...was a violent movement by the Society of Righteous and Harmonious Fists in China between 1899 and 1901. It expressed proto-nationalist sentiments and tried to eradicate foreign imperialism and Christian missions. The Great Powers intervened and defeated the government forces, in a humiliation for China.
A French political cartoon depicting China as a pie about to be carved up by Queen Victoria (Britain), Kaiser Wilhelm II (Germany), Tsar Nicholas II (Russia), Marianne (France) and a samurai (Japan), while a Chinese mandarin helplessly looks on.
The uprising took place against a background of severe drought and economic disruption in response to the growth of foreign spheres of influence. Grievances ranged from political invasion resulting from the Opium Wars to economic incursions to Christian missionary work, which the weak Qing state could not stop.
After several months of growing violence against foreign and Christian presence in Shandong and the North China plain, in June 1900 Boxer fighters, convinced they were invulnerable to foreign weapons, converged on Beijing with the slogan "Support the Qing, exterminate the foreigners." They forced foreigners and Chinese Christians to seek refuge in the Legation Quarter. In response to reports of armed foreign landings and demands, the initially hesitant Empress Dowager Cixi, urged by the conservatives of the Imperial Court, supported the Boxers and on June 21 authorized war on foreign powers. Diplomats, foreign civilians and soldiers, and Chinese Christians in the Legation Quarter were under siege by the Imperial Army of China and the Boxers for 55 days. Chinese officialdom was split between those who supported the Boxer effort to destroy the foreigners and those officials seeking a diplomatic resolution. Clashes were reported between Chinese factions favoring war and those favoring conciliation, the latter led by Prince Qing. The supreme commander of the Chinese forces, Ronglu, later claimed that he acted to protect the besieged foreigners. The Eight-Nation Alliance, after being initially turned back, brought 20,000 armed troops to China, defeated the Imperial Army, and captured Beijing on August 14, lifting the siege of the Legations. Uncontrolled plunder of the capital and the surrounding countryside ensued, along with the summary execution of those suspected of being Boxers.
The Boxer Protocol of September 7, 1901 provided for the execution of government officials who had supported the Boxers, provisions for foreign troops to be stationed in Beijing, and an indemnity of 67 million pounds -- more than the government's annual tax revenue, to be paid as indemnity over a course of thirty-nine years to the eight nations involved.
Origins of the Boxers
The Society of Righteous and Harmonious Fists was a secret society founded in the northern coastal province of Shandong consisting largely of people who had lost their livelihoods because of imperialism as well as natural disasters. The group originated from the Lí sect of the Ba-gua religious group. Foreigners came to refer to the well-trained, athletic young men as "Boxers" because of the martial arts and calisthenics they practiced. The Boxers' primary feature was a trancelike state, which involved "the whirling of swords, violent prostrations, and chanting incantations to Taoist and Buddhist spirits."
The Boxers believed that through training, diet, martial arts and prayer they could perform extraordinary feats, such as flying. Furthermore, they popularly claimed that millions of spirit soldiers would descend from the heavens and assist them in purifying China of foreign influences. The Boxers consisted of local farmers, peasants, and other workers particularly from Shangdong province, made desperate by disastrous floods and famines, widespread opium addiction, and poor standards of living for which they blamed Christian missionaries, Chinese Christians, and the Europeans who were colonizing their country. At first, they wanted to destroy the Qing dynasty and rid China of all foreign influence. When the Empress Dowager backed the Boxers, the Boxers turned to ridding China of foreigners and Chinese Christians. The Boxers, armed with rifles and swords, claimed supernatural invulnerability to blows of cannon, rifle shots, and knife attacks. The Boxer beliefs were characteristic of millennarian movements, related to such practices as the Native American Ghost Dance, another practice of a society under stress.
Several secret societies in Shandong predated the Boxers. In 1895, Yuxian, a Manchu who was then prefect of Caozhou and would later become provincial governor, employed the Big Swords Society in fighting bandits. The Big Swords relentlessly hunted the bandits, who would convert to Catholicism in order to gain legal immunity from prosecution and be placed under the protection of the foreigners. The Big Swords responded by burning Catholic churches. Yuxian was ultimately forced to execute the leaders of the Big Swords.
Causes of conflict and unrest
International tension and domestic unrest fuelled the growth and spread of the Boxer movement. First, a drought in Shandong province in 1897–1898 forced farmers to flee to cities and seek food. As one observer said, “I am convinced that a few days' heavy rainfall to terminate the long-continued drought... would do more to restore tranquility than any measures which either the Chinese government or foreign governments can take.”
A major cause of Chinese discontent was the Christian missionaries, both Protestant and Catholic, who came to China in ever increasing numbers. The extraterritoriality of the missionaries angered the local Chinese. In addition, Christians flouted traditional Chinese ceremonies and family relations. Missionaries also pressured local authorities to side with the Chinese Christians, who often came from the lower classes, in local lawsuits and disputes. On 1 November 1897 a band of twenty to thirty armed men stormed into the residence of a German missionary, George Stenz, and killed two priests who were his guests while looking for Stenz, who was sleeping in the servant's quarters. Christian villagers then came to his defense, driving off the attackers. This event was known as the Juye Incident. When Kaiser Wilhelm II received news of these murders, he dispatched the German East Asia Squadron to occupy Jiaozhou Bay on the southern coast of Shandong.
In October 1898, a group of Boxers attacked the Christian community of Liyuantun Village where a temple to the Jade Emperor had been converted to a Catholic church. Disputes had surrounded the church since 1869, when the temple had been granted to the Christian residents of the village. This incident marked the first time the Boxers used the slogan "Support the Qing, destroy the foreigners" (扶清灭洋) that would later characterise them. In Beijing the Boxers burned churches and foreign residences and killed suspected Chinese Christians.
Aggression toward missionaries and Christians gained the attention of foreign governments. In 1899, the French minister in Beijing helped the missionaries to obtain an edict granting official status to every order in the Roman Catholic hierarchy, enabling local priests to support their people in legal or family disputes and bypass the local officials. After the German government took over Shandong many Chinese felt that the missionaries and Christians in general were imperialists "carving the melon." A Chinese official expressed the animosity towards foreigners succinctly, "Take away your missionaries and your opium and you will be welcome."
1900: A year of disasters
In January 1900, the Empress Dowager changed her long policy of suppressing Boxers, and issued edicts in their defense, causing protests from foreign powers. In spring 1900, the Boxer movement spread rapidly north from Shandong into the countryside near Beijing. Boxers burned Christian churches, killed Chinese Christians, and intimidated Chinese officials who stood in their way. On 30 May the diplomats, led by British Minister Claude Maxwell MacDonald, requested that foreign soldiers come to Beijing to defend the legations. The Chinese government reluctantly acquiesced, and the next day more than 400 soldiers from eight countries disembarked from warships and traveled by train to Beijing from Tianjin. They set up defensive perimeters around their respective missions.
On 5 June, the railroad line to Tianjin was cut by Boxers in the countryside and Beijing was isolated. On 13 June, a Japanese diplomat was murdered by the soldiers of General Dong Fuxiang and that same day the first Boxer, dressed in his finery, was seen in the Legation Quarter. The German Minister, Clemens von Ketteler, and German soldiers captured a Boxer boy and inexplicably executed him. In response, thousands of Boxers burst into the walled city of Beijing that afternoon and burned many of the Christian churches and cathedrals in the city. American and British missionaries had taken refuge in the Methodist Mission and an attack there was repulsed by American Marines. The soldiers at the British Embassy and German Legations shot and killed several Boxers, alienating the Chinese population of the city and nudging the Qing government toward support of the Boxers. The Muslim Kansu braves and Boxers, along with other Chinese then attacked and killed Chinese Christians around the legations in revenge for foreign attacks on Chinese.
Conflicting attitudes within the Imperial Court
On June 16, the Empress Dowager summoned the Court for a mass audience and addressed the choice between using the Boxers to evict the foreigners from the city and seeking a diplomatic solution. In response to a high official who doubted the efficacy of the Boxers' magic, Cixi replied, "Perhaps their magic is not to be relied upon; but can we not rely on the hearts and minds of the people? Today China is extremely weak. We have only the people's hearts and minds to depend upon. If we cast them aside and lose the people's hearts, what can we use to sustain the country?" Both sides of the debate at court realized that popular support for the Boxers in the countryside was almost universal and that suppression would be both difficult and unpopular, especially when foreign troops were on the march.
With conflicting allegiances and priorities motivating the various forces inside Beijing, the situation in the city became increasingly confused. The foreign legations continued to be surrounded by both Imperial and Kansu forces. While Dong Fuxiang's Kansu army, now swollen by the addition of the Boxers, wished to press the siege, Ronglu's Imperial forces seem to have largely attempted to follow the Dowager Empress's decree and protect the legations. However, to satisfy the conservatives in the Chinese imperial court Ronglu's men also fired on the legations and let off firecrackers to give the impression that they, too, were attacking the foreigners. Inside the legations and out of communication with the outside world, the foreigners simply fired on any targets that presented themselves, including messengers from the Chinese court, civilians and besiegers of all persuasions.
When Cixi received an ultimatum demanding that China surrender total control over all its military and financial affairs to foreigners, she defiantly stated before the entire Grand Council, "Now they [the Powers] 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 not fight to the death?" It was at this point that Cixi began to blockade the legations with the Peking Field Force armies, which began the siege. Cixi stated that "I have always been of the opinion that the allied armies were permitted to escape too easily in 1860. Only a united effort was then necessary to have given China the victory. Today, at last, the opportunity for revenge has come," and said that millions of Chinese would join the cause of fighting the foreigners since the Manchus had provided "great benefits" to China. The event that tilted the Imperial Government irrevocably toward support of the Boxers and war with the foreign powers was the attack of foreign navies on the Dagu Forts near Tianjin, on June 17.
Siege of the Legations
The legations of the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Austria-Hungary, Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands, the United States, Russia and Japan were located in the Beijing Legation Quarter south of the Forbidden City. On receipt of the news of the attack on the Dagu Forts, the Empress Dowager immediately sent an order to the legations that the diplomats and other foreigners depart Beijing under escort of the Chinese army within 24 hours.
The next morning, the German envoy, Klemens Freiherr von Ketteler, was killed on the streets of Beijing by a Manchu captain. The other diplomats feared they also would be murdered if they left the legation quarter and they defied the Chinese order to depart Beijing. The legations were hurriedly fortified. Isolated legations, such as the Spanish and Belgian, and foreign businesses were abandoned. Most of the foreign civilians, which included a large number of missionaries and businessmen, took refuge in the British legation, the largest of the diplomatic compounds. Chinese Christians were primarily housed in the adjacent palace of Prince Su who was forced to abandon his property by the foreign soldiers.
On 21 June, Empress Dowager Cixi declared war against all foreign powers. Regional governors who commanded substantial modernized armies, such as Li Hongzhang at Canton, Yuan Shikai in Shandong, Zhang Zhidong at Wuhan, and Liu Kunyi at Nanjing, refused to join in the Imperial Court's declaration of war and withheld knowledge of it from the public in the south. Yuan Shikai used his own forces to suppress Boxers in Shandong, and Zhang entered into negotiations with the foreigners in Shanghai to keep his army out of the conflict. The neutrality of these provincial and regional governors left the majority of China out of the conflict.
The Chinese army and Boxers besieged the Legation Quarter from 20 June to 14 August 1900. A total of 473 foreign civilians, 409 soldiers from eight countries, and about 3,000 Chinese Christians took refuge there. Under the command of the British minister to China, Claude Maxwell MacDonald, the legation staff and security personnel defended the compound with small arms, three machine guns, and one old muzzle-loaded cannon, which was nicknamed the International Gun because the barrel was British, the carriage Italian, the shells Russian, and the crew American. Also under siege in Beijing was the Catholic Northern Cathedral (Beitang), defended by 43 French and Italian soldiers, 33 Catholic foreign priests and nuns, and about 3,200 Chinese Catholics. The defenders suffered heavy casualties from mines which the Chinese exploded in tunnels dug beneath the compound.
The Chinese built barricades surrounding the Legation Quarter and advanced, brick by brick, on the foreign lines, forcing the foreign soldiers to retreat a few feet at a time. This tactic was especially used to attack Prince Su’s residence, defended by Japanese and Italian soldiers and inhabited by most of the Chinese Christians. Fusillades of bullets, artillery, and firecrackers were directed against the Legations almost every night -– but did little damage. Sniper fire took its toll among the foreign soldiers. Despite their numerical advantage, the Chinese did not attempt a direct assault on the Legation Quarter although in the words of one of the besieged, "it would have been easy by a strong, swift movement on the part of the numerous Chinese troops to have annihilated the whole body of foreigners... in an hour."
On 17 July, an armistice was declared by the Chinese probably due to the realization that an allied force of 20,000 men had landed in China and retribution for the siege was at hand. The armistice endured until 13 August when, with an allied army approaching Beijing to relieve the siege, the Chinese launched their heaviest attack on the Legation Quarter. As the foreign army approached, Chinese forces melted away. The British Army relieved the legation quarter on the afternoon of 14 August. Beitang was relieved on 16 August, first by the Japanese and then, officially, by the French.
Generals at cross purposes
The Manchu General Ronglu had early on concluded that it was futile to fight all of the powers simultaneously, and declined to press home the siege. The Manchu prince Zaiyi, an anti-foreign friend of Dong Fuxiang, wanted artillery for Dong's troops to destroy the legations. Ronglu blocked the transfer of artillery to Zaiyi and Dong, preventing them from attacking. Ronglu and Prince Qing sent food to the legations, and used their Manchu Bannermen to attack the Muslim Kansu Braves of Dong Fuxiang and the Boxers who were besieging the foreigners. Ronglu also deliberately hid an Imperial Decree from General Nie Shicheng. The Decree ordered him to stop fighting the Boxers because of the foreign invasion, and also because the population was suffering. Because parts of the Railway were saved under Ronglu's orders, the foreign invasion army was able to transport itself into China quickly. General Nie committed thousands of troops against the Boxers instead of against the foreigners.
Massacre of missionaries and Chinese Christians
Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox missionaries and their Chinese converts were massacred throughout northern China, some by Boxers and others by government troops and authorities. By the summer's end, more foreigners and as many as 2,000 Chinese Christians had been put to death in Shanxi. Journalist and historical writer Nat Brandt has called the massacre of Christians "the greatest single tragedy in the history of Christian evangelicalism." A total of 136 Protestant missionaries and 53 children were killed, as well as 47 Catholic priests and nuns. Thirty thousand Chinese Catholics, 2,000 Chinese Protestants, and 200 to 400 of the 700 Russian Orthodox Christians in Beijing were estimated to have been killed. The Boxers went on to murder Christians across 26 prefectures.
Evacuation of Imperial Court from Beijing to Xi'an
In the early hours of 15 August, just as the Foreign Legations were being relieved, the Empress Dowager, dressed in the padded blue cotton of a farm woman, the Emperor Guangxu, and a small retinue climbed into three wooden ox carts and escaped from the city covered with rough blankets. Legend has it that the Empress Dowager then ordered that the Emperor's favorite, Consort Zhen, be thrown down a well in the Forbidden City. The journey was made all the more arduous by the lack of preparation, but the Empress Dowager insisted this was not a retreat, rather a "tour of inspection." After weeks of travel, the party arrived in Xi'an in Shaanxi province, behind protective mountain passes where the foreigners could not reach, deep in Chinese Muslim territory and protected by the Kansu Braves. The foreigners were unable to pursue, and had no such orders to do so, so they decided no action should be taken.
Aftermath
Occupation, looting, and atrocities
Beijing, Tianjin, and other cities in northern China were occupied for more than one year by the international expeditionary forces. The German force arrived too late to take part in the fighting, but undertook several punitive expeditions to the countryside against the Boxers. Although atrocities by foreign troops were common, German troops in particular were criticized for their enthusiasm in carrying out Kaiser Wilhelm II’s wishes. On 27 July 1900, Wilhelm II had spoken during departure ceremonies for the German contingent to the relief force in China, an impromptu, but intemperate reference to the Hun invaders of continental Europe that would later be resurrected by British propaganda to mock Germany during World War I and World War II:
" Just as a thousand years ago the Huns under Attila made a name for themselves, one that even today makes them seem mighty in history and legend, may the name ‘German’ be affirmed by you in such a way in China that no Chinese will ever again dare to look cross-eyed at a German."
The intermediate aftermath of the siege in Beijing was what one newspaper called "an orgy of looting" by soldiers, civilians, and missionaries.
It was reported that Japanese troops were astonished at other Alliance troops raping civilians; Japanese officers had brought along Japanese prostitutes to stop their troops from raping Chinese civilians. The Daily Telegraph journalist E. J. Dillon stated that he witnessed the mutilated corpses of Chinese women who were raped and killed by the Alliance troops, and that thousands of Chinese women committed suicide to avoid that fate. A foreign journalist, George Lynch, said “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.”
Reparations
After the capture of Peking by the foreign armies, some of the Dowager Empress's advisers advocated that the war be carried on, but the Dowager decided that the terms were generous enough for her to acquiesce as long as her continued reign was assured after the war and that China would not be forced to cede any territory.
On 7 September 1901, the Qing court agreed to sign the "Boxer Protocol," which ordered the execution of officials who were found guilty of the slaughter of foreigners and fined China 450 million taels of fine silver (1 tael = 1.2 troy ounces). The reparations were to be paid over 39 years at 4 percent interest per year and would ultimately total 982 million taels. The sum of reparations had been determined by the Chinese population (roughly 450 million in 1900), so that each Chinese person would pay one tael. When payments ceased in 1939, China had paid 668 million taels of silver, equivalent to $61 billion in 2010 purchasing power. By terms of the agreement, forts protecting Beijing were to be destroyed, Boxer and Chinese officials involved in the uprising were to be punished, foreign legations were permitted to station troops in Beijing for defense, and China was prohibited from importing arms for two years.
US Secretary of State John Hay suggested that the US $30 million plus Boxer indemnity paid to the US be reduced to US$10.8 million and be used as scholarships for Chinese students to study in the US. Using this fund, the Tsinghua College was established in Beijing, on 29 April 1911. It was first a preparatory school for students to be sent by the government to study in the United States.
Long-term consequences
In October 1900 Russia was busy occupying the provinces of Manchuria, a move which threatened Anglo-American hopes of maintaining what remained of China's territorial integrity and which ultimately led to the Russo-Japanese War.
Empress Dowager Cixi reluctantly implemented some reforms: the imperial examination system for government service was eliminated; as a result, the classical system of education was replaced with a European liberal system that led to a university degree.
The effect on China was a weakened dynasty, which was temporarily sustained by the Europeans. Behind the international conflict, ideological differences intensified between northern-Chinese anti-foreign royalists and southern-Chinese anti-Qing revolutionists. This scenario in the last years of the Qing dynasty gradually escalated to a chaotic warlord era in which the most powerful northern warlords were hostile towards the revolutionaries in the south who overthrew the Qing monarchy in 1911. The rivalry was not fully resolved until the northern warlords were defeated in the Northern Expedition of 1927.