The document collected here is the royal edict of 1685, issued under Louis XIV and printed in the 1687 Paris volume on the policing of France's American islands. Later decrees adjusted particular articles, but this first version laid down the framework that governed slavery in the French colonies until 1789.

Its opening article expels all Jews from the colonies; in the Dutch Caribbean they held a real if secondary commercial position, while under French rule they could own neither property nor enslaved people. The edict likewise requires that enslaved people be instructed as Catholics rather than Protestants.

Most of the code, however, is given over to fixing the legal condition of slavery — inherited through the mother, not the father — and to tight regulation of the conduct of the enslaved, who are left with almost nothing in the way of rights. Masters, for their part, are directed to provide for the sick and the old.