Le Jeune Case
Open-knowledge reference entry
The Le Jeune Case (or "Lejeune case") was a suit brought by 14 slaves against torture and murder by their master, Nicolas Le Jeune, in the French colony of Saint-Domingue in 1788. Le Jeune was accused of torturing and murdering six slaves, who he said had planned to poison him. Despite overwhelming evidence of Le Jeune's guilt, courts ruled in favor of the planter, demonstrating the complicity of Saint-Domingue's legal system in the brutalization of slaves. The Haitian Revolution ending slavery in Saint-Domingue would begin only three years later.
Background
In 1685, France enacted the Code Noir, regulating the treatment of slaves in its colonies. The code was brutal, and allowed both whipping and exploitation of slaves. Slaves who escaped as Maroons were to be branded, hamstrung or executed. But the code also required that slaves be clothed and fed, and it ostensibly protected them against torture, murder and rape. The codes were rarely enforced, and beginning in 1767, French King Louis XV and his administration began amending the codes to reduce their protections of slaves, free blacks and mulattoes, and white colonists who might form personal relationships with them. In 1784 however, in response to abuses from slave-holding planters, France re-imposed more stringent regulations under the Code.
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This entry incorporates text from “Le Jeune Case” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.