Diplomatic documents which record the relationship between France and the court of the bey of Tunis from the late seventeenth century to the mid-nineteenth century offer a unique source to understand the way in which cultures with very different assumptions meet and adapt to each other. The ceremonies of submission and reverence had to be adapted to meet European understandings of the state and nation while taking account of Muslim attitudes to infidels. The French Revolution introduced new criteria and new tensions which continued to vex relations into the nineteenth century. This double mirror of ‘Otherness’ raises interesting questions about the nature of culture and how cultures prove to be very flexible in practice. In spite of the dichotomization of the Others as strangers, there was agreement on common norms governing social situations where actors effectively interacted.