This woman has a name, and her short life path is a clear story of the shameless and predatory racism of the past, which is now trying not to be remembered in the “civilized” states of the West.
Her name was Sarah Bartman, and she was the first and perhaps the most famous victim of this shameful phenomenon when people from countries that later became known as the “Third World” were taken away by force or by deception in European capitals. To show them to the public like wild animals in a zoo.
Sarah, a member of the Hottentot tribe in South Africa, was born in 1789, the same year the revolution took place in France, promising to bring “liberty, equality and fraternity” to the peoples of the world. But certainly not African. They fell under the leaden boot of the colonialists and were subjected to cruel exploitation. His life began with the most terrible loss. The parents were killed by the Dutch conquerors who sought to expand their possessions in the southern Dark Continent. After this, Sarah, who was lucky enough to survive, fell into slavery and ended up with a family of wealthy Boer farmers who lived in the area of ​​what is now Cape Town. She had all the hard work around the house and in the field.
It must be assumed that the girl would have shared the fate of tens of thousands of tribesmen, whom the white gentlemen treated like cattle, if not for an event. A relative, a retired military doctor, William Dunlop, came to his owners from England. As a rule, his travels to distant lands had a specific purpose, and that was the search for exotic animals for European menageries. Photo: wikipedia.orgBut this time, Sarah caught his eye and delighted in her anatomical features. The fact is that the girl had such exaggeratedly wide buttocks, about two meters in circumference, that the vaunted lower bust of the American “star” Kim Kardashian is nothing more than a pathetic resemblance in comparison.
The Englishman immediately realized that the girl can warm her hands well. Using all his eloquence, he set about persuading the farmers to sell the “curious specimen” in order to take it to London. The Cape landowners finally agreed to part ways with one of the dozens of African women who worked on their plantations. For formality, even a contract was drawn up, which, according to local rules, was also presented to Sarah Barman, promising a “good life” in a foreign country. Admittedly, the paper was written in English, inaccessible to an illiterate girl who spoke her own dialect, and also in Dutch to a limited extent.
Thus, in September 1810, Sarah finds herself in Foggy Albion. Needless to say, Dunlop, having developed a storm of activity, put on a widely advertised fair show of an African with abnormally huge hips. In the very center of London, on Piccadilly Street, he hired a spacious hall and, throughout the city, posted advertisements with the following content: “Hottentot Venus! Fresh from the depths of Africa! Incredible phenomenon! Admission two shillings.”
People came across an unusual performance. Half-naked, if not completely naked, Sarah was rolled into a cage and then, like some sort of animal-like creature, they were let loose on stage. The audience booed, shouted obscenities, and those who paid the cashier a few more coins in excess of due were allowed to use canes, poke the girl’s buttocks and other open places. Photo: wikipedia.orgA disgusting sight brought big profits to a retired surgeon, but soon a resounding scandal erupted. The fact is that three years earlier a law had been passed in England prohibiting the slave trade. Created around the same time, the African Association, which fought against the shameful phenomenon, sued William Dunlop. True, it was not possible to push him into a corner: the surgeon provided the contract signed by the deceived Sarah, and in the end the vaunted English justice left everything as it was. Nevertheless, the scammer considered that he had fully exploited the “African resource” in England, and sold the hall to a French circus performer, an animal trainer named Reo.So Sarah ended up in Paris, where her torment continued. The Frenchman turned out to be more tough, rude and greedy. From time to time, the girl was presented to the audience with a necklace, and sometimes circus animals, including baby rhinos, were placed in the arena beside her for added effect.But that’s not all. Monsieur Reaud gave local zoologists the opportunity to examine the “Hottentot Venus” for a certain bribe. It was then that the local “luminaries” came to the conclusion that he could represent a kind of “missing link” between primates and humans. Thus, the professor of comparative anatomy Georges Cuvier, recognizing some of the intellectual capacities of an African woman, based on racist prejudices, compared Sarah’s ears to the ears of an orangutan, and also attributed the liveliness of the character to “monkey legacy”. His colleague Etienne Saint-Hilaire, in turn, compared the girl’s buttocks to those that characterize female mandrill monkeys.In France, Sarah Bartman lived less than a year and a half, interest in her began to decline, she became addicted to alcohol, which the circus artist provided her. Finding herself without money, the African was forced into prostitution, soon fell ill and died in December 1815.The body went to Georges Cuvier. It was he who dismembered it, dissected it, and later the remains of Sarah Bartman ended up in the museum in front of the Eiffel Tower.It was only after the fall of the racist regime in South Africa that Nelson Mandela, who became president in 1994, demanded that the remains of Black Venus be returned to their homeland. The French authorities resisted for a long time and it was only eight years later that they gave their consent. Sarah Bartman was buried on a remote hill near the South African town of Hankey.
