Pierre Guillon de Prince, an 86-year-old Frenchman, has issued what is believed to be the first formal personal apology in France for a family's involvement in the transatlantic slave trade. His ancestors, based in Nantes (historically France's largest slave-trading port), were shipowners who transported around 4,500 enslaved Africans and owned plantations in the Caribbean. Guillon de Prince made the apology at a ceremony in Nantes alongside Dieudonné Boutrin, a descendant of enslaved people from the Caribbean island of Martinique, and called on other French families and the state to follow suit — including through financial reparations. France recognised the transatlantic slave trade as a crime against humanity in 2001 but has never formally apologised for its role, and last month abstained on a UN resolution calling for reparations.