If you watched the televised broadcast of the Opening Ceremony of the 2024 Summer Olympics, you might remember the name Jeanne Baret. Her moment in the spotlight came during the Sororité (sisterhood) portion of the ceremony, when 10 golden statues rose from the Seine, each representing an influential woman in French history.
One of those women was the 18th-century explorer Jeanne Baret, who is recognized as the first woman to circumnavigate the globe. Her name may not have been familiar to many Opening Ceremony viewers, but her life story and achievements are worth remembering.
Baret was born to a poor peasant family in the Burgundy region of France in 1740. Her fortunes began to change in her early 20s, when she was employed as a housekeeper by naturalist Philibert Commerson. At some point, she and Commerson began a relationship and moved to Paris. By 1765, Baret had learned to write and had gained an education in botany from Commerson, essentially serving as his assistant and nurse due to his poor health.
Despite his health issues, Commerson was invited to join Louis Antoine de Bougainville’s 1766 expedition, which aimed to become the first French mission to circumnavigate the globe and included numerous naturalists and geographers among the crew. Commerson accepted the invitation but apparently hatched a plan with Baret in which she would pretend to be a man in order to serve as his valet. At the time, women were prohibited from setting foot on French naval ships, so Jeanne became Jean and the pair pretended that they had never met before going aboard the Étoile in December 1766.
Fortunately for Baret, she and Commerson were given a large cabin with a private bathroom due to the amount of scientific equipment they brought on board, which allowed her to keep up her disguise, though some of the crew apparently suspected she was a woman early on. Despite the difficulty of maintaining their deception, and Commerson’s health problems (bad seasickness and a recurring leg ulcer), they were still able to carry out important work collecting specimens as they sailed along the coast of South America and through the Strait of Magellan to the Pacific Ocean. Baret did much of the manual labor, along with helping to catalogue the specimens. One of those specimens was the well-known flowering vine Bougainvillea, which Commerson and Baret named after the explorer at the helm of their expedition.
Although there are conflicting accounts of how Baret’s true identity was finally discovered, the crew had realized she was a woman by the time the expedition reached Tahiti in 1768. She and Commerson stayed onboard until the expedition reached Mauritius in the Indian Ocean, an important French trading station that happened to be governed by a fellow botanist and old friend of Commerson. Their disembarkation in Mauritius conveniently solved the knotty issue of Bougainville having a woman illegally onboard one of his ships.
Commerson died on Mauritius in 1773, but Baret seems to have thrived there, getting involved in several business ventures, including running a tavern in the capital, Port Louis. She married French Army officer Jean Dubernat in 1774, and the newlyweds returned to France sometime around 1775. This marked the completion of Baret’s circumnavigation of the globe and made her the first woman to achieve this feat, which had taken her roughly nine years.
She and Dubernat settled in the village of Saint-Aulaye, Dordogne. Evidently, Baret’s role in the Bougainville expedition and contributions to botany were well known by this point, as France's Ministry of Marine awarded her a pension of 200 livres in 1785 in recognition of her exemplary actions during the voyage and accomplishment as the first woman to circumnavigate the globe. She died in Saint-Aulaye in 1807, at age 67.
Historical figures at a very modern Opening Ceremony:
- The 10 golden statues from the Opening Ceremonies will be donated to the City of Paris after the Games. Olympic organisers pointed out during the broadcast that there are around 260 statues of men displayed in public spaces around the city, but only 40 statues of famous women.
- The statues depict women from various historical time periods and walks of life. Besides Baret, the other women honored with statues were playwright Olympe de Gouges, philosopher Simone de Beauvoir, sportswoman Alice Milliat, journalist Paulette Nardal, anarchist and teacher Louise Michel, medieval court writer Christine de Pizan, lawyer and activist Gisèle Halimi, politician Simone Veil, and film director Alice Guy.
- Rather than holding the Opening Ceremonies in a stadium, the 2024 Paris Games broke with tradition by staging them along the Seine, with the national delegations from participating countries cruising down the river in boats. The rainy evening was punctuated by a wide range of artistic and cultural performances, including appearances by Lady Gaga and Céline Dion.