Boxer Rebellion

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BOXER REBELLION

rise of the boxers and the qing court's war on the great powers
the coming of international military forces in beijing and the boxer protocol
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The term Boxers (a shortened form of Boxers United in Righteousness [Yihequan]) first appeared in official records in 1898. The rebellion that took their name originated in spring 1898 in Shandong Province, the birthplace of the two founding figures of Confucianism: Confucius and Mencius. The principal causes of the Boxer Rebellion were economic issues and the disputes between the Chinese and foreign missionaries in the wake of the Opium Wars (1839–1842 and 1856–1860). After the legalization of the propagation of Christianity in China around 1860, foreign missionaries were very active in Shandong. But none were more disruptive than the German Society of the Divine Word led by Johann Baptist von Anzer. This missionary order entered Shandong in the 1880s and was aggressive in its intervention in secular disputes and arrogant toward the Chinese. But it attracted converts by virtue of its power to offer protection and support, and the friction between the Christians and the local communities escalated quickly in many areas of Shandong and other parts of China, especially the north, leading to the Boxer Rebellion.

rise of the boxers and the qing court's war on the great powers

The proximate cause of the uprising was the murder of two German missionaries of the Society of the Divine Word, Richard Henle and Francis Xavier Nies, in Shandong in November 1897 by local villagers. The German government wanted to expand German influence and in particular to acquire Jiaozhou Bay in Shandong. It had been looking for a pretext to gain Jiaozhou prior to the murders, and when Kaiser William II heard of the murders he saw that a "splendid opportunity" had at last arrived and immediately dispatched Germany's East Asian naval squadron to occupy Jiaozhou Bay. He built the port city of Qingdao and quickly turned a large part of Shandong into a German sphere of influence. The Germans forced the Chinese to accept other demands too: the extensive punishment of all local and provincial officials for their alleged antipathy to foreign activities and the building of a cathedral in the village where the missionaries had been killed. The Germans in Shandong became more aggressive and peremptory after they turned Shandong into their sphere of influence, which triggered a new round in the Great Powers' "scramble for concessions" in China. In the months following the Germans taking Jiaozhou, Russia seized Dalian and Port Arthur on the Liaodong Peninsula, Britain claimed Weihaiwei in Shandong as well as a ninety-nine-year lease of the New Territories opposite Hong Kong, and France made southwest China its sphere of influence.

"You must know, my men, that you are about to meet a crafty, well-armed foe! Meet him and beat him! Give no quarter! Take no prisoners! Kill him when he falls into your hands! Even as, a thousand years ago, the Huns under their King Attila made such a name for themselves as still resounds in terror through legend and fable, so may the name of Germany resound through Chinese history…that never again will a Chinese dare to so much as look askance at a German."

Kaiser William II, in a speech on 27 July 1900 at Bremerhaven on the occasion of the departure of the first contingent of German troops to China to suppress the Boxer Rebellion. In Preston, p. 209.

The escalation of foreign aggression after the murders of the German missionaries intensified the anger and hostility felt by many non-Christian Chinese toward the local Christian people and their foreign supporters and drove Chinese xenophobia to even higher levels. It was in this context that the Boxers in Shandong turned against the Christians in 1898. Although female Boxers (called Red Lanterns) later joined the movement, the Boxers were mainly young male

farmers who practiced a combination of spirit possession and martial arts. Their targets were Chinese Christians and foreign Christians and missionaries, but to prevent the Qing state from militarily suppressing them the Boxers adopted the slogan "Support the Qing, destroy the foreign" (Fuqing mieyang), in which foreign meant the foreign religion (Christianity) and its Chinese converts as much as the foreigners themselves. The Boxer movement gradually spread through northern China in 1899 and then reached Beijing where the Qing court was located and that was home to a substantial number of foreigners. By June 1900 the Boxers were moving into Beijing by the thousands. There, they blocked the foreign relief expeditionary forces, besieged the foreign legations, and eventually provoked a war with the Great Powers.

The Qing state was already substantially weakened by the Sino-Japanese War of 1894 to 1895 and now feared that the organized Boxer groups might turn into an anti-Qing movement. In the meantime the Qing court came under extremely hostile pressure from the Great Powers to suppress the Boxers. The Qing court faced a very difficult situation, and it now tried to suppress the Boxers and had several military confrontations with them. But when the Great Powers, especially Germany and Great Britain, took military action against China, the Empress Dowager Cixi decided that it was wiser to work with the Boxers against the foreigners. On 21 June 1900 the Qing government declared war on the Great Powers, and the Boxers were officially addressed as yimin (righteous people) and were enlisted in militia under the overall command of a royal prince in the capital.

the coming of international military forces in beijing and the boxer protocol

In the meantime, the Great Powers had sent international military expeditionary forces to China to fight against the Boxers and the Qing and to protect their people. Germany took the lead role in sending troops to China. In June 1900 the German minister to Beijing, Baron Clemens von Ketteler, had been shot dead by a Chinese soldier while on his way to a meeting at the Zongli Yamen (foreign ministry), and the kaiser used this development to argue that a German general should command the international troops. The kaiser's nomination was Field Marshal Count Alfred von Waldersee, who eventually was chosen as supreme commander of the international military expedition. The poorly equipped Chinese military and Boxers were no match for the modern troops of the Great Powers. The powerful governors in southeastern China declared neutrality, and in the summer of 1900 the international military forces marched to Beijing with minimal resistance. The soldiers and missionaries of the "civilized nations" wreaked terrible revenge against the Chinese. They burned historical buildings, robbed China of its national treasures and many private properties, killed many Chinese, and raped Chinese women. Although everyone joined in the looting, the Europeans were the worst perpetrators. Cixi and the court fled from Beijing in humiliation. In September 1901 the Great Powers forced the Qing state to accept the Boxer Protocol, which involved eleven foreign signatories, most of them European countries. The terms were mainly punitive: ten high officials were executed and one hundred others punished; the civil service examinations were suspended in forty-five cities; foreign troops were to be stationed in Beijing permanently and to be positioned at strategically important points between Beijing and the coast; Chinese official missions were to be sent to Germany and Japan to convey regret for the deaths of von Ketteler and a Japanese diplomat; and a monument was to be erected in Beijing on the spot where the German minister had been killed. The indemnity imposed on the Chinese was 450 million taels (about US$625 million)—one tael for each Chinese—to be paid in thirty-nine annual installments with an interest rate of 4 percent. The total was more than four times the annual revenue of the Qing state, and the annual payments represented about one-fifth of the national budget.

The Boxer Rebellion was a pivotal episode in China's fractured relationship with the West and left a lasting impact on Chinese politics and China's foreign relations. The rebellion reinforced negative European perceptions of China and its people, and the defeat and humiliation suffered at the hands of international expeditionary forces soon led to the final fall of the Qing dynasty in 1912.

See alsoChina; Imperialism; Opium Wars.