Reading the Bones: A Cultural History of the Ventnor

Abstract

In 1902, the SS Ventnor, carrying the bones of hundreds of Chinese from New Zealand back to China for burial, sank off the coast of New Zealand's North Island - a tragic end to a journey plagued with controversy since the exhumation of the deceased. However, some of the remains were subsequently recovered and buried by local Māori. More than a century later, oral histories of this event re-entered public knowledge, bringing together Māori and Chinese in an unlikely way. This thesis investigates how the journey of these departed Chinese, from exhumation to loss to remembrance, has been understood in New Zealand society from the early nineteenth century up until now. To do so, I construct a cultural history, using content analysis and direct observation to analyse various media from the past and present. These include newspaper articles and other documentation contemporaneous to the exhumations and loss of the bones, and electronic media, cultural productions and commemorative monuments from the twenty-first century. Using the historiographical method of colligation, I encode my analyses into the historical narrative by relating them to larger patterns and contexts. I argue that public discourses concerning the lost bones underwent discrete changes over time, reflecting shifting and contradictory attitudes to race and identity in New Zealand. These changes have culminated in the positioning of the Ventnor story as an important historical legacy and cultural touchstone for the Chinese in New Zealand.