Sarah Baartman

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. The women were exhibited for their steatopygic body type – uncommon in Northwestern Europe – that was perceived as a curiosity at that time, and became subject of scientific interest as well as of erotic projection.

"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. The Sarah Baartman story has been called the epitome of racist colonial exploitation, and of the commodification and dehumanization of African people.

Baartman was born to a 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, but it is thought by some to have been Ssehura, 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. Her surname has also been spelt Bartman and Bartmann. She was an infant when her mother died and her father was later killed by Bushmen (San people) while driving cattle.

Baartman spent her childhood and teenage years on Dutch European farms. She went through puberty rites and kept a small tortoiseshell necklace, most likely her mother's, until her death in France. In the 1790s, a free black (a designation for people of enslaved descent) trader named Peter Cesars (also recorded as Caesar) 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. She finally moved to be a wet-nurse in the household of Peter Cesars' brother, Hendrik Cesars, outside Cape Town in present-day Woodstock. There is evidence that she had two children, though both died as babies. She had a relationship with a poor Dutch soldier, Hendrik van Jong, who lived in Hout Bay near Cape Town, but the relationship ended when his regiment left the Cape.

In exchange for cash, Hendrik Cesars began to show her at the city hospital, where surgeon Alexander Dunlop worked. Dunlop, (sometimes wrongly cited as William Dunlop), 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. It is unknown whether Baartman went willingly or was forced.^{[page needed]}

Dunlop was the frontman and driver of the plan to exhibit Baartman. 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. . . ." Lord Caledon, governor of the Cape, gave permission for the trip, but later said he regretted it after he fully learned the purpose of the trip.

Hendrik Cesars and Alexander Dunlop brought Baartman to London in 1810. The group lived together in Duke Street, St. James, the most expensive part of London. In the household were Sarah Baartman, Hendrik Cesars, Alexander Dunlop, and two African boys, possibly brought illegally by Dunlop from the slave lodge in Cape Town.

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. She became known as the "Hottentot Venus" (as was at least one other woman, in 1829). 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. [H.C.?]" The tradition of freak shows was well established in Europe at this time, and historians have argued that this is at first how Baartman was displayed. Baartman never allowed herself to be exhibited nude, and an account of her appearance in London in 1810 makes it clear that she was wearing a garment, albeit a tight-fitting one. She became a subject of scientific interest, albeit of racist bias frequently, as well as of erotic projection. She was marketed as the "missing link between man and beast".