Boxer Rebellion

Background

Origin of the Boxers

The Righteous and Harmonious Fists arose in the inland sections of the northern coastal province of Shandong, a region which had long been plagued by social unrest, religious sects, and martial societies. American Christian missionaries were probably the first people who referred to the well-trained, athletic young men as the "Boxers", because of the martial arts which they practised and the weapons training which they underwent. Their primary practice was a type of spiritual possession which involved the whirling of swords, violent prostrations, and incantations to deities.

The opportunities to fight against Western encroachment were especially attractive to unemployed village men, many of whom were teenagers. The tradition of possession and invulnerability went back several hundred years but took on special meaning against the powerful new weapons of the West. The Boxers, armed with rifles and swords, claimed supernatural invulnerability against cannons, rifle shots, and knife attacks. The Boxer groups popularly claimed that millions of soldiers would descend out of heaven to assist them in purifying China of foreign oppression. Members demonstrated their claimed invulnerability to new initiates by firing guns loaded with blank rounds at one another.

In 1895, despite ambivalence toward their heterodox practices, Yuxian, a Manchu who was the then prefect of Cao Prefecture and would later become provincial governor, cooperated with the Big Swords Society, whose original purpose was to fight bandits. The German Catholic missionaries of the Society of the Divine Word had built up their presence in the area, partially by taking in a significant portion of converts who were "in need of protection from the law". On one occasion in 1895, a large bandit gang defeated by the Big Swords Society claimed to be Catholics to avoid prosecution. "The line between Christians and bandits became increasingly indistinct", remarks historian Paul Cohen.

Some missionaries such as Georg Maria Stenz also used their privileges to intervene in lawsuits. The Big Swords responded by attacking Catholic properties and burning them. As a result of diplomatic pressure in the capital, Yuxian executed several Big Sword leaders but did not punish anyone else. More martial secret societies started emerging after this.

The early years saw a variety of village activities, not a broad movement with a united purpose. Martial folk-religious societies such as the Baguadao ('Eight Trigrams') prepared the way for the Boxers. Like the Red Boxing school or the Plum Flower tradition, the Boxers of Shandong were more concerned with traditional social and moral values, such as filial piety, than with foreign influences. One leader, Zhu Hongdeng (Red Lantern Zhu), started as a wandering healer, specialising in skin ulcers, and gained wide respect by refusing payment for his treatments. Zhu claimed descent from Ming dynasty emperors, since his surname was the surname of the Ming imperial family. He announced that his goal was to "Revive the Qing and destroy the foreigners" (扶清滅洋 fu Qing mie yang).

Causes

The movement had multiple causes, both domestic and international. Escalating tensions caused Chinese to turn against "foreign devils" who engaged in the Scramble for China in the late 19th century. The Western success at controlling China, growing anti-imperialist sentiment, and extreme weather conditions sparked the movement. A drought followed by floods in Shandong province in 1897–98 forced farmers to flee to cities and seek food.

The Sanmen Bay Affair greatly influenced the Boxer Rebellion. It was the only time where the Qing Dynasty refused to concede to any European colonial power. After this event, the government shifted to supporting the Boxer uprising against foreign invaders and the proliferation of Christianity within China.

A major source of discontent in northern China was missionary activity. The Boxers opposed German missionaries in Shandong and in the German concession in Qingdao. The Treaty of Tientsin and the Convention of Peking, signed in 1860 after the Second Opium War, had granted foreign missionaries the freedom to preach anywhere in China and to buy land on which to build churches. There was strong public indignation over the dispossession of Chinese temples that were replaced by Catholic churches which were viewed as deliberately anti–feng shui. Some Chinese linked this to the drought, contending that the drought had been influenced by Christian church placement and design violating principles of feng shui, as well as influenced Chinese Christians by not worshipping local deities.

A further cause of discontent among Chinese people was the destruction of Chinese burial sites to make way for German railroads and telegraph lines. In response to Chinese protests against German railroads, Germans shot the protestors.

Economic conditions in Shandong also contributed to rebellion. Northern Shandong's economy focused significantly on cotton production and was hampered by the importation of foreign cotton. Traffic along the Grand Canal was also decreasing, further eroding the economy. The area had also experienced periods of drought and flood.

A major precipitating incident was anger at German Catholic priest Father Stenz, who had allegedly serially raped Chinese women in Juye County, Shandong. In a November 1897 attack known as the Juye Incident, Chinese rebels attempted to kill Stenz in his missionary quarters, but failed to find him and killed two other missionaries. The German Navy's East Asia Squadron was dispatched to occupy Jiaozhou Bay on the southern coast of the Shandong peninsula.In December 1897, Wilhelm declared his intent to seize territory in China, which triggered a "scramble for concessions" by which Britain, France, Russia and Japan also secured their own sphere of influence in China. Germany gained exclusive control of developmental loans, mining, and railway ownership in Shandong province. Russia gained influence of all territory north of the Great Wall, plus the previous tax exemption for trade in Mongolia and Xinjiang, economic powers similar to Germany's over Fengtian, Jilin and Heilongjiang. France gained influence of Yunnan, most of Guangxi and Guangdong, Japan over Fujian. Britain gained influence of the whole Yangtze valley (defined as all provinces adjoining the Yangtze, as well as Henan and Zhejiang), parts of Guangdong and Guangxi provinces and part of Tibet. Only Italy's request for Zhejiang was declined by the Chinese government. These do not include the lease and concession territories where the foreign powers had full authority. The Russian government militarily occupied their zone, imposed their law and schools, seized mining and logging privileges, settled their citizens, and even established their municipal administration on several cities.

Qing forces

The military of the Qing dynasty had been dealt a severe blow by the First Sino-Japanese War and this had prompted military reform that was still in its early stages when the Boxer rebellion occurred and they were expected to fight. The bulk of the fighting was conducted by the forces already around Zhili with troops from other provinces only arriving after the main fighting had ended.

The failure of the Qing forces to withstand the Allied forces was not surprising given the limited time for reform and the fact that the best troops of China were not committed to the fight, remaining instead in Huguang and Shandong. The officer corps was particularly deficient; many lacked basic knowledge of strategy and tactics, and even those with training had not actively commanded troops in the field. In addition, the regular soldiers were noted for their poor marksmanship and inaccuracy, while cavalry was ill-organised and was not used to its full extent. Tactically, the Chinese still retained their belief in the superiority of defence, often withdrawing as soon as they were flanked, a tendency attributable to their lack of combat experience and training as well as a lack of initiative from commanders who would rather retreat than counterattack. However, accusations of cowardice were minimal; this was a marked improvement from the Sino-Japanese War of 1894–1895, as Chinese troops did not flee en masse as before. If led by courageous officers, the troops would often fight to the death as occurred under Nie Shicheng and Ma Yukun.

On the other hand, Chinese artillery was well-regarded, and caused far more casualties than the infantry at Tientsin, proving themselves superior to Allied artillery in counter-battery fire. The infantry, for their part, were commended for their good usage of cover and concealment in addition to their tenacity in resistance.

Boxer War

Intensifying crisis

In December 1899, the Qing court responded to foreign pressure by removing Yuxian as governor of Shandong and replacing him with Yuan Shikai, who sought to suppress the movement. Yuxian, now governor of Shanxi following his removal in Shandong, continued to support the movement.

In January 1900, with a majority of conservatives in the imperial court, Cixi changed her position on the Boxers and issued edicts in their defence, causing protests from foreign powers. Cixi urged provincial authorities to support the Boxers, although few did so. In the spring of 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. American Minister Edwin H. Conger cabled Washington, "the whole country is swarming with hungry, discontented, hopeless idlers".

In April 1900, foreign warships took up stations in Bohai Bay as a show of force.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 a multinational force of 435 navy troops from eight countries debarked from warships and travelled by train from the Taku Forts to Beijing. They set up defensive perimeters around their respective missions.

On 5 June 1900, the railway line to Tianjin was cut by Boxers in the countryside, and Beijing was isolated. On 11 June, at Yongdingmen, the secretary of the Japanese legation, Sugiyama Akira, was attacked and killed by the forces of General Dong Fuxiang, who were guarding the southern part of the Beijing walled city. Armed with Mauser rifles but wearing traditional uniforms, Dong's troops had threatened the foreign legations in the fall of 1898 soon after arriving in Beijing, so much that United States Marines had been called to Beijing to guard the legations.

Wilhelm was so alarmed by the Chinese Muslim troops that he requested Ottoman caliph Abdul Hamid II to find a way to stop the Muslim troops from fighting. Abdul Hamid agreed to the Kaiser's request and sent Enver Pasha (not to be confused with the later Young Turk leader) to China in 1901, but the rebellion was over by that time.

Seymour Expedition

As the situation grew more violent, the Eight Powers authorities at Dagu dispatched a second multinational force to Beijing on 10 June 1900. This force of 2,000 sailors and marines was under the command of Vice Admiral Edward Hobart Seymour, the largest contingent being British. The force moved by train from Dagu to Tianjin with the agreement of the Chinese government, but the railway had been severed between Tianjin and Beijing. Seymour resolved to continue forward by rail to the break and repair the railway, or progress on foot from there, if necessary, as it was only 120 km from Tianjin to Beijing. The court then replaced Prince Qing at the Zongli Yamen with Manchu Prince Duan, a member of the imperial Aisin Gioro clan (foreigners called him a "Blood Royal"), who was anti-foreigner and pro-Boxer. He soon ordered the Imperial army to attack the foreign forces. Confused by conflicting orders from Beijing, General Nie Shicheng let Seymour's army pass by in their trains.

After leaving Tianjin, the force quickly reached Langfang, but the railway was destroyed there. Seymour's engineers tried to repair the line, but the force found itself surrounded, as the railway in both behind directions was destroyed. They were attacked from all sides by Chinese irregulars and imperial troops. Five thousand of Dong Fuxiang's Gansu Braves and an unknown number of Boxers won a costly but major victory over Seymour's troops at the Battle of Langfang on 18 June. The Seymour force could not locate the Chinese artillery, which was raining shells upon their positions. Chinese troops employed mining, engineering, flooding, and simultaneous attacks. The Chinese also employed pincer movements, ambushes, and sniping with some success.

On 18 June, Seymour learned of attacks on the Legation Quarter in Beijing, and decided to continue advancing, this time along the Beihe River, toward Tongzhou, 25 km (16 mi) from Beijing. By 19 June, the force was halted by progressively stiffening resistance and started to retreat southward along the river with over 200 wounded. The force was now very low on food, ammunition, and medical supplies. They happened upon The Great Hsi-Ku Arsenal, a hidden Qing munitions cache of which the Eight Powers had had no knowledge until then.

There they dug in and awaited rescue. A Chinese servant slipped through the Boxer and Imperial lines, reached Tianjin, and informed the Eight Powers of Seymour's predicament. His force was surrounded by Imperial troops and Boxers, attacked nearly around the clock, and at the point of being overrun. The Eight Powers sent a relief column from Tianjin of 1,800 men (900 Russian troops from Port Arthur, 500 British seamen, and other assorted troops). On 25 June the relief column reached Seymour. The Seymour force destroyed the Arsenal: they spiked the captured field guns and set fire to any munitions that they could not take (an estimated £3 million worth). The Seymour force and the relief column marched back to Tientsin, unopposed, on 26 June. Seymour's casualties during the expedition were 62 killed and 228 wounded.

Conflict within the Qing imperial court

Meanwhile, in Beijing, on 16 June, Empress Dowager Cixi summoned the imperial 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, Cixi replied that both sides of the debate at the imperial court realised 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.

Siege of the Beijing legations

On 15 June, Qing imperial forces deployed electric naval mines in the Beihe River to prevent the Eight-Nation Alliance from sending ships to attack. With a difficult military situation in Tianjin and a total breakdown of communications between Tianjin and Beijing, the allied nations took steps to reinforce their military presence significantly. On 17 June, Allied forces under Russian Admiral Yevgeni Alekseyev took the Dagu Forts commanding the approaches to Tianjin, and from there brought increasing numbers of troops on shore. When Cixi received an ultimatum that same day 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 don't we fight to the death?" It was at this point that Cixi began to blockade the legations with the armies of the Peking Field Force, which began the siege. Cixi stated that "I have always been of the opinion, that the allied armies had been 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" on China. On receipt of the news of the attack on the Dagu Forts on 19 June, Empress Dowager Cixi 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, diplomats from the besieged legations met to discuss the Empress's offer. The majority quickly agreed that they could not trust the Chinese army. Fearing that they would be killed, they agreed to refuse the Empress's demand. The German Imperial Envoy, Baron Clemens von Ketteler, was infuriated with the actions of the Chinese army troops and determined to take his complaints to the royal court. Against the advice of the fellow foreigners, the baron left the legations with a single aide and a team of porters to carry his sedan chair. On his way to the palace, von Ketteler was killed on the streets of Beijing by a Manchu captain. His aide managed to escape the attack and carried word of the baron's death back to the diplomatic compound. At this news, the other diplomats feared they also would be murdered if they left the legation quarter and they chose to continue to defy the Chinese order to depart Beijing. The legations were hurriedly fortified. 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 (Fu) of Prince Su, who was forced to abandon his property by the foreign soldiers.

Infighting among officials and commanders

General Ronglu concluded that it was futile to fight all of the powers simultaneously and declined to press home the siege. Zaiyi 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 forced Dong Fuxiang and his troops to pull back from completing the siege and destroying the legations, thereby saving the foreigners and making diplomatic concessions. Ronglu and Prince Qing sent food to the legations and used their bannermen to attack the Gansu Braves of Dong Fuxiang and the Boxers who were besieging the foreigners. They issued edicts ordering the foreigners to be protected, but the Gansu warriors ignored it, and fought against bannermen who tried to force them away from the legations. The Boxers also took commands from Dong Fuxiang. Ronglu also deliberately hid an Imperial Decree from Nie Shicheng. The Decree ordered him to stop fighting the Boxers because of the foreign invasion, and also because the population was suffering. Due to Ronglu's actions, Nie continued to fight the Boxers and killed many of them even as the foreign troops were making their way into China. Ronglu also ordered Nie to protect foreigners and save the railway from the Boxers. Because parts of the railway were saved under Ronglu's orders, the foreign invasion army was able to transport itself into China quickly. Nie committed thousands of troops against the Boxers instead of against the foreigners, but was already outnumbered by the Allies by 4,000 men. He was blamed for attacking the Boxers, and decided to sacrifice his life at Tietsin by walking into the range of Allied guns.

Xu Jingcheng, who had served as the envoy to many of the same states under siege in the Legation Quarter, argued that "the evasion of extraterritorial rights and the killing of foreign diplomats are unprecedented in China and abroad". Xu and five other officials urged Empress Dowager Cixi to order the repression of Boxers, the execution of their leaders, and a diplomatic settlement with foreign armies. The Empress Dowager was outraged, and sentenced Xu and the five others to death for "willfully and absurdly petitioning the imperial court" and "building subversive thought". They were executed on 28 July 1900 and their severed heads placed on display at Caishikou Execution Grounds in Beijing.

Reflecting this vacillation, some Chinese soldiers were quite liberally firing at foreigners under siege from its very onset. Cixi did not personally order imperial troops to conduct a siege, and on the contrary had ordered them to protect the foreigners in the legations. Prince Duan led the Boxers to loot his enemies within the imperial court and the foreigners, although imperial authorities expelled Boxers after they were let into the city and went on a looting rampage against both the foreign and the Qing imperial forces. Older Boxers were sent outside Beijing to halt the approaching foreign armies, while younger men were absorbed into the Muslim Gansu army.

Gaselee Expedition

Foreign navies started building up their presence along the northern China coast from the end of April 1900. Several international forces were sent to the capital, with varying success, and the Chinese forces were ultimately defeated by the Alliance. Independently, the Netherlands dispatched three cruisers in July to protect its citizens in Shanghai.

British Lieutenant-General Alfred Gaselee acted as the commanding officer of the Eight-Nation Alliance, which eventually numbered 55,000. Japanese forces, led by Fukushima Yasumasa and Yamaguchi Motomi and numbering over 20,840 men, made up the majority of the expeditionary force. French forces in the campaign, led by general Henri-Nicolas Frey, consisted mostly of inexperienced Vietnamese and Cambodian conscripts from French Indochina. The "First Chinese Regiment" (Weihaiwei Regiment) which was praised for its performance, consisted of Chinese collaborators serving in the British military. Notable events included the seizure of the Dagu Forts commanding the approaches to Tianjin and the boarding and capture of four Chinese destroyers by British Commander Roger Keyes. Among the foreigners besieged in Tianjin was a young American mining engineer named Herbert Hoover, who would go on to become the 31st President of the United States.

The international force captured Tianjin on 14 July. The international force suffered its heaviest casualties of the Boxer Rebellion in the Battle of Tientsin. With Tianjin as a base, the international force marched from Tianjin to Beijing (about 120 km (75 mi)), with 20,000 allied troops. On 4 August, there were approximately 70,000 Qing imperial troops and anywhere from 50,000 to 100,000 Boxers along the way. The allies only encountered minor resistance, fighting battles at Beicang and Yangcun. At Yangcun, Russian general Nikolai Linevich led the 14th Infantry Regiment of the US and British troops in the assault. The weather was a major obstacle. Conditions were extremely humid with temperatures sometimes reaching 42 °C (108 °F). These high temperatures and insects plagued the Allies. Soldiers became dehydrated and horses died. Chinese villagers killed Allied troops who searched for wells.

The heat killed Allied soldiers, who foamed at the mouth. The tactics along the way were gruesome on either side. Allied soldiers beheaded already dead Chinese corpses, bayoneted or beheaded live Chinese civilians, and raped Chinese girls and women. Cossacks were reported to have killed Chinese civilians almost automatically and Japanese kicked a Chinese soldier to death. The Chinese responded to the Alliance's atrocities with similar acts of violence and cruelty, especially towards captured Russians. Lieutenant Smedley Butler saw the remains of two Japanese soldiers nailed to a wall, who had their tongues cut off and their eyes gouged. Lieutenant Butler was wounded during the expedition in the leg and chest, later receiving the Brevet Medal in recognition for his actions.

Qing court flight to Xi'an

As the foreign armies reached Beijing, the Qing court fled to Xi'an, with Cixi disguised as a Buddhist nun. 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, beyond protective mountain passes where the foreigners could not reach, deep in Chinese Muslim territory and protected by the Gansu Braves. The foreigners had no orders to pursue Cixi, so they decided to stay put.

Russian invasion of Manchuria

The Russian Empire and the Qing dynasty had maintained a long peace, starting with the Treaty of Nerchinsk in 1689, but Russian forces took advantage of Chinese defeats to impose the Aigun Treaty of 1858 and the Treaty of Peking of 1860 which ceded formerly Chinese territory in Manchuria to Russia, much of which is held by Russia to the present day (Primorye). The Russians aimed for control over the Amur River for navigation, and the all-weather ports of Dairen and Port Arthur in the Liaodong peninsula. The rise of Japan as an Asian power provoked Russia's anxiety, especially in light of expanding Japanese influence in Korea. Following Japan's victory in the First Sino-Japanese War of 1895, the Triple Intervention of Russia, Germany and France forced Japan to return the territory won in Liaodong, leading to a de facto Sino-Russian alliance.

Local Chinese in Manchuria were incensed at these Russian advances and began to harass Russians and Russian institutions, such as the Chinese Eastern Railway, which was guarded by Russian troops under Pavel Mishchenko. In June 1900, the Chinese bombarded the town of Blagoveshchensk on the Russian side of the Amur. The Russian government, at the insistence of war minister Aleksey Kuropatkin, used the pretext of Boxer activity to move some 200,000 troops led by Paul von Rennenkampf into the area to crush the Boxers. The Chinese used arson to destroy a bridge carrying a railway and a barracks on 27 July. The Boxers attacked the Chinese Eastern Railway and burned the Yantai mines.

Massacre of missionaries and Chinese Christians

A total of 136 Protestant missionaries, 53 children, 47 Catholic priests and nuns, 30,000 Chinese Catholics, 2,000 Chinese Protestants, and 200–400 of the 700 Russian Orthodox Christians in Beijing are estimated to have been killed during the uprising. The Protestant dead were collectively termed the China Martyrs of 1900.

Orthodox, Protestant, and Catholic missionaries and their Chinese parishioners were massacred throughout northern China, some by Boxers and others by government troops and authorities. After the declaration of war on Western powers in June 1900, Yuxian, who had been named governor of Shanxi in March of that year, implemented a brutal anti-foreign and anti-Christian policy. On 9 July, reports circulated that he had executed forty-four foreigners (including women and children) from missionary families whom he had invited to the provincial capital Taiyuan under the promise to protect them. Although the purported eyewitness accounts have recently been questioned as improbable, this event became a notorious symbol of Chinese anger, known as the Taiyuan massacre.

The England-based Baptist Missionary Society opened its mission in Shanxi in 1877. In 1900, all its missionaries there were killed, along with all 120 converts. By the summer's end, more foreigners and as many as 2,000 Chinese Christians had been put to death in the province. Journalist and historical writer Nat Brandt has called the massacre of Christians in Shanxi "the greatest single tragedy in the history of Christian evangelicalism".

Some 222 Russian–Chinese martyrs, including Chi Sung as St. Metrophanes, were locally canonised as New Martyrs on 22 April 1902, after Archimandrite Innocent (Fugurovsky), head of the Russian Orthodox Mission in China, solicited the Most Holy Synod to perpetuate their memory. This was the first local canonisation for more than two centuries.

Aftermath

Allied occupation and atrocities

The Eight Nation Alliance occupied Zhili province while Russia occupied Manchuria, but the rest of China was not occupied due to the actions of several Han governors who formed the Mutual Protection of Southeast China that refused to obey the declaration of war and kept their armies and provinces out of the war. Zhang Zhidong told Everard Fraser, the Hankou-based British consul general, that he despised Manchus so that the Eight Nation Alliance would not occupy provinces under the Mutual Defense Pact.

Beijing, Tianjin and Zhili province were occupied for more than one year by the international expeditionary force under the command of German Field Marshal Alfred von Waldersee, who had initially been appointed commander of the Eight-Nation Alliance during the rebellion but did not arrive in China until after most of the fighting had ended. The Americans and British paid General Yuan Shikai and his army (the Right Division) to help the Eight Nation Alliance suppress the Boxers. Yuan Shikai's forces killed tens of thousands of people in their anti-Boxer campaign in Zhili province and Shandong after the Alliance captured Beijing. The majority of the hundreds of thousands of people living in inner Beijing during the Qing were Manchus and Mongol bannermen from the Eight Banners after they were moved there in 1644, when Han Chinese were expelled. Sawara Tokusuke, a Japanese journalist, wrote in "Miscellaneous Notes about the Boxers" about the rapes of Manchu and Mongol banner girls. He alleged that soldiers of the Eight-Nation Alliance raped a large number of women in Peking, including all seven daughters of Viceroy Yulu of the Hitara clan. Likewise, a daughter and a wife of Mongol banner noble Chongqi of the Alute clan were allegedly gang-raped by soldiers of the Eight-Nation Alliance. Chongqi killed himself on 26 August 1900, and some other relatives, including his son, Baochu, did likewise shortly afterward.

During attacks on suspected Boxer areas from September 1900 to March 1901, European and American forces engaged in tactics which included public decapitations of Chinese with suspected Boxer sympathies, systematic looting, routine shooting of farm animals and crop destruction, destruction of religious buildings and public buildings, burning of religious texts, and widespread rape of Chinese women and girls.

Contemporary British and American observers levelled their greatest criticism at German, Russian, and Japanese troops for their ruthlessness and willingness to execute Chinese of all ages and backgrounds, sometimes burning villages and killing their entire populations. The German force arrived too late to take part in the fighting but undertook punitive expeditions to villages in the countryside. According to missionary Arthur Henderson Smith, in addition to burning and looting, Germans "cut off the heads of many Chinese within their jurisdiction, many of them for absolutely trivial offenses". US Army Lieutenant C. D. Rhodes reported that German and French soldiers set fire to buildings where innocent peasants were sheltering and would shoot and bayonet peasants who fled the burning buildings. According to Australian soldiers, Germans extorted ransom payments from villages in exchange for not torching their homes and crops. British journalist George Lynch wrote that German and Italian soldiers engaged in a practice of raping Chinese women and girls before burning their villages. According to Lynch, German soldiers would attempt to cover up these atrocities by throwing rape victims into wells as staged suicides. 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 civilisation of ours is merely a veneer over savagery".

Indemnity

After the capture of Peking by the foreign armies, some of Cixi's advisers advocated that the war be carried on, arguing that China could have defeated the foreigners as it was disloyal and traitorous people within China who allowed Beijing and Tianjin to be captured by the Allies, and that the interior of China was impenetrable. They also recommended that Dong Fuxiang continue fighting. The Empress Dowager Cixi was practical however, and decided that the terms were generous enough for her to acquiesce when she was assured of her continued reign after the war and that China would not be forced to cede any territory.

On 7 September 1901, the Qing imperial court agreed to sign the Boxer Protocol, also known as Peace Agreement between the Eight-Nation Alliance and China. The protocol ordered the execution of 10 high-ranking officials linked to the outbreak and other officials who were found guilty for the slaughter of foreigners in China. Alfons Mumm, Ernest Satow, and Komura Jutaro signed on behalf of Germany, Britain, and Japan, respectively.

China was fined war reparations of 450,000,000 taels of fine silver (approx. 540,000,000 troy ounces (17,000 t)) for the loss that it caused. The reparation was to be paid by 1940, within 39 years, and would be 982,238,150 taels with interest (4 per cent per year) included. The existing tariff increased from 3.18 to 5 per cent, and formerly duty-free merchandise was newly taxed, to help meet these indemnity demands. The sum of reparations was estimated by the Chinese population size (roughly 450 million in 1900) at one tael per person. Chinese customs income and salt taxes guaranteed the reparation. China paid 668,661,220 taels of silver from 1901 to 1939 – equivalent in 2010 to approx. US$61 billion on a purchasing-power-parity basis.

A large portion of the reparations paid to the United States was diverted to pay for the education of Chinese students in US universities under the Boxer Indemnity Scholarship Program. To prepare the students chosen for this program, an institute was established to teach the English language and to serve as a preparatory school. When the first of these students returned to China, they undertook the teaching of subsequent students; from this institute was born Tsinghua University.

The US China Inland Mission lost more members than any other missionary agency: 58 adults and 21 children were killed. However, in 1901, when the allied nations were demanding compensation from the Chinese government, Hudson Taylor refused to accept payment for loss of property or life, to demonstrate the meekness and gentleness of Christ to the Chinese.

Long-term consequences

The occupation of Beijing by foreign powers and the failure of the rebellion further eroded support for the Qing state. Support for reforms decreased, while support for revolution increased. In the ten years after the Boxer Rebellion, uprisings in China increased, particularly in the south. Support grew for the Tongmenghui, an alliance of anti-Qing groups which later became the Kuomintang.

Cixi was returned to Beijing, the foreign powers believing that maintaining the Qing government was the best way to control China. The Qing state made further efforts to reform. It abolished the imperial examinations in 1905 and sought to gradually introduce consultative assemblies. Along with the formation of new military and police organisations, the reforms also simplified central bureaucracy and made a start at revamping taxation policies. These efforts failed to maintain the Qing dynasty, which was overthrown in the 1911 Xinhai Revolution.

In October 1900, Russia occupied the provinces of Manchuria, a move that threatened Anglo-American hopes of maintaining the country's openness to commerce under the Open Door Policy.

The historian Walter LaFeber has argued that President William McKinley's decision to send 5,000 American troops to quell the rebellion marks "the origins of modern presidential war powers":

McKinley took a historic step in creating a new, 20th century presidential power. He dispatched the five thousand troops without consulting Congress, let alone obtaining a declaration of war, to fight the Boxers who were supported by the Chinese government ... Presidents had previously used such force against non-governmental groups that threatened U.S. interests and citizens. It was now used, however, against recognised governments, and without obeying the Constitution's provisions about who was to declare war.

Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., concurred and wrote:

The intervention in China marked the start of a crucial shift in the presidential employment of armed force overseas. In the 19th century, military force committed without congressional authorisation had been typically used against nongovernmental organisations. Now it was beginning to be used against sovereign states, and, in the case of Theodore Roosevelt, with less consultation than ever.

Analysis of the Boxers

In the short-term, the Boxer Rebellion prompted many Chinese and Westerners to take a pessimistic view of Christian/non-Christian relations and Chinese/European relations. Even among Chinese who were not sympathetic to the movement, many believed that the Catholic presence and proselytizing in China had provoked the retaliation to some degree.

From the beginning, views differed as to whether the Boxers were better seen as anti-imperialist, patriotic and proto-nationalist, or as backward, irrational, and futile opponents of what was inevitable change. The historian Joseph W. Esherick comments that "confusion about the Boxer Uprising is not simply a matter of popular misconceptions" since "there is no major incident in China's modern history on which the range of professional interpretation is as great".

The Boxers drew condemnation from those who wanted to modernise China according to a Western model of civilisation. Sun Yat-sen, considered the founding father of modern China, at the time worked to overthrow the Qing but believed that government spread rumours that "caused confusion among the populace" and stirred up the Boxer Movement. He delivered "scathing criticism" of the Boxers' "anti-foreignism and obscurantism". Sun praised the Boxers for their "spirit of resistance" but called them "bandits". Students studying in Japan were ambivalent. Some stated that while the uprising originated from the ignorant and stubborn people, their beliefs were brave and righteous and could be transformed into a force for independence. Reformers like Liang Qichao criticized the Boxers as superstitious and ignorant; this remained the dominant narrative on the rebellion among Chinese intellectuals until the 1920s and 1930s.

After the fall of the Qing dynasty in 1911, nationalistic Chinese became more sympathetic to the Boxers. In 1918, Sun praised their fighting spirit and said that the Boxers were courageous and fearless in fighting to the death against the Alliance armies, specifically the Battle of Yangcun. Chinese liberals such as Hu Shih, who called on China to modernise, still condemned the Boxers for their irrationality and barbarity. The leader of the New Culture Movement, Chen Duxiu, forgave the "barbarism of the Boxer ... given the crime foreigners committed in China", and contended that it was those "subservient to the foreigners" that truly "deserved our resentment".

Terminology

The name "Boxer Rebellion", concludes Joseph W. Esherick, a contemporary historian, is truly a "misnomer", for the Boxers "never rebelled against the Manchu rulers of China and their Qing dynasty" and the "most common Boxer slogan, throughout the history of the movement, was 'support the Qing, destroy the Foreign,' where 'foreign' clearly meant the foreign religion, Christianity, and its Chinese converts as much as the foreigners themselves". He adds that only after the movement was suppressed by the Allied Intervention did the foreign powers and influential Chinese officials both realise that the Qing would have to remain as the government of China to maintain order and collect taxes to pay the indemnity. Therefore, to save face for the Empress Dowager and the members of the imperial court, all argued that the Boxers were rebels and that the only support which the Boxers received from the imperial court came from a few Manchu princes. Esherick concludes that the origin of the term "rebellion" was "purely political and opportunistic", but it has had a remarkable staying power, particularly in popular accounts.

On 6 June 1900, The Times of London used the term "rebellion" in quotation marks, presumably to indicate its view that the rising was actually instigated by Empress Dowager Cixi. The historian Lanxin Xiang refers to the uprising as the "so called 'Boxer Rebellion'", and he also states that "while peasant rebellion was nothing new in Chinese history, a war against the world's most powerful states was." Other recent Western works refer to the uprising as the "Boxer Movement", the "Boxer War" or the Yihetuan Movement, while Chinese studies refer to it as the "Yihetuan Movement" (义和团运动). In his discussion of the general and legal implications of the terminology involved, the German scholar Thoralf Klein notes that all of the terms, including the Chinese terms, are "posthumous interpretations of the conflict". He argues that each term, whether it be "uprising", "rebellion" or "movement" implies a different definition of the conflict. Even the term "Boxer War", which has frequently been used by scholars in the West, raises questions. Neither side made a formal declaration of war. The imperial edicts on June 21 said that hostilities had begun and directed the regular Chinese army to join the Boxers against the Allied armies. This was a de facto declaration of war. The Allied troops behaved like soldiers who were mounting a punitive expedition in colonial style, rather than soldiers who were waging a declared war with legal constraints. The Allies took advantage of the fact that China had not signed "The Laws and Customs of War on Land", a key document signed at the 1899 Hague Peace Conference. They argued that China had violated provisions that they themselves ignored.

Media portrayal

By 1900, many new forms of media had matured, including illustrated newspapers and magazines, postcards, broadsides, and advertisements, all of which presented images of the Boxers and the invading armies. The rebellion was covered in the foreign illustrated press by artists and photographers. Paintings and prints were also published including Japanese woodblocks. In the following decades, the Boxers were a constant subject of comment. A sampling includes:

Liu E, The Travels of Lao Can sympathetically shows an honest official trying to carry out reforms and depicts the Boxers as sectarian rebels.

Wu Jianren, Sea of Regret deals with the disintegration of the relationship of a young couple with the Boxer Rebellion in its background.

Lin Yutang, Moment in Peking covers events in China from 1900 to 1938, including the Boxer Rebellion.

The 1963 film 55 Days at Peking directed by Nicholas Ray and starring Charlton Heston, Ava Gardner, and David Niven.

In 1976, Hong Kong's Shaw Brothers studio produced the film Boxer Rebellion (八國聯軍; bāguó liánjūn; Pa Kuo lien chun; 'Eight-Nation Allied Army') under director Chang Cheh.

The Last Empress (Boston, 2007), by Anchee Min, describes the long reign of the Empress Dowager Cixi in which the siege of the legations is one of the climactic events in the novel.

Sandalwood Death by Mo Yan. The novel is written from the viewpoint of villagers during the Boxer Uprising.

Gene Luen Yang's Boxers, a piece of historical fiction written around the event in the form of a graphic novel.