traders, missionaries and farmers. With a lack of servants and labourers, the population wanted to import individuals to undertake such tasks. At the time, slavery was prohibited in France but permitted in the colonies out of the desire to have a large labour force to clear and exploit land. In 1721, the king issued an edict in which he prevented minors emancipated from wardship to sell the Black slaves they owned. Already set up as commodities, Blacks could only be considered if they were enslaved. In 1727, the king issued another edict to regulate foreign commerce with the British American colonies, where it was stated that Blacks who were found on vessels trading abroad would be forfeited to the state of New France. Moreover, although the French legislation posed no question of denying the right of asylum, “even when asylum was granted, a Black person remained a slave” (56), as Marcel Trudel informs.