I have long wanted to talk about Sarah Baartman, known as the Hottentot Venus or the Black Venus. Her story is a very hard one to hear when you are a Black woman, when you love Black women, or when you love women in general. The story of Sarah Baartman is a story of abuse and objectification that has become a powerful symbol of colonial exploitation and racism, and of the ridicule and commodification of black people.
Image credit: The British Museum/Wikimedia
Sarah, also known as the "Hottentot Venus," was a Khoi woman from South Africa who was taken from her homeland and exhibited as a "freak show" attraction in Europe in the early 19th century owing to her unusually large buttocks.
Early Life and Enslavement
Sarah Baartman (Afrikaans: [ˈsɑːra ˈbɑːrtman]; c. 1789 - 29 December 1815), also spelled Sara, sometimes in the Dutch diminutive form Saartje (Afrikaans pronunciation: [ˈsɑːrki]), or Saartjie, and Bartman, Bartmann, was a Khoikhoi woman who was exhibited as a freak show attraction in 19th-century Europe under the name Hottentot Venus, a name that was later attributed to at least one other woman similarly exhibited. "Venus" is sometimes used to designate representations of the female body in arts and cultural anthropology, referring to the Roman goddess of love and fertility.
"Hottentot" was a Dutch-colonial era term for the indigenous Khoikhoi people of southwestern Africa, which then became commonly used in English, and was shortened to "hotnot" as an offensive term; the term "Hottentot" refers to the tribe, like Zulu or Xhosa. Baartman was born to a [Xhosa and Khoekhoe] family in the vicinity of the Camdeboo Dutch Cape Colony, a British colony by the time she was an adult. Her birth name is unknown,[4] but is thought by some to have been Ssehura,[1] supposedly the closest to her given name. Saartjie is the diminutive form of Sarah; in Cape Dutch the use of the diminutive form commonly indicated familiarity, endearment or contempt. Baartman spent her childhood and teenage years on Dutch European farms. She went through puberty rites, and kept a small tortoise shell necklace, most likely her mother's, until her death in France.
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In the 1790s, a free black (a designation for people of enslaved descent) trader named Peter Cesars (also recorded as Caesar[6]) met her and encouraged her to move to Cape Town. She lived in Cape Town for at least two years working in households as a washerwoman and a nursemaid, first for Peter Cesars, then in the house of a Dutch man in Cape Town. In exchange for cash, Hendrik Cesars began to show her at the city hospital, where surgeon Alexander Dunlop worked.
Dunlop,[9] (sometimes wrongly cited as William Dunlop[6]), a Scottish military surgeon in the Cape slave lodge, operated a side business in supplying animal specimens to showmen in Britain, and he suggested she travel to Europe to make money by exhibiting herself. Baartman refused. Dunlop persisted, and Baartman said she would not go unless Hendrik Cesars came too. In 1810, he agreed to go to Britain to make money by putting Baartman on stage. Dunlop was the frontman and driver of the plan to exhibit Baartman.
Exhibition in Europe
According to a British legal report of 26 November 1810, an affidavit supplied to the Court of King's Bench from a "Mr. Bullock of Liverpool Museum" stated: "some months since a Mr. Alexander Dunlop, who, he believed, was a surgeon in the army, came to him to sell the skin of a Camelopard, which he had brought from the Cape of Good Hope. . . . Some time after, Mr. Dunlop again called on Mr. Bullock, and told him, that he had then on her way from the Cape, a female Hottentot, of very singular appearance; that she would make the fortune of any person who shewed her in London, and that he (Dunlop) was under an engagement to send her back in two years. . .
Hendrik Cesars and Alexander Dunlop brought Baartman to London in 1810.[4] The group lived together in Duke Street, St. James, the most expensive part of London. Dunlop had to have Baartman exhibited and Cesars was the showman. Dunlop exhibited Baartman at the Egyptian Room at the London residence of Thomas Hope at No. 10 Duchess Street, Cavendish Square, London. Dunlop thought he could make money because of Londoners' lack of familiarity with Africans and because of Baartman's large buttocks, which was viewed as variously grotesque, lascivious, and obscene.[12] Crais and Scully allege that: "People came to see her because they saw her not as a person but as a pure example of this one part of the natural world".[5] She became known as the "Hottentot Venus" (as was at least one other woman, in 1829[13]).
A handwritten note made on an exhibition flyer by someone who saw Baartman in London in January 1811 indicates curiosity about her origins and probably reproduced some of the language from the exhibition; thus the following origin story should be treated with skepticism: "Sartjee is 22 Years old is 4 feet 10 Inches high, and has (for a Hottentot) a good capacity. She lived in the occupation of a Cook at the Cape of Good Hope. Her Country is situated not less than 600 Miles from the Cape, the Inhabitants of which are rich in Cattle and sell them by barter for a mere trifle. A Bottle of Brandy, or small roll of Tobacco will purchase several Sheep - Their principal trade is in Cattle Skins or Tallow. - Beyond this Nation is an other, of small stature, very subtle & fierce; the Dutch could not bring them under subjection, and shot them whenever they found them. 9 Jany, 1811.
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Her exhibition in London just a few years after the passing of the 1807 Slave Trade Act, which abolished the slave trade, created a scandal.[18] A British abolitionist society, the African Association, conducted a newspaper campaign for her release. The British abolitionist Zachary Macaulay led the protest, with Hendrik Cesars protesting in response that Baartman was entitled to earn her living, stating: "has she not as good a right to exhibit herself as an Irish Giant or a Dwarf?"[4] Cesars was comparing Baartman to the contemporary Irish giants Charles Byrne and Patrick Cotter O'Brien.[19]
Macaulay and The African Association took the matter to court and on 24 November 1810 at the Court of King's Bench the Attorney-General began the attempt "to give her liberty to say whether she was exhibited by her own consent." In support he produced two affidavits in court. The first, from William Bullock of Liverpool Museum, was intended to show that Baartman had been brought to Britain by people who referred to her as if she were property. Some historians have subsequently expressed doubts on the veracity and independence of the statement that Baartman then made, although there remains no direct evidence that she was lying.[18]
She stated that she was not under restraint, had not been sexually abused and had come to London on her own free will.[19] She also did not wish to return to her family and understood perfectly that she was guaranteed half of the profits. The case was therefore dismissed.[18] She was questioned for three hours. The publicity given by the court case increased Baartman's popularity as an exhibit.[4] She later toured other parts of England and was exhibited at a fair in Limerick, Ireland in 1812.
She travelled to England of her own free will but, appears to have changed when she travelled to France. A man called Henry Taylor took Baartman there around September 1814. Taylor then sold her to a man sometimes reported as an animal trainer, S. Réaux,[23] but whose name was actually Jean Riaux and belonged to a ballet master who had been deported from the Cape Colony for seditious behaviour.[6] Riaux exhibited her under more pressured conditions for 15 months at the Palais Royal in Paris. In France she may have been in effect enslaved, although her exact position remains unclear.
In Paris, her exhibition became more clearly entangled with scientific racism. French scientists were curious about whether she had the elongated labia which earlier naturalists such as François Levaillant had purportedly observed other Khoekhoe women to have at the Cape.[23] French naturalists, among them Georges Cuvier, head keeper of the menagerie at the Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle and founder of the discipline of comparative anatomy, visited her. She was brought out as an exhibit at wealthy people's parties and private salons.[9] In Paris, Baartman's promoters did not need to concern themselves with slavery charges. Crais and Scully suggest: "By the time she got to Paris, her existence was really quite miserable and extraordinarily poor". At some points a collar was placed around her neck (although it is unclear whether that was just a prop for the performance).[5][failed verification] Specifically, she was exhibited with a collar on some occasions.
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Sarah Baartman's exhibition in Europe. Source: sahistory.org.za
Death and Dissection
Sarah Baartman: The Tragic Exploitation of an African Woman
Baartman died on 29 December 1815 around age 26,[2] of an undetermined[26] inflammatory ailment, possibly smallpox,[27][28] while other sources suggest she contracted syphilis,[29] or pneumonia. The French anatomist Henri Marie Ducrotay de Blainville published notes on the dissection in 1816, which were republished by Georges Cuvier in the Memoires du Museum d'Histoire Naturelle in 1817. Cuvier, who had met Baartman, notes in his monograph that its subject was an intelligent woman with an excellent memory, particularly for faces. In addition to her native tongue, she spoke fluent Dutch, passable English, and a smattering of French. He describes her shoulders and back as "graceful", arms "slender", hands and feet as "charming" and "pretty". He adds she was adept at playing the Jew's harp,[30] could dance according to the traditions of her country, and had a lively personality.[31]
Despite this, Cuvier interpreted her remains as evidencing ape-like traits. Saint-Hilaire applied on behalf of the Muséum d'Histoire Naturelle to retain her remains (Cuvier had preserved her brain, genitalia and skeleton[9]), on the grounds that it was of a singular specimen of humanity and therefore of special scientific interest.[4] The application was approved and Baartman's skeleton and body cast were displayed in Muséum d'histoire naturelle d’Angers. Her skull was stolen in 1827 but returned a few months later. The restored skeleton and skull continued to arouse the interest of visitors until the remains were moved to the Musée de l'Homme, when it was founded in 1937, and continued up until the late 1970s.
Her body cast and skeleton stood side by side and faced away from the viewer which emphasised her steatopygia (accumulation of fat on the buttocks) while reinforcing that aspect as the primary interest of her body. The Baartman exhibit proved popular until it elicited complaints for being a degrading representation of women.
Repatriation and Legacy
From the 1940s, there were sporadic calls for the return of her remains. A poem written in 1998 by South African poet Diana Ferrus, herself of Khoekhoe descent, titled "I've come to take you home", played a pivotal role in spurring the movement to bring Baartman's remains back to her birth soil.[32][29] The case gained world-wide prominence only after American paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould wrote The Mismeasure of Man in the 1980s.
Mansell Upham, a researcher and jurist specializing in colonial South African history, also helped spur the movement to bring Baartman's remains back to South Africa.[5] After the victory of the African National Congress (ANC) in the 1994 South African general election, President Nelson Mandela formally requested that France return the remains. After much legal wrangling and debates in the French National Assembly, France acceded to the request on 6 March 2002.
Sarah Baartman was not the only Khoekhoe to be taken from her homeland. Her story is sometimes used to illustrate social and political strains, and through this, some facts have been lost. Dr. Yvette Abrahams, professor of women and gender studies at the University of the Western Cape, writes, "we lack academic studies that view Sarah Baartman as anything other than a symbol. Her story becomes marginalized, as it is always used to illustrate some other topic."
Baartman is used to represent African discrimination and suffering in the West although there were many other Khoekhoe people who were taken to Europe. Historian Neil Parsons writes of two Khoekhoe children 13 and six years old respectively, who were taken from South Africa and displayed at a holiday fair in Elberfeld, Prussia, in 1845. Bosjemans, a travelling show including two Khoekhoe men, women, and a baby, toured Britain, Ireland, and France from 1846 to 1855.
Baartman's tale may be better known because she was the first Khoekhoe taken from her homeland, or because of the extensive exploitation and examination of her body by scientists such as Georges Cuvier, an anatomist, and the public as well as the mistreatment she received during and after her lifetime. She was brought to the West for her "exaggerated" female form, and the European public developed an obsession with her reproductive organs. Her body parts were on display at the Musée de l'Homme for 150 years, sparking awareness and sympathy in the public eye.
