Dall'asiento ai codes noirs: i tentativi di normativizzazione della schiavitù (sec. XV-XVIII)

Abstract

Between the XV and XVII century in the American colonies there was an influx of forced slave labor from Africa. Portugal, France, Spain and England were the protagonists of this slave trade or triangular trade fueled by the cultivation of sugar cane and due to the extinction of Amerindian populations. In these areas the need to regulate legally the lives of slaves produced a particular legislation: the black codes. In this work is analyzed and compared the origin of this legislation, starting from the Spanish asientos up to the French code noir, the Americans black codes and the Caroline codigo, a collection of rules about the slaves, but it never entered into force. The paper focuses on a particular profile of the history of human rights in the modern age that will have its effect until the middle of the twentieth century.