Décret relatif à l’abolition de l’esclavage dans les colonies et possessions françaises

Edition

The official text as printed in the Bulletin des lois de la République française, 10th series, vol. 1 (February to June 1848), bulletin n° 32, decree n° 296, pages 321 to 323 (views 339 to 341 of the Gallica copy, BnF). The text comes from the OCR of these pages (ALTO files of Gallica), read word by word against the page images, which corrected its errors (misread letters, such as “d7appliquer” and “k.” for “4.”, and missing commas). Kept: everything from “Le Gouvernement provisoire,” to “Signé Pagnerre.”, with the spelling, capitals and italics of the print (“très-près”, “A l’avenir”, “Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité;” in italics). Left out: the running heads and page numbers, and the heading of the decree, “N° 296. Décret relatif à l’abolition de l’Esclavage dans les Colonies et Possessions françaises. Du 27 Avril 1848.”, which is printed with the misprint “Escldvage”: the title of the poster is the title of the decree on Légifrance (JORFTEXT000000295898), and the date is in the kicker. Words divided at line ends are joined; the space before the comma after “républicain” is dropped; the names that the print sets in small capitals are set in small capitals, and apostrophes are typographic.

Rights

A decree of the Provisional Government of the French Republic, published in the Bulletin des lois in 1848: an official act of a public authority, which French copyright does not protect, and a text published before 1931, hence in the public domain in the United States. Its signatories all died before 1 January 1956 (the last, Louis Blanc, in 1882).

Gallica gives the volume the rights statement “domaine public” (dc:rights of the OAI record of ark:/12148/bpt6k486121r). Its conditions of use (https://gallica.bnf.fr/edit/und/conditions-dutilisation-des-contenus-de-gallica): “La réutilisation non commerciale de ces contenus est libre et gratuite dans le respect de la législation en vigueur et notamment du maintien de la mention de source des contenus”, in the form “Source gallica.bnf.fr / BnF”, and “La réutilisation commerciale de ces contenus est payante et fait l’objet d’une licence.” The poster reuses the text of the decree, which is not protected, not the images of Gallica; its footer cites Gallica (BnF) as the source.