Cuvier, Georges

has biography | a une biographie: French naturalist, zoologist and racial theorist. Cuvier was an important figure in the development of scientific racism in the eighteenth century and nineteenth centuries. He is also known for the scientific examinations and abuses he performed on a Khoikhoi woman named Sarah Baartman (1789-1815).

Baartman spent her early childhood on farms in the Eastern Cape of South Africa during the period of Dutch colonial rule. In 1810, Baartman was taken - potentially by force - to London by Scottish military surgeon Alexander Dunlop and Hendrik Cesars. She was then subject to cruel racist exhibitions across Europe for the next five years, including by Cuvier himself in 1815.

Baartman died in 1815, but her body was subjected to further scientific experimentation, abuse and violence after her passing. Cuvier later dissected Baartman's body and preserved her remains in the Muséum d'Histoire Naturelle. Her remains stayed in France until they were repatriated and buried in South Africa in 2002, after a request made by Nelson Mandela to the French government in 1994.
was born | est né: 23 August 1769
died in | est mort par: 13 May 1832
has nationality | a la nationalité: France
has type | est de type: depicted
has association with | a une association avec: Baartman, Sarah

is referred to by | est référencé par: Wikipedia - Georges Cuvier; Wikipedia - Sarah Baartman; Claude Blanckaert, ed., La Vénus hottentote: Entre Barnum et Muséum (Paris: Publications scientifiques du Muséum, 2013); Angela Saini, Superior: The Return of Race Science (London: Fourth Estate, 2019); Clifton Crais and Pamela Scully, Sara Baartman and the Hottentot Venus: A Ghost Story and a Biography (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2009)

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Baartman, Sarah