An Expatriate Community in Tunis, 1648-1885: St George's Protestant Cemetery and Its Inscriptions

The history of the European community in Tunis has been the focus of much scholarly attention since the late 1950s. Research has tended to concentrate on the mid to late nineteenth century, partly because of the comparative lack of documentation surviving from earlier centuries. In this context, the value of tombstones as a source for historical and sociological research, long recognized by classical historians, is considerably increased. The group of tombstones surviving in St George's cemetery from the 1640s until its closure in 1885 constitutes one such significant resource. The present work gathers the information that the cemetery and its monuments can provide on the demographics, economy and society of the expatriate community in Tunis during these centuries into a structured and comprehensive catalogue, including transcriptions of epitaphs and photographs of tombstones.