II The French Empire and the Code Noir

This essay can be seen as a tour through the Parnassia Collection.12 In the process of discussing different clocks and groups of clocks, we address the history of the pendulum clock itself, as well as the history of the terminology and nomenclature of the pendule au Noir. Below is our categorization of these particular types:

A. Le pendule au Noir Personnifi é (allegories, ideologies, continents, colonies, or countries, depicted as persons) B. Le pendule au Bon Noir (Black people living carefree in the natural order of pristine nature/Arcadia) C. Le pendule au Noir Enchaîné (enslaved Black people mostly involved in manual labor)

The fi rst category consists of the black personifi cations like Africa and America, while the second group encompasses clocks au Bon Noir that are mostly based on contemporary novels and/or depict men and women in relaxed, natural poses. The third group allows us to focus on slavery and life on the plantations. For an outline and categorization of the 23 pendulum clocks and one inkwell from the Parnassia Collection we selected for this essay, see the overview on page 76 and 77.

The French began colonizing the Americas from the 1550s onwards: fi rst in Canada and Louisiana (now part of the USA). It was in these lands that the French fi rst came into contact with indiginous peoples and were introduced to the smoking of tobacco and homemade beverages containing caffeine, argue David Graeber (anthropologist) and David Wengrow (archaeologist) in their book The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity. 13 The French enjoyed these new fl avors so much that in a way this was one of the triggers for the colonization of North and South America. “Slavery is the outcome of argiculture and farming,” Wengrow regularly states in talks about this

12 This essay focuses solely on the pendules au Noir of the Parnassia Collection. 13 Graeber and Wengrow, op.cit. note 7.

bestseller he and Graeber worked on for 10 years.14 From the 1620s, France continued to expand its empire to Louisiana, French Guiana, and the food producing islands in the Caribbean region, as well as Senegal in Africa and three islands located in the Indian Ocean, Réunion, Mauritius and the Seychelles. In 1789, the Caribbean colonies, such as SaintDomingue (since their independence in 1804 known as the Republic of Haiti) and Martinique produced bulk sugar, indigo, coffee, tobacco, and cotton. The colonies could yield huge volumes because of the enormous amount of free labor: enslaved men and women traffi cked from the African continent.

In 1685, the French Prime Minister under King Louis XIV, Jean-Baptist Colbert (1619-1683), drew up the Code Noir. This publication laid out the laws, rules and regulations regarding the management of enslaved people on plantations. Some of the rules were, for instance, that a master had to feed and clothe a slave, even if s/he is sick or old; that enslaved Africans from different masters were not allowed to congregate; that when harboring a fugitive slave, a free person would be fi ned; that masters were allowed to chain and beat slaves but not to torture or mutilate them.15 The guidelines of the Code Noir were often ignored by plantation owners who used excessive and repetitive violence against their enslaved laborers. The cruelties of plantation life have been well documented; even in the realm

Picture 2 • Code noir ou recueil d’édits, déclarations et arrêts concernant les esclaves

nègres de l’Amérique, 1743 (fi rst version 1685), public domain

14 Two weeks before the publication of The Dawn of Everything, David Graeber died. 15 Code Noir, ou recueil d’édits, déclarations et arrets concernant les esclaves nègres de l’Amérique, avec un recueil de réglemens, concernant la police des isles françoises de l’Amérique et les Engagés, Paris, 1658. Although subsequent decrees modifi ed some of its provisions, most of the Code Noir remained in place until 1848.

of philosophy we fi nd records of the horrors of the transatlantic slave trade. For instance, as documented in Voltaire’s masterpiece Candide, ou l’optimisme published in 1759, Candide witnesses the horrors of slavery fi rst hand while visiting the Dutch colony Suriname; he stumbles upon a dismembered African slave laying in a ditch. The man had lost his hand on a sugar plantation. On occasion, a hand may be caught by the machine as one feeds sugar canes into the shredder. Rather than stop the machine and delay the process, the hand or arm is cut off.16 This is just one of many accounts sharing the atrocities that took place on plantations. Interestingly enough Voltaire’s Candide also visits El Dorado, the mythical city of Gold. Authors like Abbé Raynal (1713-1796) together with philosopher Denis Diderot (1713-1784) voiced their anti-slavery sentiments in L’Histoire des deux Indes, published in 1770.17 Theoretically, Raynal and Diderot argued, primitive humans could be educated under the guidance of whites. With this train of thought, Blacks were not yet or might never be ready to be free. In 1788, the newly formed Société des Amis des Noirs was primarily focused on the abolition of slave trade and to propagate the correct way to treat slaves. The idea of individual liberty made the voice of abolitionism grew stronger: was slavery just? Should it be abolished? How should we respond to the revolts of the enslaved people? Some philosophers opposed slavery, but none of them opposed racism. Fueled by Enlightenment ideas and inspired by the American Bill of Rights, the French National Assembly presented the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen on August 26, 1789. The fi rst article reads: “Human Beings are born and remain free and equal in rights.” Copies of the Declaration were sent to all corners of the French empire, including overseas colonies. In the colonies, equality and freedom for all humans, as the Declaration articulated, should in theory have included the free and the enslaved, colored and Black.

16 Voltaire, Candide, ou l’optimisme, Gabriel Cramer, Geneva, 1759. In Suriname Voltaire’s Candide fi nds a dismembered African slave in a ditch. For similar accounts, see also: Cynthia Mc Leod, Hoe duur was de suiker?, Vaco, Paramaribo, 1987. 17 Marlene L. Daut, “Teaching Perspective: The Relation between the Haitian and French Revolutions,” in: Julia V. Douthwaite, Catriona Seth and Antoinette Sol (eds), Teaching Representations of the French Revolution, MLA Option for Teaching Series, New York, 2019, pp. 264274; Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Silencing the Past. Power and the Production of History, Beacon Press, London, 1995, p. 70-107.

In 1793, slavery was abolished in Haiti after a two-year warfare of maroons and slaves against French rule.18 In Paris on February 4, 1794, the Convention Nationale proclaimed the end of slavery and declared the enslaved people French citizens.19 Immediately a countermovement arose, the so-called Club Massiac, consisting of wealthy plantation owners and slave merchants. In the Parisian Hotel Massiac, their homebase, members emphasized the catastrophic economical loss for France if slavery were to be banned in its entirety. Clearly infl uenced by this countermovement, Napoleon Bonaparte wrote in his Les maximes et pensées, “All people are the same, if we make their chains from gold, they will not mind dedicating their lives to servitude (slavery).” 20 The abolishment lasted up to 1802 when Napoleon, pressured by the Massiac Club members, reinstated slavery.

The central queen-like fi gure, seated on a pillow, is dressed and armed. She has a bow in her left hand and is wearing a feathered crown, skirt, sandals, several necklaces, earrings, and bracelets while patting a hunting dog. Her palanquin is carried by four barefoot children dressed in loincloths. The feet of the clock could be that of a lioness or a cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus). The cheetah, which is the fastest animal on the African continent, is the only feline that cannot totally retract its nails, illustrated on the ornamentation. The hunting motif is echoed in the frieze, showcasing an alternating row of dog, fox and swine heads, framed in a geometric pattern built up out of hunting horns with tassels.

18 Almost half of Haiti’s population died in the gruesome war. 19 On slavery: Myriam Cottias, Elisabeth Cunin and Antonio de Almeida Mendes, Les traites et les esclavages: perspectives historiques et contemporaines, Karthala, Paris, 2010. On French colonies: Susan H. Libby, “The color of Frenchness: racial identity and visuality in French anti-slavery imagery, 1788-1794,” in: Adrienne Childs and Susan Libby (eds), Blacks and Blackness in European Art of the Long Nineteenth Century, Ashgate Publishing, Farnham/Burlington, 2014, pp. 19-45; Adrienne Childs and Susan Libby, The Black Figure in the European Imaginary, exhibition catalog Cornell Fine Arts Museum at Rollins College, Winter Park, D. Giles Ltd, London, 2017; Elmer Kolfi n, “Becoming Human. The Iconography of Black Slavery in French, British and Dutch Book Illustrations, c. 1600-c. 1800,” in: Elizabeth McGrath and Jean Michel Massing (eds), The Slave in European Art, From Renaissance Trophy to Abolitionist Emblem, Warburg Institute Colloquia 20, The Warburg Institute – Nino Aragno Editore, London/Turin 2012, pp 253-293. 20 Napoleon Bonaparte, Les maximes et pensées, 1805, “Le peuple est le même partout. Quand on dore ses fers, il ne hait pas la servitude.”

Picture 3 • The Huntress on a palanquin, or the Black Diana, ormolu and patination, Paris, c. 1800-1810

This clock is a pendule au Noir Personnifi é (Type A), like the personifi cations of Africa and America we discuss in the next section. The huntress is a fi gure of importance, as she is being carried by four African children. What does