According to Rudyard Kipling, death was always a ‘near companion’ in colonial India. Thousands of European sepulchral monuments survive till today and these still constitute an eminent cultural asset. However, most of them are in precarious condition: The tropical climate with its abundant rainfall, lush vegetation, peoples need for land, neglect and vandalism regularly take their toll on them. This book investigates death and colonial cemeteries in south India between the seventeenth and the nineteenth centuries. It studies demographical issues such as mortality rates among the Europeans, the causes of death as well as infant-and child-mortality. Furthermore, the shape and structure of the cemeteries is investigated, next to the architecture of individual monuments and their inscriptions. Such material evidence is perceived as an expression for private and public memory in colonial south India.
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