Adresse à l'Assemblée nationale, pour l'abolition de la traite des Noirs

A passionate address delivered to France's National Assembly on February 5, 1790, by Jacques-Pierre Brissot de Warville, founder of the Société des Amis des Noirs. This document represents a crucial intervention in the early days of the French Revolution, when the ideals of liberty clashed with the brutal economics of colonial slavery. Brissot, drawing on Enlightenment philosophy and inspired by British abolitionists like Thomas Clarkson, argues for the immediate abolition of the slave trade while carefully distinguishing this from immediate emancipation. His reasoning reveals the complex moral calculations of revolutionary-era abolitionists: they believed that ending the trade was both a moral imperative and a practical necessity, while arguing that formerly enslaved people required education before they could be integrated into free society. The text captures the tensions between radical principle and political compromise that would define the abolitionist movement for decades to come. This is essential reading for anyone interested in the origins of modern human rights discourse and the difficult birth of abolitionist thought.