BOXER REBELLION

A History from Beginning to End

Table of Contents

Introduction
Trade with the Mighty Middle Kingdom
The First Opium War
The Second Opium War
The Self-Strengthening Movement
Rise of the Boxers
The Fight for Beijing
The Legacy of the Boxer Rebellion
Bibliography
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Introduction

In the twentieth-century saga of two investigative journalists reporting on the
skullduggery of a presidential campaign, an anonymous source advised
Washington Post to “follow the money” as they sought to unravel the
Watergate scandal during Richard Nixon’s presidential term. For those who
wish to unravel the roots of a different political headline, one which erupted
in the year 1899 between China and the West, a more apt direction might be
to “follow the opium.”

The Boxer Rebellion began in 1899, but its roots went deeper into the

fertile but rocky soil that harvested the lucrative commerce between the
Empire of China, which for centuries had been the dominant country in Asia,
and Great Britain, which by the middle of the nineteenth century had built an
“empire on which the sun never sets.” Many of the Western powers were
engaged in trade with a sometimes-reluctant China, but it was Great Britain,
flexing its imperial muscle, which took center stage in the conflict.

Great Britain had been on the losing end of the trade with China, as the

British and the Western world were ardent buyers of Chinese goods, but the
Chinese did not reciprocate when British goods were offered for sale. The
financial future of the British East India Company was at risk. Then the
Portuguese discovered a highly potent form of opium in India, one that was
much more powerful—and addicting—than what the Chinese used in their
medicines. The poppy which produced this opium was grown in Bengal,
which was under the control of the British.

The Chinese tried to legislate the problem by making opium use illegal,

but smugglers managed to bring in the powerful substance and sell it anyway.
The British would go to battle against the Chinese twice in efforts to force
China to legalize the opium trade. William Gladstone, a future British prime
minister, regarded the Opium Wars as a disgrace upon the British nation.
Still, profit ruled over principle, and the Chinese eventually capitulated to the
British. This led them to open up more ports to British trade and grant Britain
most-favored-nation trade status as well as legalize the sale of opium, despite
the harm it inflicted on the Chinese who were becoming addicted to it.

The weakness of the Chinese military, combined with the fact that the

Chinese government was powerless to keep the foreigners out of the

Forbidden City, Beijing, was demoralizing for the Chinese, and the Qing
Dynasty was held to blame. Resentment against foreigners mounted, and
social unrest increased. Tensions between those in the government who saw
advantages in encouraging trade with the West and those who recognized the
threats to the Chinese way of life challenged the Qing Dynasty’s
effectiveness and power. In the late 1890s, as northern China dealt with
natural disasters which led to drought, depriving the citizens of employment
and food, a group known as the Boxers arose.

The name “Boxer” probably came from the Christian missionaries in the

area and referred to the Boxers’ emphasis on physical fitness and the martial
arts. Yet the Yìhéquán, or the Society of Righteous and Harmonious Fists, the
Boxers’ official name, were about much more than shadow boxing. They
were determined to purify China by ridding it of the Western foreigners
whose influence was dominating the Chinese government and sullying their
ancient and cherished traditions. They resolved to purge the country of the
missionaries whose Christian beliefs diminished the long-held Confucian
precepts which had formed the Middle Kingdom, as China called itself.

When the Boxers left northern China and made their way to Beijing, the

foreign legations established there realized their danger and called upon their
nations’ armies to come to their rescue. The Chinese Empress Dowager Cixi,
who had initially hesitated as the crisis mounted, subsequently declared war
on all foreign powers. The Boxers united with the imperial Chinese forces
against the Eight-Nation Alliance which was marching to Beijing to rescue
the besieged legation officials, civilians, missionaries, and Chinese Christians
who were trapped in the Forbidden City.

No one can be sure how many people were killed in the ensuing fighting;

some estimates believe that as many as 100,000 lives were lost in the conflict.
However, some casualties cannot be counted in terms of loss of life. For the
Chinese, the victory of the Western powers was yet another blow to their
traditions, their autonomy, and their image in the eyes of their neighboring
nations. For the Qing Dynasty, it was the beginning of the end; in 1912, the
child emperor Puyi abdicated, bringing to an end the 268-year reign of the
Qing and imperial rule in China. China then became a republic under the
presidency of Sun Yat-sen, bringing the nation out of its feudalistic history
into the modern era. China’s tenure as a republic was brief, however, as the
Communist Party under the leadership of Mao Zedong took control of the
country in 1949.

When viewed against a timeline of 2,000 years of imperial rule, 30-some

years as a republic, and over 70 years as a communist nation, the Boxer
Rebellion might seem irrelevant. But the Boxer Rebellion spoke with the
voice of a Chinese population that was weary of being subject to the whims
of foreign powers. By striking against the Western powers, the Boxer
Rebellion set the stage for a Chinese government that would follow its own
course and, for good or ill, define a new way of life in a rapidly changing
world. Twenty-first century China is an economic and political force not only
in Asia but across the globe, and the role of the Boxer Rebellion in the
restoration of China to a position of power must be acknowledged. Whether
modern China exemplifies the model that the Boxers sought is, of course,
open to debate.

Chapter One

Trade with the Mighty Middle

Kingdom

“If you put together all the Christians in the world, with their Emperors and

their Kings, the whole of these Christians—aye, and throw in the Saracens to

boot—would not have such power, or be able to do so much as this Kublai,

who is Lord of all the Tartars in the world.”

—Marco Polo

Trade with imperial China, which was already thriving in the East when the
Roman Empire was coming to dominance in the West, was the stuff of
legend early on in Chinese history, as the Silk Road brought merchants to
Cathay, as China was then known. In the thirteenth century, Marco Polo,
along with his merchant father and uncle, traveled to China, where they were
received by Emperor Kublai Khan, founder of the Yuan Dynasty.

Kublai Khan, the grandson of Genghis Khan, was a Mongolian who did

not speak Chinese and was mainly raised by his mother, a Nestorian Christian
princess. Under Genghis Khan, the Mongols had conquered China. By the
time Kublai Khan was emperor, the empire under his control reached from
the Caspian Sea to the Korean peninsula. In 1271, Kublai Khan’s ambition
was to unify China under his rule, which he named the Yuan Dynasty, and
establish Beijing as the capital of the nation.

Even though China itself was actually a conquered territory under the

control of the Mongols, the Chinese regarded everyone who was not Chinese
as inferior. The Chinese were Huá; those outside China were Yi, or
“barbarians” and “uncivilized.” Despite his identity as a foreigner, Polo was
entrusted with diplomatic missions on the emperor’s behalf, traveling within
China as well as to neighboring Asian regions. Polo reportedly stayed in

China for 17 years, and upon his return to Europe, his accounts of the exotic
East excited the imaginations—and the commercial interest—of Western
explorers and monarchs, who learned from his writings of Chinese products
such as paper money, gunpowder, coal, and porcelain.

Under the Ming Dynasty, which ruled from 1368 to 1644, the emperor

welcomed foreign envoys to Nanjing and Beijing but did not permit Chinese
merchants to venture abroad in pursuit of private trade. The Chinese under
the Ming era explored much of Asia while the Ming leaders limited but did
not discourage trade with other nations.

After 1557, trade with other nations opened up. It was then that the

Portuguese began to trade with the Chinese. China soon also started trading
goods with the Spanish in exchange for silver mined from Spain’s New
World colonies. So much silver currency was exchanged in China that the
silver became a familiar sight and would, in time, become a bulwark of the
Chinese economy.

For the Western world, mercantile expansion was also a route to Christian

evangelism, and Jesuit missionaries began to come to China under the Ming
Dynasty. It was in fact the Italian Jesuit Matteo Ricci who translated the
name of a Chinese philosopher, Kong Qiu, into Confucius. Working with a
Chinese colleague who had been baptized, Ricci also translated Euclid’s
Elements into Chinese. The cross-pollination of ideas followed the incursion
into China made by commerce.

Although the Chinese emperor decided against expanding trade with

Great Britain in 1793, trade between the West and East still played an active
role in the commercial enterprises of Western nations. However, the Chinese
did not need Western trade as much as the West needed trade with the
Chinese. The Chinese operated outside the European sphere of influence and
were capable of meeting the domestic needs of their own citizens, offering a
high standard of living, independent innovation, and agricultural prowess.
There was no need for the Chinese Empire to feel threatened or even
influenced by Western demands. China remained focused upon its own world
view, establishing policies which mitigated the expansion of Western power.

During the eighteenth century, the British, French, and Dutch were

zealous in their efforts to maximize their trade networks in Asia, which made
China’s Qing Dynasty a sought-after partner in their expanding markets.
China had, for more than a millennium, been the Silk Road’s eastern
destination, one which the British and Dutch East India Companies yearned

to break into in order to increase the profits of their trading companies.

However, the centuries would see a dynamic shift in the global influence

which the West held over the East, and in the mid-nineteenth century, the
British Empire was rapidly becoming the largest empire in history. The
British, along with much of the world, continued to desire Chinese exports
such as tea, silk, and porcelain. At this point, China’s boundaries upon
Western trade, which included restricting European traders to the port of
Canton, forbade the foreigners from learning Chinese and threatened
punishment to any European who attempted to venture outside Canton in
order to enter China. The Chinese were still able, despite Great Britain’s
growing power, to define the borders of trade in the country.

Although Chinese goods were wildly popular in Europe, the Chinese did

not reciprocate with an interest in the manufactured products of Europe.
Instead of trading goods, the Qing Dynasty required payment in silver. This
lopsided trading partnership left the British with a trade deficit; the British,
lacking their own supply of silver, had to purchase the coveted metal either
from Mexico or from those European nations who had silver mines in
colonies they controlled.

By this time, the British had become excessively fond of tea, and the

nation was importing more than six tons of Chinese tea each year. The
imbalance was so pronounced that in 50 years of trading with each other, the
British sold £9 million worth of its manufactured goods to the Chinese while
buying £27 million worth of Chinese products, paying for the difference in
silver. The opium trade was about to shift the balance of trade in Great
Britain’s favor.

The Chinese had been introduced to opium late in the sixth or early in the

seventh century by Turkish and Arab traders. It was useful to relieve pain and
tension in limited quantities. The importation of opium increased during the
first century of the Qing Dynasty rule, which began in 1644. As the practice
of smoking tobacco had spread from the New World, smoking opium became
a common practice.

As the eighteenth century dawned, the Portuguese began earning a great

profit by importing Indian opium to sell in China. The path was paved for the
British to do the same. The opium product was by now stronger than what the
Chinese used in their medicines. In response, Emperor Yongzheng prohibited
the sale and smoking of opium in 1729. However, addiction meant that the
popularity of opium was undiminished, and the trade continued.

The British depended upon the money received from opium revenues; for

the British, the lucrative opium trade funded their own financial stability. By
1773, the British were the leading suppliers of opium to China. In India, the
British East India Company’s monopoly on opium cultivation led to a method
of growing poppies abundantly and at a cheaper cost. Once again, the
Chinese emperor legislated against the importation of opium, and once again,
the effort failed. The British had finally discovered an export which the
Chinese wanted and could not do without; that it was a deadly drug
debilitating a nation’s population mattered only to the Chinese.

Chapter Two

The First Opium War

“You do not wish opium to harm your own country, but you choose to bring

that harm to other countries, such as China.”

—Lin Zexu

It wasn’t long before Chinese traders were willing to accept opium as
payment in exchange for goods, even though the transaction was illegal in
China. The result led to alarming rates of addiction; some estimates claim
that perhaps as many as 90% of the young men along the east coast of China
were opium addicts by 1830. Operating by stealth, the British East India
Company outsourced the opium to private traders it had licensed to transport
the opium from India to China, selling it to smugglers along the coast of
China. The traders gave the gold and silver they received for the opium to the
British East India Company; the company then used the gold and silver to
buy Chinese goods it could sell at a profit in the United Kingdom.

The increase in opium sold to China was staggering; the Chinese

purchased 1,000 chests of opium in 1767. Between 1820 and 1830, the sale
increased to 10,000 chests a year. Each chest contained approximately 140
pounds of opium. By 1838, 40,000 chests per year were being imported into
China, aided by corrupt Chinese officials who helped develop an effective
network for distributing it.

Opium addiction had infiltrated the empire’s military troops and officials

as well as the lower classes. With the illegal opium trade, Great Britain was
winning the trade war; the opium production and smuggling process now
made up between 15 and 20 percent of the revenue of the British East India
Company. To protect this monopoly on opium production, Great Britain
annexed whole sections of the Indian subcontinent where the poppy grew.

Meanwhile, China was losing the addiction war. Even though the Chinese

had completely outlawed opium in 1796, its prevalence was felt throughout

Chinese society, particularly in the cities on the coast. An imperial edict was
issued, stating that opium was a poison undermining the morals and customs
of China. The warning went unheeded. By 1839, an estimated 27% of
Chinese males were opium addicts. The viceroy to the emperor, Lin Zexu,
sent a letter to Queen Victoria, asking for her help and challenging the
morality of her government’s actions. Citing the British ban on opium, Lin
wrote, “You do not wish opium to harm your own country, but you choose to
bring that harm to other countries such as China.”

The British monarch did not reply to the letter. Driven to do something to

ease the crisis, in the spring of 1839, Lin Zexu had the opium dealers arrested
and confiscated 1,200 tons of opium and 70,000 opium pipes, destroying over
20,000 opium chests that had been stored in Canton warehouses by the
British merchants. While some British ships were able to escape Canton,
some of the traders had no choice but to surrender their opium, which was
destroyed. The opium trade became an offense punishable by death.

British influence—some would say control—over Chinese policies

extended beyond trade. In July of that year, a Chinese villager was killed by
two drunken British sailors. The British government refused to release the
sailors to the Chinese to face the justice of the Chinese legal system. As a
result, tensions between the two countries heightened.

The British had a military presence in the area, and Charles Elliot, the

British Superintendent of Trade in China, commanded a fleet which were
stationed outside the Canton harbor. After the Chinese authorities issued a
statement requiring all foreign ships to sign a bond agreeing not to trade
opium, Elliot countered by ordering a blockade preventing British ships from
trading with the Chinese. In November 1939, the British fired warning shots
when one British trading vessel, the Royal Saxon, ignored the blockade and
attempted to sail into Canton port. The Chinese ships sailed out of the harbor
to preserve order. Firing ensued, and the Chinese ships were disabled.

Back in London, feelings ran high at the incident. Many British felt that

the Chinese were violating free trade. The Whig government proposed going
to war, a decision opposed by the Tories; their opposing motion was defeated
by nine votes, revealing the controversial nature of the conflict. The British
Prime Minister, Lord Palmerston, instructed the British military to engage the
Chinese in a punitive expedition and to capture Hong Kong, which would
serve the British as a trading site in the future.

In June 1840, British troops and ships arrived in Hong Kong. The Royal

Navy sailed up the Pearl River estuary, where they captured one port and
blocked several others. Negotiations followed, but ultimately, diplomacy
failed to resolve the conflict. In May 1841, the British attacked Canton and
occupied it, but the fighting in other parts of China continued into the
following year. British ships which were powered by steam were able to
move against the wind and the tides, an ability which served them well when
they attacked cities located further up the Pearl and Yangtze Rivers. There
were also more guns on some of the British warships than the entire Chinese
fleet could claim.

After a vigorous counterattack by Chinese troops in the spring of 1842,

the British managed to fight back against the offensive. British artillery
bombardments led to the capture of Shanghai, and when the Royal Navy
reached Nanjing, the Chinese were open to negotiations. The Chinese had
lost as many as 20,000 soldiers, while the British only suffered a few hundred
casualties, and many of those were caused by disease rather than fighting.

On August 29, the Treaty of Nanjing was signed aboard the HMS

Cornwallis. The terms of the treaty were exceedingly advantageous to Great
Britain. China had to cede Hong Kong to the British as well as increase the
number of ports open to British trading and residence. Instead of only being
allowed to live and trade in Canton, the British gained access to four more
ports, including Shanghai. In addition, the British demanded compensation
for the cost of the war and for the opium which had been destroyed. The total
amount to be paid by China was $21 million, $6 million of which was to be
paid immediately.

Furthering their triumph, the British Supplementary Treaty of the Bogue,

which was signed on October 8, 1843, ensured that if a British citizen were
charged with a crime in China, they would be tried in a British court, not a
Chinese one. The British also demanded most-favored-nation trading status.

Yet most devastating to the Chinese people and government was the

British insistence that the opium trade had to be legalized. Addiction, it
seemed, was required if the Chinese were to keep the British appeased.

Chapter Three

The Second Opium War

“The opium trade produced a rationale for the Christian presence in China,

turning the country into a depraved mass of opium sots to be disciplined and

improved by salvation-hungry missionaries.”

—Julia Lovell

Advances in maritime exploration and trade in the mid-nineteenth century,
combined with a dauntless conviction of the glorious destiny of white
Christianity, emboldened the Western powers to press their advantages in
order to expand trade with China. The British were in the vanguard of this
movement, seeking for their empire the opening of the vastness of China to
British merchants, the legalization of the opium trade, the installation of a
British ambassador in Beijing, and exemption of imports from tariffs.

These proposals were not supported by Emperor Xianfeng or his Qing

government, by this time weary of constant concessions being demanded by
the British government. Making matters worse was the Taiping Rebellion,
which broke out against the government in 1850. The Taiping Rebellion
possessed the alarming potential to undo the existing political and social
structure of Chinese society, and the ability of the emperor to mount a solid
defense against the invasion by the Westerners was compromised by this
internal unrest.

Understandably, the Treaty of Nanjing which awarded the British so

much in terms of influence and future profits did nothing to soothe the
exacerbated hostilities between Great Britain and China. Well aware of the
possibilities that unrest within China could provide in terms of an advantage,
the British were alert for ways to exploit the volatile situation for their own
benefit.

On October 8, 1856, Chinese officials in Canton arrested 12 Chinese

crewmen from the Arrow, a ship that was registered in Hong Kong which by
then was under British control. According to reports, the Arrow had been
flying the British flag at the time of the arrest before the Chinese officials tore
the flag down. British diplomats sought redress and the release of the
prisoners, but the Chinese, claiming that the Arrow was a pirate ship involved
in smuggling, refused. In addition, the Chinese were reportedly offering a
bounty of $100 on every British taken.

As a result, a British warship bombarded Canton and destroyed forts

outside the city. Trade came to a halt as the two sides were at an impasse. In
December of that year, the Chinese set fire to foreign warehouses in Canton.

Back home, British citizens were outraged at Prime Minister

Palmerston’s handling of the Arrow incident, forcing a general election in
1857. As British nationalism surged, the Whig government gained a majority
in Parliament and the public hungered for war against China. William
Gladstone, who would one day serve as prime minister, was not swayed by
the warlike fervor and regarded the first Opium War as “calculated in its
progress to cover this country with permanent disgrace.” That a Second
Opium War was in the offing only exacerbated the matter.

Like the Chinese, the British also had unrest to deal with, although their

unrest was not back in Britain but in the colony of India. As the British were
dealing with the election at home and the aftermath of the Arrow incident in
China, members of the Bengal army rose up against the British in what
became known as the Indian Rebellion. The uprising required the sending of
more troops to India, so Great Britain called upon its allies—France, Russia,
and the United States—for support. The Russians and the Americans merely
sent envoys, but the French, still furious that the Chinese had executed a
French missionary, joined the British forces.

After the Indian Rebellion was put down, the British and French went to

Hong Kong and, from there, to the Chinese forts south of Canton. Advancing
north, the Western alliance engaged in a brief fight before taking Canton in
late 1857. With Canton occupied by the military, the French and British
headed north, and in May 1858, they captured the Taku Forts outside of
Tianjin.

Still distracted by the Taiping Rebellion, which would continue until

1864, the Chinese government struggled to mount a consistent defense
against the Western invaders. The Chinese government did not want to risk
the outrage which allowing a foreign government to have a residence in the

Chinese capital would ignite among the population. Because the Chinese felt
themselves superior to the mercenary and intrusive Westerners, they could
not allow Western standards to be absorbed into their own cultural model. If
the Westerners lived in Beijing, that would indicate that they were equal to
the Chinese, and this was not something the Chinese were prepared to
concede.

This loss of face would challenge the view that China was the center of

human civilization, the Middle Kingdom. The West, with its burgeoning
industry and vigorous trade, saw its maritime commerce as a sign of its
power. But to the Chinese, the Westerners came because they needed Chinese
goods; hence, it was the Western powers who were in need. As far back as
1793, Emperor Qianlong had written to King George III: “I set no value on
objects strange and ingenious, and have no use for your country’s
manufactures.”

Suing for peace was the only option that seemed viable for the Chinese. A

British retinue led by the Earl of Elgin came to sign the Treaty of Tianjin on
June 26, 1858; a military band played music and the Royal Marines
accompanied the British contingent. It was a hot summer day, with the
temperatures reaching into the 90s Fahrenheit (32 degrees Celsius), when the
representatives of the two clashing cultures met.

The Chinese presented their case, but in the end, Lord Elgin secured the

right for British envoys to live in Beijing. Naturally, other Western powers
arranged for a similar agreement. In addition, ten new Chinese ports were
opened to trade, and foreigners were now allowed to travel into the interior of
the Chinese mainland. Foreign missionaries of both the Catholic and
Protestant faiths were permitted to evangelize, and opium could legally be
imported and sold in China.

However, the truce did not last long. The Chinese government resented

the concessions made in the previous treaties, and Emperor Xianfeng was
soon forced to accede to the government’s wishes by sending military forces
under Mongol General Sengge Rinchen to reinforce the Taku Forts. When
General Rinchen refused permission to allow foreign troops to escort the
British ambassadors to their post in Beijing—he was amenable to allowing
the ambassadors to land on Chinese soil but not to having an entourage of
troops accompany them to Beijing—the fighting resumed.

After clearing obstacles from the Baihe River, the British Admiral Sir

James Hope’s fleet bombarded the Taku Forts. However, the Chinese fought

fiercely, leaving the British with no option but to withdraw with the
assistance of the American Commodore Josiah Tattnall, violating U.S.
neutrality in the process.

The British and French had not expected such a vigorous and successful

defense of the Taku Forts, and they were determined to prove victorious in
their next endeavor. By the summer of 1860, the French and British boasted a
military force of more than 17,000 soldiers and 173 ships. The British landed
two miles from the Taku Forts on August 3, 1860; by August 21, the forts
were in British hands.

In September, General Rinchen, with 30,000 men, met the British at

Baliqiao and launched frontal assaults against them. Not only were his efforts
in vain, but his army was wiped out. With the British and French troops
rapidly approaching Beijing, Emperor Xianfeng felt that he had no option but
to sue for peace again. However, the negotiation was doomed after a British
envoy and his delegation were arrested and tortured.

The French and British entered Beijing on October 6 as the emperor, with

no military forces to protect him, escaped from Beijing, leaving Prince Gong
behind to negotiate peace terms. Western retaliation was vicious. The French
and British troops attacked the Old Summer Palace to liberate the Western
prisoners who were held there. Chinese art was looted and taken home to
Britain and France. Diplomats were able to dissuade Lord Elgin from burning
Beijing to punish the Chinese for the kidnapping and torture of the prisoners;
instead, he settled for burning the Old Summer Palace.

After Beijing was taken, the negotiations with the Western forces left the

Chinese with few options. Prince Gong signed a new treaty, the Convention
of Peking, on October 24, 1860. Kowloon, which had been leased in March
1860, was formally ceded to the British, and Tianjin was opened as a free
port for foreigners. Religious freedom was permitted, and reparations were to
be paid to France and Great Britain. In a separate treaty, the Russians
acquired coastal land in the north of China; here, they would establish the
port of Vladivostok as their reward for convincing the French and British to
not burn down Beijing.

The fact that a barbarian army had defeated the Chinese military led to a

reassessment of the government on the part of the Chinese people. The Qing
Dynasty’s standing in the eyes of the people was shattered: the emperor had
fled from the fighting, casting doubt on the superiority of the Chinese and
leading to questions about the effectiveness of the government. Wounded by

the humiliation which China had endured and wary of the government’s
acquiescence to foreign powers, ordinary Chinese citizens began questioning
their obedience to an imperial court which seemed incapable of defending
their honor.

The concessions that China made in the Convention of Peking and the

prior agreements, which would be known as the unequal treaties,
demonstrated the weakness of China’s position. The truth was even worse
than ordinary people could have imagined. Some modern economists have
asserted that, until the Opium Wars, China had the world’s largest economy.
By 1870, China’s share of global GDP had fallen by half, and China would
be severely disadvantaged in its international relations and trade for decades.
China had been beaten by the Yi, the barbarians.

Chapter Four

The Self-Strengthening Movement

“Take away your missionaries and your opium and you will be welcome.”

—Chinese official

The triumph of the West in the Opium Wars and the concessions made in the
unequal treaties were humbling for China, which for 2,000 years had been the
unquestioned power in Asia. Now that the West had forced China to submit,
the Western powers began to regard Chinese territory similar to the way in
which they viewed their colonies.

For the British, their region was the Pearl River Basin because of their

control of Hong Kong. In addition, Shanghai had evolved into a vital
commercial center for the British, and from there, they extended their
dominance over the entire Yangtze River Basin. The French were dominant
in Vietnam, so they regarded southern China’s Red River Basin as their
sphere of influence. Russia’s imprint was pressed upon Manchuria. Germany,
with the Shandong Province, sought to extend its authority along the Yellow
River. The Chinese still maintained governments in these areas, but they no
longer operated on their own authority. They had foreign officials to answer
to, who were intent on keeping the regions obedient to Western aims.

For the Qing Dynasty, which had reigned over China since 1644, the

erosion of its power and sovereignty was ominous. Their authority over the
people had overseen everything from language to rituals to religion and social
customs. The Qing came from Manchuria, and they had preserved their
identity as outsiders who had conquered China. But the control they could
impose upon regions in the past had been changing as Asia was
accommodating the intrusion of the West.

The White Lotus Rebellion, which began in 1796, had challenged the

Qing edict limiting agriculture in the northern regions, as crops like maize
and potatoes from the New World changed farming. The West ushered in

ways to irrigate farmland and use fertilizers to maximize harvest, practices
which were different from what had been done in the past. The West also
introduced new methods of treating infectious diseases like smallpox. While
some of the Western innovations were positive, they represented a change
from the methods and practices that were familiar to the Chinese, adding
more resentment to what the population already felt.

These advances led to a population boom; in 1749, the population of

China was roughly 178 million. By 1851, the Qing Dynasty ruled over 432
million people. Overcrowding in some areas led to Chinese people moving to
other parts of China, and with movement came new ideas and new conflicts,
including rebellions. The Qing Dynasty had been able to defeat the White
Lotus Rebellion but not to wipe out its goals, which remained the overthrow
of the dynasty. The following decades, which witnessed more encroachment
by the West, gave rise to increasing frustration for the Chinese.

After the Second Opium War, the British demand for reparations enriched

Great Britain with millions of pounds of silver, weakening China’s economy
as well as its image. The Qing Dynasty came belatedly to the realization that
in order to restore its power in the region and its image within, it had to
modernize. Beginning in 1861, China underwent what was called the Self-
Strengthening or Westernization Movement, which implemented institutional
reforms.

Prince Gong, who had negotiated the Convention of Peking treaty after

the flight of the emperor, was made the head of the Zongli Yamen, which
functioned in the manner of a foreign ministry. Private militias in the Western
model were formed to fight the Taiping rebels, and the overall intention of
the movement was to import Western science and military technology into
Chinese schools, arsenals, and munitions factories.

The provincial officials were successful in constructing railways and

innovating shipping and telegraph communication, resulting in the
modernization of Chinese heavy industry and its military. The Self-
Strengthening Movement focused on economic and military upgrading, not
social reform. These innovations saved the Qing Dynasty from collapse in the
short term. Unfortunately for the future of the Qing, however, its demise was
merely a matter of time. The seemingly endless succession of wars and
conflicts was corrosive to the Qing Dynasty’s ability to maintain order and
stability in a nation weary of fighting and losing.

In 1894, the two Asian empires—China’s Qing Dynasty and the Empire

of Japan—fought over which nation would prevail in having influence in
Korea. The Japanese army and navy triumphed, resulting in the Chinese loss
of the port of Weihaiwei. In February 1895, the Chinese government sought
peace terms. Japan capitalized on China’s weakness, taking Taiwan and
controlling Korea which had formerly been a tributary of the Chinese. By
1895, Japan was also empowered to insist on advantageous trade demands in
the Treaty of Shimonoseki.

Despite the improvements brought about by the Self-Strengthening

Movement, the Qing Dynasty had demonstrated that it was unable to defend
its borders from the aggression of its powerful neighbor Japan. As a result,
Japan was now the dominant power in East Asia, a crushing blow to Qing
prestige. Stricken by the loss of Korea as a tributary state, the public was not
silent.

The end of the Qing Dynasty was nearing, a fall which would be

precipitated by yet another uprising, this one in northern China. It was
inspired by Chinese resentment at the continued encroachment of the
influence of Westerners and the Japanese in the region. Young men in local
villages, some only teenagers, found the call to arms to be a welcome
substitute for the unemployment and lack of opportunity which plagued their
communities. The uprising, called the Boxer Rebellion, would come to have
a much greater influence over twentieth-century China than the two years of
its span would seem to indicate.

Behind the Boxer Rebellion lay capitulation to foreign powers. Ahead of

it was the fall of the Qing Dynasty, the rise of the Chinese republic, the rise
of Mao Zedong and the Cultural Revolution, and the foundations of what
would lead to the evolution of modern China as a pivotal player on the
world’s economic and political stage.

Chapter Five

Rise of the Boxers

“The Boxer is a patriot. He loves his country better than he does the

countries of other people. I wish him success.”

—Mark Twain

In the late early nineteenth century, another group, the Eight Trigrams
Society, had formed with the objective of overthrowing the Qing Dynasty
and getting rid of the intrusive Westerners who seemed to be taking over
China. Although the Eight Trigrams uprising failed, those sentiments would
take root in other disaffected members of the Chinese population.

The northern region of China, in the coastal Shandong province of China,

was a region beset by famine and flooding and known for its religious
groups, social unease, and lack of economic opportunity. From 1897 to 1898,
a drought that came after flooding drove farmers to the cities in need of food.
When these natural conditions were combined with resentment against
foreign powers holding such unbalanced influence over China, an assortment
of fervent young men formed a secret society as a way of redressing the
wrongs done to their people. The adverse effects of prolonged extreme
weather and the mounting hostility toward the imperial court were catalyzed
by the further expansion encroachment of the Western colonization efforts.

The young men of the region were hungry for more than food. Following

the terms of the Treaty of Tianjin and the Convention of Peking, foreign
missionaries were permitted to preach the Christian doctrine in China and to
purchase Chinese land for the building of churches. Their evangelism fueled
the resentment which the villagers felt against foreigners.

Thus, the Society of Righteous and Harmonious Fists, or the Boxer

movement, was formed late in the 1890s. Frustrated at feeling helpless and
impoverished while foreigners exploited their country, the members of the
group, mostly peasants, employed physical fitness to build up their strength.

Believing that they were immune to bullets and invincible to attack, the group
used calisthenics and martial arts. Their practices included prostration and the
chanting of incantations to gods. They armed themselves with swords and
rifles, confident that their spiritual powers would protect them from the
weapons of the West. As they moved forward on their quest to rid China of
the foreigners, they believed that the heavens would open up to send millions
of soldiers to assist them in their righteous quest.

Angry at the presence of foreigners and missionaries who were, they felt,

subverting Chinese beliefs with Christian evangelism, the Boxers started to
attack foreigners as well as Chinese Christians. Christian missionaries,
passionate with the zeal to spread their beliefs, were often insensitive to
Chinese customs. The foreign missionaries put pressure on community
officials so that Chinese converts to Christianity would have special favors in
lawsuits and disagreements over property.

As the Boxers became more united in their cause and began to attract

more members who agreed with their goals, they started to act upon their
purpose. In October 1898, they attacked a Christian community where a
former temple to the Jade Emperor had been turned into a Catholic place of
worship. The site of the church had been a source of controversy since 1869
between the Chinese and the Christians who lived there, and the attack was a
precursor of more to come. A year later, the Boxers clashed with troops from
the Qing government at the Battle of Senluo Temple.

Coinciding with the rise of the Boxer movement was the Hundred Days

Reform. During that time, Protestant missionaries had gotten the support of
some Chinese government officials to convince the Qing government to bring
about reforms. However, Empress Dowager Cixi, responding to the
opposition of the more conservative officials in the government, canceled the
reforms. This caused greater dissension between the factions, making the
Qing Dynasty even more vulnerable. The empress dowager grabbed the reins
of power and had the emperor placed under house arrest in order to wrest
control of the government.

As the dissension grew stronger, members of the Chinese government

who agreed with the Boxers on the desire to rid China of its foreign presence
were able to persuade the group to relinquish their intentions to overthrow the
Qing Dynasty. Together, the Boxers and the conservative forces in the
government would join together to liberate China from foreign influence. By
January of 1900, the imperial court of Empress Dowager Cixi was heavily

influenced by a majority of conservative officials, and this led the empress to
voice support for the Boxers too. Her decision spawned protests from the
foreign representatives in China.

Spring of 1900 saw the movement’s expansion from Shandong to the

outskirts of Beijing, where the Boxers targeted Christian places of worship as
well as Chinese converts to Christianity. When German soldiers in Beijing
captured a Boxer youth and executed him, the Boxers retaliated, and
thousands entered Beijing to burn not only many of the Christian places of
worship in the city but also burning people alive as well. As soldiers
protecting the legations fired back upon the Boxers, the Chinese who lived in
the city felt animosity toward the foreigners, and some sought revenge by
killing Chinese Christians in the city.

Increasingly concerned, the foreign diplomats in China requested

permission from the Chinese government to ask foreign troops to enter
Beijing to provide defense for the foreign legations who were now
vulnerable. After the Chinese government gave its reluctant consent, a force
of 435 naval troops from the Eight-Nation Alliance (Britain, Russia, Japan,
France, Germany, the U.S., Italy, and Austria-Hungary) was on its way to
Beijing. However, the Boxers had severed the railway line from Tianjin,
which meant that Beijing was now cut off.

The imperial court was sending mixed messages regarding its intentions.

On June 13, the empress dowager directed her forces to prevent the foreign
soldiers from advancing, forcing the troops to turn back. Recognizing the
dilemma that China faced—support of the Boxers versus the wrath of the
Western powers—the empress dowager addressed the issues to her imperial
court. Support for the Boxers ran high in the countryside; attempts to
suppress that support at a time when foreign troops were actively engaged
within Beijing would be difficult. The anti-foreigner faction believed that the
Qing government ought to take advantage of the opportunities offered by the
Boxers and kick out the foreigners and their divisive influence. Opposing that
view were those in the court who derided the Boxers as ignorant peasants
who were an obstacle to achieving an agreement with the governments of the
other Western countries.

In any case, the spread of the violence brought in more foreign troops and

sailors under the command of the British. Vice-Admiral Edward Seymour
decided they needed to repair the severed railway line or travel on foot in
order to get to Beijing. His resolve in doing so, and the advance of the troops,

incited further anger in the imperial court. A prince of the Manchus, who
supported the Boxer movement, became the new leader of the Chinese
foreign office and ordered the imperial army to strike against Seymour’s
forces headed toward Beijing.

However, the orders were not clear, and initially, the Chinese did not

prevent the British advance by train. Seymour’s forces managed to reach
Langfang, but while there, as the engineers worked to repair the damaged
railway line, the soldiers were surrounded both by government troops and
Chinese irregulars. The Chinese forces were victorious over Seymour on June
18 at the Battle of Langfang, forcing the Europeans to retreat under fire. The
Europeans, having expected an easy victory over the Chinese, had neglected
to bring along sufficient artillery. The Chinese had not been so lax and their
bombardment was effective, as were their sniper actions, ambushes, and
pincer movements against the invaders.

The British-led forces loaded their wounded and supplies onto civilian

ships commandeered from the Chinese. Food, ammunition, and medical
supplies were in short supply when the foreign forces fortuitously discovered
a concealed arsenal with rifles, millions of rounds of ammunition, and field
guns. The supply also included rice and medical supplies.

The British-led forces, now well supplied, waited to be rescued. A servant

infiltrated the Chinese lines and reached the Eight Powers to alert them to the
plight of Seymour’s troops, who by this time were nearly at the point of being
overwhelmed. A regiment of multinational troops was sent, and after setting
fire to the munitions they could not take with them, Seymour’s force was
rescued.

Communication between Tianjin and Beijing had meanwhile broken

down, and the foreign nations decided it was time to make their military
presence felt. On June 17, the Alliance captured the Taku Forts, which
controlled the approach to Tianjin as part of the tactical effort to open access
to Beijing. Troops in ever-increasing numbers landed on the shore.

The military alliance issued a demand to the Chinese empress dowager:

surrender control over the Chinese military and financial matters to the
foreign powers. Empress Dowager Cixi responded to her grand council,
“Now they have started the aggression, and the extinction of our nation is
imminent. If we just fold our arms and yield to them, I would have no face to
see our ancestors after death. If we must perish, why don’t we fight to the
death?”

The empress dowager ordered the expulsion of all foreign diplomats from

Beijing on June 18. The subsequent murder of a German government official
made it clear that the lives of the foreigners were in mortal danger, and they,
along with hundreds of Chinese converts to Christianity, found themselves
under siege in the Legation Quarter and the Roman Catholic cathedral in
Beijing.

Chapter Six

The Fight for Beijing

“Support the Qing, destroy the foreigners.”

—Boxer slogan

When Empress Dowager Cixi learned that the Taku Forts had been attacked,
she gave orders that all foreigners were to leave Beijing within 24 hours. By
this point, the foreign legations in Beijing were already under siege by the
Peking Field Force. The diplomats doubted that the Chinese army, which
Empress Dowager Cixi said would escort them out of the city, could be
trusted with their safety, and they refused to obey the imperial command. As
they fortified their legations, they offered sanctuary to the Christian
missionaries who were in the city.

There were 473 civilians, 409 military men, and approximately 3,000

Chinese Christians seeking the protection of the legation. Their defense
consisted of small arms, three machine guns, and an old muzzle-loaded
cannon. Lack of food soon began to weaken the besieged occupants, and
casualties resulted from mines which had been placed in tunnels dug beneath
the compound.

On June 21, the empress dowager declared war against all the foreign

powers. However, the regional Chinese governors, who commanded fighting
forces in Canton, Shandong, Wuhan, and Nanjing, refused to take part in the
hostilities. They prevented the declaration of war from being publicized to the
public in the south. By remaining neutral, these governors, called the Mutual
Protection of Southeast China, kept most of the Chinese people from
becoming involved in the fighting.

However, neutrality was relative; for example, Governor Zhang of

Wuhan entered into negotiations with the foreign powers, while Governor
Yuan used his troops to put down the Boxers in Shandong. These actions,
although insubordinate in terms of their response to imperial authority,

created the impression that the Boxer Rebellion was a local disturbance
confined to the northern region of Shandong, which was false.

Meanwhile, in the Legation Quarter, the representatives of the Eight-

Nation Alliance struggled to survive under siege by the Chinese Army and
the Boxers. After a failed attempt to force the foreigners out by setting fire to
areas around the British Legation, the Chinese forces constructed barricades
surrounding the Quarter and steadily pushing the Legation guards back
incrementally. Yet despite the attacks of artillery and firecrackers, the
damage to the Legation Quarter was minimal. Chinese Christians did the
majority of the work in fortifying the defenses of the structures for the
besieged Legation Quarter.

Facing the threat of a Chinese advance upon its crucial defensive position

at the Tartar Wall, the Americans opted for an attack on July 3. British,
American, and Russian marines and sailors caught the Chinese by surprise
with the early morning assault, killing some and driving away the rest.
However, ten days later, on July 13, things looked bleak for the legations as
the Japanese and Italians in the Fu, the Roman Catholic place of worship,
were driven back to their final line of defense. On the same day, a mine under
the French Legation was detonated by the Chinese, forcing the occupants out.

On July 17, the American minister contacted the Chinese government for

an armistice, as over 40% of the foreign guards had been either killed or
wounded. A force of 20,000 Western soldiers had now landed in China, and
the Qing government realized that despite their victories over the occupants
of the Legation, a larger force would be harder to overcome.

The Eight-Nation Alliance had by this point captured Tianjin. From

Tianjin, the 20,000 troops of the international force advanced toward Beijing,
encountering minimal resistance from the Chinese, despite the fact that they
had 70,000 imperial troops and at least 50,000 Boxer troops. However, more
devastating than enemy fire was the hot, humid weather, which reached 108
degrees Fahrenheit (42 degrees Celsius) in August. When the Allied forces
sought wells to stave off dehydration for themselves and to give water to their
horses, they were met by hostile Chinese villagers.

Eyewitness accounts reported that both the Western and the Chinese

forces were guilty of committing hideous atrocities during the conflict:
women were raped, civilians were beheaded and bayoneted, soldiers’ bodies
were mutilated as the Western soldiers fought their way to Beijing. They
reached the Forbidden City on August 14, where they encountered Chinese

forces trained in Western combat techniques and equipped with modern
weapons. Although the Chinese troops had retreated during the battle for
Tianjin, they put up a strong resistance during the fighting. However, their
efforts were not enough to halt the advance of the 20,000-man force intent on
rescuing the besieged captives inside Beijing.

Arriving at the Legation Quarter, the international force relieved the

troops that had been defending the legations. Realizing that her military had
been defeated, the empress dowager and her retinue fled from Beijing in ox
carts, the empress dressed as a farmworker. They found safety in Xi’an in
Shaanxi Province, where the mountainous terrain kept them out of reach of
the invaders.

Although her advisors urged her to continue the fighting, the empress

dowager, after being assured that she would be allowed to retain her title and
authority and that China would not have to surrender any of its land, decided
to accept the terms presented by the international force. Still, China would
not escape punitive terms entirely; the defeated nation was ordered to pay
$330 million in war reparations. The Qing government signed the peace
treaty, known as the Boxer Protocol, on September 7, 1901. As part of the
treaty, ten members of high rank in the imperial court were executed for their
part in supporting the Boxer Rebellion. Other government officials who were
found guilty of killing foreigners were also executed.

The reforms which the empress dowager had previously resisted were

now implemented. Beginning in 1901, the existing Chinese educational
system was replaced with a European format that issued university degrees.
Some students, including Sun Yat-sen who would go on to found the Chinese
Nationalist Party and head the Chinese Republic after the fall of the
monarchy, chose to be educated in Japan. The central bureaucracy was
simplified. Taxation policies were revamped. New military and police
organizations were formed.

With the reforms came a weakening of the dynasty. Within the governing

structure, there was ideological tension between the northern Chinese, who
supported the Qing Dynasty and opposed the foreigners, and the southern
Chinese, who sought the downfall of the Qing Dynasty. Inevitably, a
weakened government could not offer a strong national defense and the
waning years of the Qing rule saw northern warlords positioned against the
revolutionaries of southern China. The bitter rivalry for power between the
two factions would not be solved entirely until the Chinese Nationalist Party,

joining with the Chinese Communist Party, launched an expedition in 1926 to
defeat the northern warlords.

Beijing and Tianjin, along with other cities in the northern region of

China where the Boxer Rebellion had begun, were occupied by the
international forces for over a year. The foreign troops were guilty of
committing atrocities against the Chinese people during the occupation;
women were raped, villages were burned, and property was seized. The
British held “loot auctions” every afternoon of the week except on Sundays,
and valuable items stolen from China found their way to Europe.

Retaliation against the Chinese was rife, and even some Christian

missionaries sought revenge despite the precepts of Christianity which
preached forgiveness. A foreign journalist wrote of the carnage, “There are
things that I must not write, and that may not be printed in England, which
would seem to show that this Western civilization of ours is merely a veneer
over savagery.”

Accurate numbers of the casualties from the Boxer Rebellion are difficult

to obtain. Most of the 100,000 deaths were civilians, with merely an
estimated 3,000 military men killed in the fighting. More than 30,000
Chinese Catholics and 2,000 Chinese Protestants were killed during the
Boxer Rebellion, paying the price for what was seen as their betrayal of their
Chinese religious heritage. Clergy of multiple Christian denominations lost
their lives, including members of the Russian Orthodox, Protestant, and
Catholic churches.

Ultimately, the Boxer Rebellion enlightened the Western powers,

teaching them that their efforts to make China a colony were futile. It had
taken the uprising of the Boxers to prove that the West needed to work with
the Chinese imperial court and the government in order to have an effective
partnership. But while the West was willing to reduce its influence over
China, the Empire of Japan saw an opportunity to expand its sphere of
influence in Asia, becoming the new dominant power in the region.

Chapter Seven

The Legacy of the Boxer Rebellion

“Suppose . . . the great nations of Europe were to put their fleets together,

came over here, seize Portland, move on down to Boston, then New York,

then Philadelphia, and so on down the Atlantic Coast and around the Gulf of

Galveston? Suppose they took possession of these port cities, drove our

people into the hinterland, built great warehouses and factories, brought in a

body of dissolute agents, and calmly notified our people that henceforward

they would manage the commerce of the country? Would we not have a Boxer

movement to drive those foreign European Christian devils out of our

country?”

—Rev. Dr. George F. Pentecost

Were the Boxers insular, unsophisticated peasants fighting against Western
culture and religion, or were they freedom fighters committed to preserving
the Chinese way of life? Sun Yat-sen, the founder of the Republic of China
which would succeed the Qing Dynasty, credited the Boxers for their
resistance but still referred to them as bandits; the Boxers were not from the
elite ranks of Chinese society, and perceptions may have been tinged by the
view that they were uncouth members of the lower classes. Still, after the
Qing Dynasty fell, which happened in 1911, national assessment of the
Boxers became more favorable.

Sun Yat-sen later commended the Boxers’ bravery in taking on the

military might of the Western powers. In fact, their actions—violent and even
barbaric though they seemed to others—were in many ways matched by the
actions of the Western nations. There were even people in the West who
acknowledged the fact that the Boxers were just in their motives to defend
their country against Western arrogance. It was a time when bigotry toward
Asians was tolerated often without restraint. Some people, including some

theologians, remarked that the behavior of the Christian powers toward the
Chinese had displayed no Christ-like attributes.

On October 1, 1949, Mao Zedong, the leader of the Chinese Communist

Revolution, introduced the People’s Republic of China onto the world
political stage. Now, the Boxers were honored rather than disdained for their
peasant origins and their forthright stance against Western imperialism. After
the death of Mao Zedong, as Chinese historians reassessed the impact of the
Cultural Revolution, the violent extremes to which the Boxers resorted were
critically redefined, just as China itself was undergoing a redefinition of its
national identity.

The twenty-first century has seen the rise of Chinese economic might, a

modern-day recreation of its Silk Road hegemony when the markets of Asia
were sought after by the West. Yet today’s China has not ceded supremacy to
those foreign markets; now, when Western companies seek to enter the
Chinese market, they must cooperate with the Chinese government.

Other aspects have changed as well since the Boxer Rebellion was

crushed. Hong Kong, which was ceded to the British under the treaty terms,
is now under Chinese rule again. Hong Kong’s independence was intended to
be honored under the “One Country, Two Systems” philosophy of governing,
but as China sought to impress its authority upon the island, Hong Kong has
become the setting for protests against what is perceived as an overbearing
authoritarian rule which fails to respect its unique identity. The volatile
situation continues to stir alarm, with diplomats and journalists wondering to
what extent China will go to rein in its defiant prodigal child.

China is always aware of the suffering it endured at the hands of the

West, even now when the nation is an equal to those nations which once
exploited it. The ruins of the Summer Palace which was burned down as the
Western powers invaded Beijing after the Boxers besieged the Forbidden
City remain today, a reminder of what happened when China was at the
mercy of invaders. Generations later, the Chinese remember their humiliation
at the hands of the West. Chinese President Xi Jinping referred to it in 2017,
saying, “That page of Chinese history was one of humiliation and sorrow.”