The Tombstones of the English East India Company Cemetery in Macao: a Linguistic Analysis
O'Regan, J. P. (2009). The tombstones of the English East India Company cemetery in Macao: a linguistic analysis. Markers XXVI. Journal of the Association of Gravestone Studies. 88-119. THE TOMBSTONES OF THE ENGLISH EAST INDIA COMPANY CEMETERY AT MACAO: A LINGUISTIC ANALYSIS JOHN P. O’REGAN1 It was Macao’s privilege to save their names from oblivion, and looking at these epitaphs you realize that “They, being dead, yet speak”. J. M. Braga (1940)1 Introduction In a quiet corner of the former Catholic Portuguese colony of Macao, China, away from the bustle and hum of the surrounding streets, there is to be found a small nineteenth century burial ground for Protestants – British and American in the main, but also including French, German, Danish, Dutch, Swedish and Armenian graves. The ground is entered via a narrow gate off the Praça Luis de Camões (Camoens Square), above which is a white tablet bearing the legend: ‘Protestant Church and Old Cemetery [East India Company 1814]’. The date is in fact erroneous, as the burial ground did not open until 1821, and the land was only purchased in the same year.2 Here beneath shaded canopies of bauhinia and frangipani lie 164 men, women and children each of whom died in the service of their nation in a foreign land, either as soldiers, merchants, sailors, medics, diplomats, civil servants, entrepreneurs, missionaries, wives, mothers or innocents. The maladies of which the cemetery’s residents died were numerous, and all too typical of life in the tropics. Their death certificates, and in some cases their gravestones, indicate malaria, cholera, typhus, dysentery, falls from aloft, drowning, death in battle, suicide and murder.
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