When a French expedition set out to circle the globe in 1766, women were not allowed aboard its navy ships. Jeanne Baret went anyway. Disguised as a man and using the name Jean, she joined the voyage as an assistant to botanist Philibert Commerson. Years later, after crossing oceans and continents, she returned to France and became the first woman known to have circumnavigated the world.
Baret’s achievement is striking not only for the distance traveled, but for the barriers built into the journey. The expedition was organized to expand French geographic and scientific knowledge. Yet the rules that shaped it excluded women from participating openly. Baret’s place on board depended on a disguise—and her contributions were recorded in a story that usually gave the spotlight to the men who led the voyage.
A botanist’s assistant joins the expedition
Baret was born in 1740 in Burgundy, France. She later became closely associated with Commerson, a physician and botanist appointed to the expedition led by Louis-Antoine de Bougainville. Commerson needed help with the demanding work of collecting and handling plants. Baret joined him as his assistant and valet, presenting herself to the crew as a young man.
The expedition sailed from France in 1766 aboard two ships, La Boudeuse and L’Étoile. Its route took the crew across the Atlantic, around South America, into the Pacific and onward through a series of ports and islands. The ships carried people, equipment, specimens and the ambitions of a government seeking new geographic and scientific knowledge.
Botanical collecting was more than a matter of noticing unusual flowers. Plants had to be found, gathered, pressed or otherwise preserved, labeled and kept safe through long stretches at sea. The work could take expedition members into difficult terrain. Baret’s role placed her within that practical labor, even though surviving accounts do not allow historians to draw a complete map of her individual contributions.
Working behind a disguise
For much of the voyage, Baret’s disguise concealed her identity from the crew. Accounts of when and how people aboard learned she was a woman differ, and some dramatic versions of the story rely on details that are difficult to verify. What is clear is that her presence challenged the expedition’s rules: she had taken on work in a world that officially had no place for her.
That distinction matters. Baret was not simply a passenger who happened to travel far. She accompanied Commerson in the work of a scientific expedition, where field observations and collected specimens were part of its purpose. But the surviving record is uneven. Commerson, as the expedition’s appointed botanist, was the person most likely to receive formal credit. Later historians have examined whether Baret’s labor and botanical knowledge have been underestimated, while recognizing that the evidence does not settle every question about who collected or documented each plant.
One plant name often connected with the voyage is Bougainvillea, named in honor of expedition commander Bougainville. That association helps illustrate how scientific credit could follow rank and formal titles. The name does not, by itself, tell us who did the fieldwork behind a particular specimen. Baret’s broader significance rests on the journey she made and the work she helped carry out, not on claiming a single discovery that the record cannot confidently assign to her.
A long route home
Baret’s time with the expedition ended in Mauritius, an island in the Indian Ocean. Commerson remained there with her, and he died in 1773. Baret did not immediately return to France. She married Jean Dubernat, a French soldier, in Mauritius in 1774, then made the journey back to Europe. She reached France in 1775, completing her circumnavigation.
Her route home was separate from the expedition’s final leg, but that does not diminish the scale of the feat. Circumnavigation means making a continuous journey around the world; it does not require a traveler to stay with one vessel or party from departure to return. Baret’s journey began with the expedition and ended when she came back to France, after years of travel across the globe.
Her return also brought a measure of recognition. Baret received a royal pension, an acknowledgment of her work connected with the expedition. That support offers a glimpse of the value placed on her service, even as her name remained far less familiar than those of the expedition’s male leaders.
What Baret’s story reveals
It is tempting to tell Baret’s life as a simple tale of disguise and adventure. But her story also asks who gets counted as an explorer and whose work becomes visible in the records. Expedition histories often center commanders and formally appointed specialists. Assistants, collectors and the people who made scientific labor possible can be harder to see, especially when social rules kept them from being acknowledged openly.
Baret’s achievement is therefore both geographic and historical. She crossed the world at a time when women were barred from the ships that made such journeys possible, and she contributed to a voyage organized around exploration and science. The evidence has limits: it cannot assign every specimen or discovery to her. Still, the broad outline is remarkable. She entered an expedition through a narrow opening, endured years of travel, and completed a journey no woman is known to have completed before her.
Her story makes exploration feel less like a list of famous captains and more like the work of everyone who carried it out. Jeanne Baret crossed the globe, but she also crossed the boundary between who the expedition’s rules permitted to travel and who found a way to go.
