Alexandrine Tinné was not the kind of woman the 19th century expected. Born into a wealthy Dutch family, she could have lived a life of ease and social obligation. Instead, she chose the brutal, unpredictable path of an explorer, navigating regions of Africa few Europeans—let alone European women—had ever seen. Her story is one of obsession, bravery, and tragic defiance against the rigid roles assigned to women of her class and time.
In the 1860s, while Victorian society wrapped itself in layers of propriety, Alexandrine wrapped herself in linen and determination, setting out on grueling expeditions across the Sahara. She wasn’t just accompanying male explorers—she led her own missions. She traveled deep into Sudan, pushed toward Central Africa, and survived harrowing conditions: disease, heat, isolation, political unrest. Along the way, she documented languages, customs, and cultures with a mix of curiosity and respect rarely seen in colonial-era travel narratives.
But it’s not just the scale of her travels that makes her story resonate—it’s how her life reflects a kind of radical autonomy. Alexandrine didn’t marry. She was fiercely independent. Her explorations weren’t just geographic—they were deeply personal, a way to carve out space in a world that had little room for women who didn’t conform. There’s a queer kind of courage in that—not necessarily in the modern identity-politics sense, but in the way she sidestepped heteronormative expectations to live a life entirely of her own design.
Her death in 1869 was as brutal as her life was bold. Ambushed and killed by Tuareg tribesmen in what is now Algeria, her body was left in the desert, her caravan scattered. The motivations for her murder are still debated—politics, suspicion, cultural tension—but what remains clear is that Alexandrine Tinné was a woman too fearless for the world she moved through.
Her legacy lives in fragments: dusty journals, faded photographs, a few passing mentions in history books. But for those of us who look for the misfits, the trailblazers, the ones who refused the script—they are the ones who haunt us most powerfully.
