Facing Death During the First World War: Ritual and Commemorative Practices Among Chinese Labourers

During the First World War, some 140,000 Chinese labourers were recruited by the British and French governments for service on the Western Front. This article examines how Chinese labourers, their families, and the British and French authorities understood and responded to death. It argues that family was both the source of meaning that enabled Chinese labourers to endure danger and the root of their deepest fears about death. Dying far from home meant an inability to fulfil filial duties to one’s parents, leaving the soul without repose, severing the family line, and the absence of relatives to perform sacrificial rites. Diverse religious resources also helped them cope with the possibility and reality of death. The British and French authorities’ management and commemoration of death among Chinese labourers – especially the principle of treating all the dead equally – did not in fact fully address the cultural needs and expectations of the labourers and their families. This reveals the tension between the modern wartime management and commemoration of death and labourers’ own understandings of death.