In the early nineteenth century, European audiences gathered to stare at a young African woman whose body had been turned into a spectacle. She was advertised, examined, and reduced to an object of curiosity. That woman was Sarah Baartman, and what began as public display did not end there, it continued even after her death.
Early Life in Southern Africa
Sarah Baartman was born in the late eighteenth century in what is now South Africa, into a Khoikhoi community already feeling the weight of European expansion.
By the time she came into the world, the land around her had begun to change. Dutch settlers had taken control of parts of the Cape, and with them came conflict, loss of land, and a system that pushed many Khoikhoi people into labor they did not choose.
Her own life carried that instability from the beginning. She lost her mother as an infant, and her father was later killed during a cattle raid. What followed was not a protected childhood, but a life shaped by survival. She spent her youth moving through European farms, working where she could, as a washerwoman, a nursemaid, doing what many in her position had to do just to survive. For a time, she lived in Cape Town, and later worked as a wet nurse in the household of Hendrik Cesars.
From Servitude to Exhibition
The transition from domestic worker to public spectacle did not happen overnight, but it did not take long.
Hendrik Cesars began showing her in Cape Town, where her body drew attention. A Scottish military surgeon named Alexander Dunlop then saw an opportunity. Dunlop was already involved in supplying animal specimens to collectors and showmen in Britain. He believed Baartman could be even more profitable.
Around 1810, Baartman was transported to London. Some accounts suggest she agreed to go, others raise questions about coercion, but whatever the arrangement was on paper, it did not translate into real control over her life. Once in London, she was placed into a system of public exhibition that treated her body as a product.
She was advertised under the name “Hottentot Venus,” a label that was both sexualized and dehumanizing. Crowds paid to see her, not for anything she did, but for how she looked. European promoters focused heavily on the size and shape of her buttocks, a feature associated with some Khoikhoi women and later described by scientists as steatopygia. What should have been a normal variation of the human body was turned into something to be stared at, discussed, and sold.
The invasion of her privacy went further than that. Her genitalia became a point of fascination, talked about openly and examined in ways that stripped her of any dignity. She was made to stand before audiences, sometimes to move or present herself in ways that emphasized her body, while spectators observed her as if she were an exhibit rather than a person.
London audiences, many of whom had little familiarity with Africans, were drawn in by the idea that she represented something rare or “other.” She was described in ways that blurred the line between human and animal, reinforcing racist ideas that were already circulating at the time.
The exhibitions caused controversy. Abolitionists argued that she was being exploited, especially in a country that had recently abolished the slave trade. The case went to court, where she stated that she was there voluntarily and shared in the profits. The court accepted this, and the exhibitions continued.
But that outcome did not settle the question. Historians have since pointed out that statements made under such conditions cannot be taken at face value. Power was uneven, and her options were limited.
What the case did achieve was publicity. It made her even more famous, and the exhibitions continued.
After London, she was exhibited in other parts of England and even in Ireland. She appeared at fairs and public shows, drawing crowds wherever she went.
After some years, she was taken to Paris, where her situation worsened. She was sold to a man named Jean Riaux and exhibited under stricter, more pressured conditions.
In Paris, her exhibitions expanded beyond public shows into private settings. She was displayed at wealthy gatherings and salons, where curiosity about her body mixed with scientific interest.
Among those who studied her was Georges Cuvier, one of the leading scientists of the time. He examined her body, recorded his observations, and used her physical features as part of broader arguments about human difference. This was not neutral inquiry. It contributed to a growing body of thought that attempted to rank human beings and place Europeans at the top of that hierarchy.
Her life in Paris became increasingly difficult. She lived in poverty, and some accounts suggest she may have been forced into prostitution, though this remains uncertain. What is clear is that she was no longer simply being exhibited, she was being consumed by a system that offered her very little in return.
And she was not the only one this happened to. Others were also taken from their homes and put on display in different parts of Europe and America. Ota Benga was exhibited at the Bronx Zoo years later, where he was treated as part of an animal display. Angelo Soliman, who had lived in Vienna as a respected figure, had his body preserved and displayed after his death. These cases show that what happened to Sarah Baartman was not an isolated incident, but part of a wider pattern in which African bodies were turned into spectacles.
Death and Return
Sarah Baartman died in Paris on 29 December 1815, at about 26 years old. No one can say for certain what killed her, illness, infection, or simply the toll of the life she had been forced to live. But even in death, she was not left alone.
Soon after she died, Georges Cuvier took her body for study. It was dissected. Her skeleton was kept. Parts of her, including her brain and genitalia, were removed and preserved. A plaster cast was made of her body, as if she needed to be fixed in place, held there for others to examine.
Cuvier later wrote about her, noting her intelligence and memory, but at the same time comparing her features to those of animals, using her body to support ideas that placed Africans lower on a supposed human scale. Even in death, she was being turned into evidence.
What followed was not a quiet burial.
Her remains were passed into scientific collections, where they were kept, studied, and eventually displayed. Over time, they became part of museum exhibits in France, and later were housed at the Musée de l’Homme in Paris. There, for decades, people came to look at what was left of her.
Years passed. Then decades. Then more than a century.
She remained on display.
It was not until the late twentieth century that serious efforts began to bring her home. After the end of apartheid, Nelson Mandela formally requested that France return her remains. In 2002, France agreed.
More than 180 years after her death, Sarah Baartman was finally returned to South Africa and buried in the Gamtoos Valley.
For the first time since she had been taken, she was no longer being looked at.
Sources:
https://naming.mandela.ac.za/Projects/Residence-Project/Sarah-Baartman
https://blackpast.org/global-african-history/baartman-sara-saartjie-1789-1815/
https://news.fiu.edu/2021/how-sarah-baartmans-hips-went-from-a-symbol-of-exploitation-to-a-source-of-empowerment-for-blackwomen
