Since the 1960s in Martinique, French Guiana, Guadeloupe and Réunion, and since 1998 in metropolitan France, memories of the slave trade and colonial slavery have mobilized associations, artists and scholars. After a long period of marginalization in French history and culture, colonial slavery has become a point of reference for the women, children and men who identify with those who were enslaved in the French colonies. It has been used to question the French national narrative and its pervasive inequalities, to explore the role and place of racial thinking in the making of French society and culture, and to analyse its contemporary legacies both in France and in the former colonies that became French departments in March 1946. Archaeological research, new research in the archives, the construction of memorials and monuments, the opening of galleries dedicated to the history of the slave trade and slavery in French museums, the organization of colloquiums and temporary exhibitions, the creation of spectacles (including dance, theatre and artistic performances) and the exploration of new fields (for example in law, the arts and music) have all testified to the renewed importance of this history for understanding the past and the present. The Taubira law, which in May 2001 recognized the slave trade and colonial slavery as ‘crimes against humanity’, marked an important turning point in this process. In 2006, the first national day for commemorating the memories of the slave trade, slavery and their abolitions was held (10 May), and in 2012 the largest memorial in the world dedicated to the struggle against slavery, the Memorial to the Abolition of Slavery, was opened in Nantes. These important acts suggest that progress has been made in the fields of education, research and culture. So how do we explain the fact that, in the wake of decolonization, such a resurgence in memories of slavery has led to official commemorations that are often emptied of social and cultural content, whether in the Hexagon or in the overseas departments? Moreover, clear discrepancies remain between official commemorations and state discourses on the one hand, and the cultural, social, economic and political situation of the territories in which slavery reigned supreme for two centuries on the other.