An 86-year-old Frenchman has delivered what is believed to be the first formal apology in France by a private individual for a family’s direct involvement in the transatlantic slave trade, in a development that adds a personal dimension to the growing global reparations debate that Ghana has been leading at the United Nations.
Pierre Guillon de Prince’s ancestors, based in Nantes, France’s largest port for transatlantic slavery, were shipowners who transported around 4,500 enslaved Africans and owned plantations in the Caribbean. He delivered the apology to a gathering in Nantes ahead of the inauguration of an 18-metre replica ship mast, alongside Dieudonné Boutrin, a descendant of enslaved people from the Caribbean island of Martinique.
Guillon de Prince called on other French families and the state to go beyond symbolic gestures, including through the pursuit of reparations. “Faced with the rise of racism in our society, I felt a responsibility not to let this past be erased,” he said, adding that he wanted to pass his family’s history on to his grandchildren.
The two work together at Coque Nomade Fraternité, an association dedicated to breaking the silence around slavery, and said the mast would serve as a beacon of humanity. Boutrin described the apology as a courageous act, noting that many families of slave traders’ descendants hold back for fear of reopening old wounds.
The private gesture comes as France remains under scrutiny for its national position on reparations. France recognised transatlantic slavery as a crime against humanity in 2001 but has never formally apologised for its role. President Emmanuel Macron has expanded access to archives on France’s colonial past and said he would establish a commission to examine France’s history with Haiti, without mentioning reparations.
The apology also arrives weeks after the United Nations General Assembly adopted a landmark resolution on March 25, 2026, declaring the trafficking of enslaved Africans the gravest crime against humanity and calling for reparations, a motion led by Ghana’s President John Dramani Mahama in his role as African Union Champion for Reparations. The resolution passed 123 votes to three, with the United Kingdom and all 27 European Union member states, including France, among the 52 nations that abstained.
From the 15th to the 19th century, at least 12.5 million Africans were abducted and forcibly transported, mostly on European ships. France trafficked an estimated 1.3 million people.
Guillon de Prince expressed hope that his apology would inspire others, including governments, to follow suit.
