Théodore Roustan  Théodore Roustan, complete name Justin Théodore Dominique Roustan, (8 August 1833 – 8 August 1906) was a diplomat and official of the French colonial empire. Born in Nîmes, in an academic environment, Roustan prepared a licenciate in law at Aix-en-Provence, then choose a diplomatic career. A student consul since 1860, he was successively appointed to Beirut and then Izmir, before being transferred in March 1865 to Cairo, where he was entrusted with the management of the consulate before being appointed in August of that same year. He then returned to Paris as attaché to the direction of the consulates in December 1866 and was appointed consul in Alexandria in June 1867 and in Damascus in March 1868. Commissioner in Palestine in August 1870, at the time of the interreligious conflicts, he returned as consul of Alexandria in June 1872 after being placed on leave during the events of September 1870. General consul in Beirut in December 1872, he was promoted to the rank of general consul and chargé d'affaires in Tunis on 17 December 1874. The which he discovered was in the midst of a period of reform since the appointment of the Hayreddin Pasha on 22 October 1873. But the task ahead for Roustan was enormous: the English took advantage of France's weakening following the defeat in the 1870 Franco-Prussian War to obtain numerous concessions from the reigning monarch, Sadok Bey. On 23 August 1871, they were authorized to build a railway line between Tunis and Le Bardo, the future TGM. The contract even granted the authorization to operate for 99 years the land crossed by the line, inaugurated on August 2, 1872. This was an opportunity for the British consul, Richard Wood, to push his advantage by obtaining an extension of the line from La Goulette to La Marsa as well as the concessions of the Tunis - Hammam Lif, Tunis - Béja and Tunis - Le Kef lines. These were not the only contracts won by the English companies: the distribution of town gas was also granted to the "Foreign and Colonial Gas Company" for a period of fifty years. An English bank, "The London Bank of Tunis", was authorized on 19 May 1873 to issue banknotes despite protests from all foreign consuls. All these concessions had been obtained thanks to the benevolence of the former Grand vizier, Mustapha Khaznadar.