Reuters —
A man in his 80s on Saturday issued what is believed to be the first formal apology by someone in France for their family’s role in transatlantic slavery, saying he hoped others – including the government – would follow.
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.
Guillon de Prince said other French families must confront their historical ties to slavery and that the state should go beyond symbolic gestures to address the past, including through reparations.
“Faced with…