The Boxer Rising in China

 

In 1898-99, many young and discontented peasants, in northern China, joined a secret society called “The Society of the Righteous Harmonious Fists” or “Boxer”. In 1899 they attacked vulnerable foreign outposts run missionaries in Shandong Province. Priests, nuns and Christian converts were murdered. Railway track and telegraph lines were sabotaged.

They treaty powers, worried by the growth of anti-foreigner feeling, demanded that the Chinese Government stamp out the Boxer movement and punish the offenders. Instead, highly placed official in the Manchu Government, and in Shandong Province, gave the Boxer every encouragement.

Causes of the Boxer Rising.

Famine, high taxes and poverty provided the right background for a rebellion against the foreigners who seemed to be taking over China. Some of the Chinese people were afraid the new railways and telegraph lines across the countryside, would disturb the graves of their ancestors.

There was deep resentment, too, at the interference the missionaries in Chinese everyday life. Above all, there was hatred for foreigners. Many were arrogant, grasping and condescending. By 1900 most people in China from the Dowager empress to the humblest peasant opposed the foreigner.

The siege of the Legations in Beijing.

In 1900 the Boxers move close to Beijing, to the alarm of the foreign residents. On 13 June they entered the city. Those foreign residents and Chinese Christians who could get away in time fled for protection to the foreign legation compound, which housed the British, Russia, American, French and Japanese legations.

On 20 June, the German ambassador, Baron Ketteler, was murdered. Chinese troops made little attempts to stop the Boxers and the Dowager Empress Cixi, was persuaded by the Boxer supporters at court to declare war on the treaty Powers. This decree was ignored by Li  Hongzhang in Guangzhou and other provincial commanders. They claimed that the Dowager Empress must have been forced by the Boxer too declare war.

In August the legation in Beijing were relieved by an allied expeditionary forces containing Russian, Italian and Japanese troops. The Rising was crushed and much of Beijing destroyed in revenge.

Results of the Boxer rising.

• The allies overlooked the behavior of the Dowager Empress but humiliated China so much in the peace settlement, that there could have been little doubt they knew he was quilt.
• China had to apologize, pay a huge sum in compensation, punish the Boxer ringleaders, permit foreign troops to remain on Chinese soil and destroy a number of forts.
• China would probably have been partitioned like Africa, had the treaty Power thought it possible to govern 450 million hostile people, or even if they had been able to agree among themselves as to know it should be done.