SYMHC Classics: Jeanne Baret

Published Jul 27, 2024, 2:00 PM

This 2019 episode covers Jeanne Baret, the first woman known to circumnavigate the globe. Her work took her to places that were totally unexpected for someone of her gender and economic class in the 18th century.

Happy Saturday. Jean Barret was born July twenty seventh, seventeen forty or two hundred and eighty four years ago today if you're listening the day this episode came out. So we are bringing out our episode on her as Today's Saturday Classic. This one originally came out on October fourteenth, twenty nineteen. Enjoy Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class a production of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Frye And today's episode is a sponsored one. It's sponsored by the all new twenty twenty Ford Explorer. They asked us to do something that was related in some way to exploration and then left it totally up to us. How did we want to interpret that? So of course we had a big pile of ideas at the ready that fit in some way for that theme, and we finally decided to talk about Jean Beret, who was the first woman known to circumnavigate the globe. But her experience was not just about the travel like a lot of the women travelers that we have talked about were traveling to explore just mostly because they had disposable income, and you know, had the means and the money to do that kind of thing, and sometimes to do other work alongside all the travel. But like the travel was a major piece of it. She was working, and the work she was doing was taking her to places that were totally unexpected for somebody of her gender and her economic class in the eighteenth century. Jean Beret was born on July twenty seventh, seventeen forty, to Jean Barret and Jeanne Pouchards. They lived in La Caamelle, France, which is roughly two hundred miles that's about three hundred and twenty kilometers southeast of Paris. This is a rural agricultural area, and Jehne's father worked as a day laborer. He did not own any land or always have access to steady work. So the Beret family and others who were similarly situated were some of the poorest people in that part of Europe. We really know almost nothing about her upbringing or her early life, but she might have been trained as an herb woman, so somebody who knew how to grow and forage and prepare medicinal herbs. This is something that she would have learned from other women based on knowledge that was mostly passed down orally. We do know that when she was in her early twenties, Barret started working for a man named Philibert Commerson, who was about twelve years older than she was. He was from an affluent family and was formally educated in both medicine and botany. He much preferred botany, though, and he never established a medical practice. Yeah, and the Grand Scheme of social and economic circumstances, they were nearly opposites. Instead of going into that medical practice, Commerce established a botanical garden in Chatillon les Domme. In the late seventeen fifties, he visited Voltaire and one of his colleagues was Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus, who is the person who helped establish that system of binomial nomenclature that is still used to classify organisms today, although that system, of course, has evolved a lot since then. Linnaeus secured a commission from the Queen of Sweden for Comerson to catalog Mediterranean fish. So in addition to his work as a botanist, he was also an ichthyologist. So if Baret was already trained as an herb woman, it would have made a lot of sense for Commersoon to hire her. There is a twenty three page table of medicinal plants arranged in order of their virtues and according to the healing indications that is among Commerson's papers, which biographer Glennis Ridley suggests was actually Beret's work. If that is correct, and if the knowledge contained in that notebook was something that Bahret had already learned before being hired, she would have been a very clear help to Commersoon's botany work from day one. But it appears that at least at first, commerce On hired Beret not as a botany assistant, but as a domestic servant, and that would have been more stable and financially lucrative than what the family had been experiencing as day laborers. We don't know exactly when she started working for him. Her formal employment sorted in seventeen sixty four, but she seems to have also been working with him in some capacity before that. It's possible that she started working there just after the death of Commerson's wife at the age of thirty four. That happened shortly after she gave birth to their child, and it's possible that part of Bret's role working for him was to help care for this newborn. Ultimately, though, the baby was sent to live with an uncle, and at some point Bahret and Commerson's relationship became more personal rather than employer and employee. In seventeen sixty four, Bahret became pregnant. Unmarried women were legally required to register their pregnancies, including naming the baby's father. Bahret did register her pregnancy on August twenty second, seventeen sixty four, but she traveled to another town to do it, and she took two men with her as character witnesses. They maintained that she had been assaulted by an unknown man, and that that assault had resulted in her pregnancy. This baby was almost certainly commerceans, with the character witnesses being a part of an effort to cover up what would have been something truly scandalous if people had actually known the facts of the situation. Barret and Comercell moved to Paris together in September of seventeen sixty four. She was given a salary of one hundred livres a year. They lived near the Jardines Lelois, or the Royal Gardens. Which is today known as the Jardines des plant. In January of seventeen sixty five, Barret surrendered her baby, named Jean Pierre, to a home for foundling children. Jean Pierre was placed with the Foster family, although he died a couple of years later. The registry of Barret's pregnancy, Jean Pierre's birth, and his fostering and death are all documented in the historical record, but Berets and Commons Arson's thoughts and feelings on these events really are not part of any of those documents. Within a few months of surrendering Jean Pierre, Barret and Commerceans were preparing for a voyage around the world. This expedition of exploration and scientific discovery had been authorized by King Louis the fifteenth, and it was meant as both an exploratory voyage and a scientific endeavor. Admiral Louis Antoine, Comte de Bougambieux, who had served in the Seven Years War, was in command of three hundred and thirty men who were divided between two vessels, the Boudoeus and the Etois. In addition to being in command of the expedition as a whole, Bougambilleux was in command of the Boudeus, and Francois Chenard de la Girodet was in command of the Etois. Three scientists had been recruited to participate in this expedition, commercal who was acting as royal botanist and naturalist, astronomer Pierre Antoine Veron, and cartographer Charles Routier des trem Ville. Among his other duties, Commercant was one of the people helping to plan the expedition's route. Comerson was given a budget to hire an assistant naturalist to take on this voyage to help him collect and catalog specimens and to illustrate what they found, but he could not take Jen Barret, at least not legally. It had been illegal for women to be on French naval ships for anything other than a brief visit since sixteen eighty nine. Officers who broke this rule could be suspended for a month, and sailors who broke it could be sentenced to fifteen days in chains. There is a lot that we don't know about the dynamics between Comerson and Barret. There were obvious and meaningful disparities between the two of them. Especially when it came to power and wealth stemming from both their relative social class and their genders, and as well as him being her employer. But at the same time, what happens next suggests that Bahret was in this relationship willingly, and we're going to get into that after we first pause for a little sponsor break. As they were preparing for their expedition around the world, Philibert Commerson wrote out a will and that bequeathed his actual property to his son, but it also made it clear that all of the women's clothes and similar possessions in his home belonged to his housekeeper, Jean Beret, to whom he left the household, furnishings and linens, along with six hundred livres. The will also gave her the right to live in his home for a year after the date of his death, during which time she would organize his specimens and manuscripts and then send them on to the Royal Collection. The will makes it sound as though Jean Beret was staying behind while he was going on this expedition, and it also noted that she was sometimes known as Jean Bonifoy. Barret was not staying behind, though instead Commersam maintained that he had not been able to find a workable assistant to go with him on this voyage in spite of all of his efforts to do so. Then Jean Barret, dressed in men's clothing and using the name Bonifoy, arrived at the port of Rochefort, maintaining that she was looking for work. Commerson hired the disguised beret on the spot, and from that point on for much of the expedition, he consistently referred to her as male. Based on everything we know about the situation, this was a disguise and not a reflection of her gender, so we will keep referring to her as a woman. This whole ruse seems like kind of a stretch to me, the idea that he would have just hired a random person on the spot, having failed to find somebody that met actual criteria for a botanist's assistant on this voyage. But it seems like everyone thought that was it made sense. I guess that he hired an apparently random person at the dock. I feel like this is one of those things where it's like the excuse checklist of like, look, you all know who this is and I know who this is, and she knows. You all know who this is. But we have you know, we've checked all the boxes for all you know, you can say you thought it was a dude the whole time. Yeah, this is. This is also really to me the moment that if she had wanted to get out of this situation, it would have been easy enough to not show up, which definitely would have been a reduction in the opportunities that were available to her. She probably would have had to go back home and try to find some kind of other employment. But this would have been an easier moment for her to kind of slip away if she did not actually want to go on this voyage. So the Aetol and the Budeaus planned to cross the Atlantic separately, traveling southwest across the Atlantic Ocean to rendezvous at Rio in June of seventeen sixty seven. From there, they would sail south along the coast of South America and through the Strait of Magellan. Then they would follow the western coast of South America before turning west across the Southern Pacific. Then to return to Europe, they would travel through the East Indies and around the Horn of Africa, then back north, obviously back to Europe, and they would make stops all along the way, gathering specimens, making maps, recording the people in places they saw. They would also claim land where they could, and in what case they would give it up. One stop on the voyage involved surrendering the Falkland Islands to Spain. Commersant and Baret were to sail aboard the atois when they embarked. Commerson had so much equipment with him that he was given the captain Stateroom as his quarters. The captain State Room had its own private baths, which would have made it easier for Baret to conceal her sex while on board. The idea of easy was really relative here, though. For almost two years Baret maintained a disguise that required her to bind her breasts. Today's chest binders are usually made with synthetic elastic fibers, which have some stretch, but these materials had not been invented yet when Barret was living. She would have been using bandages or strips of cloth, and giving the materials that were available at the time, they wouldn't have been very stretchy or giving at all. This would have made this whole process a lot more uncomfortable and difficult, with the bindings also prone to slipping and shifting during the day. Working as commercial's assistant also required by Ray to do a lot of physical work in all kinds of weather and climate conditions, from the tropics to the far southern tip of South America which is almost in the Antarctic circle. So even before accounting for the difficulties of travel and the work itself, Barret's job was inherently uncomfortable, often unpleasant, and very physically demanding. Added to that, there were storms that seriously damaged the ship and periods where they were becalmed and ran out of dude illnesses spread among the crew, and there was intense seasickness at sea, and that often affected both Baret and Commercel. So he was able to spend time out on deck that a lot of the time will help with seasickness because you can see the way the boat is moving. But Barrat didn't have that option. She really had to weather all this in the confines of commerce On's quarters to try to protect her privacy and her identity. That would not have been a particularly comfortable place to try to ride that out. Even though Bahrat meticulously maintained her disguise and Commerceong scrupulously addressed and referred to her as a man, Rumors began to spread throughout the ship that they were carrying a woman in disguise, and that happened not long after the A twelve set sail from Rochefort on December fourteenth, seventeen sixty six, and naturally, suspicion fell on Baret, who, among other things, did not have facial hair and didn't use the communal toilet facilities for the crew who her rank. Obviously, there are plenty of men who don't have facial hair, but that was one of the things that drew suspicion to her. On March twenty second of seventeen sixty seven, the Attwell crossed from the northern to the Southern hemisphere, and the ship's crew had sort of a ritual baptism in quotation marks for people who hadn't previously crossed the equator. The details of this hazing ritual differed depending on the person's rank and for the officer's servants, which was how Barria was classified. It involved being made to drop into a pool made of a sail cloth that was being dragged alongside the ship. The people who were having to do this were also blackened with soot and prevented from getting out of the water. And because of all this water and mess involved, the men who were being made to undertake this ritual usually did it partly or completely nude. Because she was a woman, Barre would have had to do this still dressed. Commersome does describe this ritual in his journal, but he doesn't make any reference to Barre's participation in it. Eventually, Etoile's captain, Francoisin now de la Girodet, was obligated to investigate the rumors about a woman on board his ship. Apart from it being unlawful for anyone to bring a woman on board, the rumors and efforts to figure out whether they were true were clearly causing a disruption. According to his logs, he questioned Bahret about her gender, and she told him that she was a eunuch. Framing it in terms of the men who guarded the Ottoman empire, this seems to have at least temporarily stopped the suspicion, or at least reined in the sailor's harassment. Of her to try to figure out if she was a woman in disguise. The Ottoman Empire's implementation of slavery included enslaving Christian men, although this practice was at least officially ended before this voyage was taking place, but horror stories about it still circulated in a lot of Europe, and the idea of being captured and enslaved and then castrated by the Ottoman end Empire was frightening and disturbing. That probably led to the sailors treating Barret with a little more kindness than they had before. After this interrogation, the captain did put a stop to Baret sleeping in Commerson's quarters. From that point, Baret was always armed, especially when she slept or went ashore to gather specimens. Commerceong was frequently ill, and he had an abscess on his leg that didn't want to heal, so it was often Bahret and not Commersong who was doing the botany work on shore, and she was often doing it without him or anyone else to protect her. The plants that they collected in the earlier part of this voyage included the one that they named Bougunvilla spectabilis or the Great Bugambilla, which is named, of course, for Bougambe, the commander of this expedition. It still cultivated a lot as an ornamental plant today as very lovely blossoms, and Barret was likely the person who gathered it. Others aboard the Atoale eventually discovered Jean Barret's sex, but accounts disagree on exactly when this happened or how, and we're going to get into that after we have one more little sponsor break. Luis Anspine de Bougambille wrote the account that's most often cited as far as how jam Beret was discovered to be a woman. This isn't just because he was in command of the whole expedition and was one of the most prominent people on it. It's also because, unlike the authors of all the other accounts, he later edited his journals into a book and had them published. His account of the discovery is noted as having been written on May twenty eighth or twenty ninth, seventeen sixty eight, about six weeks after the expedition left Tahiti, which was the first time that the French had actually seen this island. Bougainville writes that some business called him over to the atual and quote, I had an opportunity of verifying a very single fact. For some time there was a report in both ships that the servant of Monsieur de Comerson, named Bahret, was a woman. His shape, voice, beardless chin, and scrupulous attention of not changing his linen or making the natural discharges in the presence of anyone. Besides several other signs had given rise to and kept up this suspicion. He went on to describe Baret as an expert botanist who had worked alongside Colmerson with quote so much courage and strength that the naturalist had called him his beast of burden. He went on to write quote A scene which passed at Tahiti changed this suspicion into certainty. Monsieur de Commerson went on shore to botanize there. Bahret had hardly set his feet on shore with the herbal under his arm, when the men of Tahiti surrounded him, cried out, it is a woman, and wanted to give her the honors customary in the aisle. The Chevalier de Bernard, who was upon guard on shore, was obliged to come to her assistance and escort her to the boat. Okay, the honors customary to the isle that he is referring to. We should clarify the French had virtually no experience with Pacific island cultures at this point, and they really widely misinterpreted a lot of actions and gestures as being an offer or an expectation of sex. And this includes ceremonial gifts of cloth which were given wrapped around a woman or a girl's body, along with various dances and a general acceptance of nudity as being socially acceptable. Also, Bougomvilla's writing about Tahiti and Tahitians in his journal really spread a highly romanticized idea of the island and reinforced the idea of the quote noble savage that was being spread at the time by romantic writers like Jean Jacques Rousseau. According to Bougainville, the discovery changed the tone of Barret's relationship to the rest of the crew quote. After that period, it was difficult to prevent the sailors from alarming her modesty. When I came on board the Attoine Bahret, with her face bathed in tears, owned to me that she was a woman. She said that she had deceived her master at Rochefort by offering to serve him in men's clothes at the very moment when he was embarking, that she had already before served a geneva gentleman at Paris in quality of a valet, that being born in Burgundy and become an orphan, the loss of a lawsuit had brought her to a distress situation and inspired her with the resolution to disguise her sex. That she well knew when she embarked that we were going round the world, and that such a voyage had raised her curiosity. Although Bougamville had grounds to be angry with both Commerson and Bahret because they had been deceiving everyone on board and her presence on the ship was unlawful, he finishes his account of what happened in a way that's relatively respectful, at least for part of it. After alluding to this trip around the world, he wrote, quote, she will be the first woman that ever made it, and I must do her the justice to affirm that she has always behaved on board with the most scrupulous modesty. And then it gets into the part that's maybe less respectful quote, she is neither ugly nor handsome, and is no more than twenty six or twenty seven years of age. It must be owned that if the two ships had been wrecked on any desert isle in the ocean, Barret's fate would have been a very singular one. Another account also connects the discovery of her sex to Tahiti, or at least to a Tahitian person. A man named Ahutoru, who was a chieftain's brother, learned French while the expedition was in Tahiti and asked to be taken to France when they departed. He described Barret as mahu, which is a term used in several Pacific island cultures to signify a third gender. After colonization by European powers, in many places, that term took on a disparaging connotation connected to cross dressing, and that being a pejorative term. Ahutoru died of small pop before the voyage got back to France, however, but most of the other accounts placed this discovery of Jean sex later in July of seventeen sixty eight on the island of New Ireland in Papua New Guinea, not in May in Tahiti. The ship's log for July eighteenth, seventeen sixty eight reads quote the physician Monsieur Comercen's domestic was discovered to be a girl who until now passed as a boy. Ship's surgeon Flacois Vives, wrote about several moments in Baret's time on board. In his journals, he wrote of rumors about a woman in disguise and then the captain's putting a stop to Barets sleeping in Commercal's cabin. He writes as though he was present when the captain interrogated Bahret, and that she said she was a eunuch. This account of the discovery includes a reference to a body song about a woman named Geneton who is accosted by fore men in a field, suggesting that some of the crew may have physically assaulted her to figure out her sex. Yeah, most of his writing about her comes off as pretty gross. The Prince of nessau Stigen, who was on board as a paying passenger, also alluded to the discovery of Barret's sex and said quote, I want to give her all the credit for her bravery, a far cry from the gentle pastimes afforded her sex she dared confront the stress, the dangers, and everything that happened that one could realistically expect on such a voyage. Her adventure should, I think, be included in a history of famous women altogether. These other accounts suggest that Jean Barret was discovered to be a woman almost a month after bugain Villa reported in his book. It's not clear whether he fiddled with the timeline to take suspicion off of himself in some way, or if this was just a matter of where it seemed to fit while the journal was being edited. Regardless, though afterward Barret continued dressing in masculine attire that was what she had with her, but she stopped binding her chest after her identity was known. For his part, Comersov claimed that he was totally surprised with this entire revelation, writing that Beret was quote a courageous young woman who, taking the clothing and temperament of a man and the curiosity and audacity to circumnavigate the world, accompanied us without us knowing it. I think he might have been covering his own tail there. He really it is, I mean, just bordering all on impossible that he would not have recognized her, and this whole thing really did play out as just him hiring a random person at the dock like that. Just it's so far fetched, and he just seems to have kept up with this. Wow that turned out to be a woman. I didn't have any idea again, checklist reasonable deniability. Boudaville's expedition left New Ireland on July twenty sixth, seventeen sixty eight. By December, they had traveled across the Indian Ocean toward the eastern coast of Africa. On December twelfth, the ships left a small island now known as Mauritius, which was then a French colony known as El de France. They left without Burrets or Commerceant on board. Commersant had been released from the expedition. The ship's astronomer left at that time as well. On Mauritius, Commerceant and Beret continued to live together and pursue their botanical work. This included making an expedition to the island of Madagascar and documenting various things on Mauritius. The island's governor was another botanist, a man named Pierre plav who had become friends with them and It's pretty likely that Bougainville thought that it was best that they both be off the ship, and that a French colony with a friendly governor who was also a botanist made Mauritius the best situation they could probably find to accomplish getting them off the ship. Comersong Mbaret lived together on Mauritius for about five years. At first they lived with Poivre at the governor's residence, but when he was recalled to France, they had to find their own lodgings. Commercen had been chronically ill for much of their time together, and his condition worsened in the early seventeen seventies. He died in seventeen seventy three, leaving Baret without protection or support. So Baret once again found work, first working out a tavern and then running one. On May seventeenth, seventeen seventy four, she married a non commissioned officer named Jean Dubarnand, and by that point she'd been on Mauritius for seven years. It's not clear exactly when Bahret returned to France, but when she did, that last leg of the journey made her the first woman known to have circumnavigated the globe. Bougamville intervened on her behalf after she got back to France to make sure she wouldn't be punished for her time aboard ship, and a point in her favor in his doing this was that he didn't think that her example would inspire other women to do something similar. He thought she'd just be the only woman ever to circumnavigate the globe, and that quote her example is not likely to be contagious. This line of logic really reminds me of the way that people talked about Sorwana Inez de la Cruz and how her becoming a nun was going to keep her from inspiring other women to be similarly iconoclastic in their behavior. Instead, the opposite wound up happening to being punished. The French Ministry of Marine recognized her work with the expedition and awarded her a pension of two hundred livres per year, and then she also secured the money that Commerceon had left her in his will, although by that point his death was long enough in the past that she didn't live in his house for a year. Not much as known about Jean Varret's last years. She did not get to do the cataloging of the collection that Commerson had hoped she would. Everything that they had collected on bugin Vie's expedition and afterward was either in storage or impounded after Commerson's death. However, since the unorganized collection was not well known or associated with a prominent member of the nobility, it made it through the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror. Today, at least six thousand specimens survive in museum collections, including the French National Museum of Natural History, part of which is on the site of the former Royal Guard. Yeah, a lot of that stuff still has its original handwritten labeling that was probably written by her. Jean Barret died in Santavier, France, on August fifth, eighteen oh seven, and left her remaining property to Commerson's heirs. She was sixty seven. We know so little about Commerson's feelings towards her. He named a plant after her during the expedition, calling it Baretia bonifidia, although it turned out to be a species that had already been discovered and named, and he wrote of her very fondly. Here is a sample cited in a biography published in nineteen ninety three quote. Armed with a beau like Diana, armed with intelligence and seriousness like Minerva, she eluded the snare of animals and men, not without many times risking her life and her honor. He also praised her for doing all of this risky and difficult work without complaint. He did also call her his beast of burden, but he did that while trying to maintain this ruse that she was a man and that doesn't seem like a weird way for a man to talk about his male assistant at the time. Although the plant that Comersome named after her didn't stick, Barrey did have a species permanently named for her in twenty twelve. That was Solanum beryte, which is part of a large and diverse plant genus that also includes the night shades. This particular species was selected to bear her name because of its leaves, which are really variable in their shape and size. This was also true of the species that Commersome had originally named after her, because he thought this variability really reflected her life and her character, and like the fact that she had disguised herself as a man for so long and taken on so many jobs that were really unexpected for women at the time. My two cents are are that that is such a thoughtful way to look at the selection of her plant species that he wanted to be named for her, that it does suggest a very genuine affection between the two of them. Yeah, her relationship with Hi definitely started as his hiring her to do work, but a lot of their life together they really seem to live basically as common law spouses, not so much as employer and employee, especially once they were off the expedition and she was no longer officially on his payroll, but they were continuing to live together essentially as a couple. I feel like her story is pretty complicated. It's clearly that she went through so much difficulty and possibly even violence while on that expedition, but also the fact that she was from really the poorest class of people where she was living, and a woman, and was able to go on this round the world voyage, which was just a whole like universe away from the possibilities that were open to people in that same situation. It's really incredible to me. She sounds kind of spectacular. That's the person I would use the time machine to go back and talk to Yeah. Thanks so much for joining us on this Saturday. Since this episode is out of the archive, if you heard an email address or a Facebook RL or something similar over the course of the show, that could be obsolete now. Our current email address is History Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. You can find us all over social media at missed Inhistory, and you can subscribe to our show on Apple podcasts, Google podcasts, the iHeartRadio app, and wherever else you listen to podcasts. Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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