The Boxer Rebellion targeted both the Qing dynasty in China and the influence of European powers within China and, though being unsuccessful, stirred up national pride within China.
Long:
The humiliation caused by the defeat in the Sino-Japanese War of 1895 stirred up nationalism in China as well as resentment against European-powers. It was believed that the Europeans were driving China’s domestic and foreign policy and that is was important to reclaim China for the Chinese to return to Confucian values. In 1898, the situation escalated when a group called the “Boxers” (officially “Righteous Harmony Fists”) began a rebellion in north China in the Shantung Province. In this province, Germans dominated the rail lines, factories and coal mines
The Boxers were tortured and killed in public. The foreign powers did not take it easy on the boxers. There were even accounts taken that the Russians and the Italian troops were publicly executing boxers and raping women of rural villages. Another humiliating thing the boxers had to do was the signing of the boxer protocol. China ended up giving 330 million dollars for the eight nations to split. That may not sound like a lot of money but that amount of money in this day and age would equal to about 8.97 million dollars. Another thing to remember is China was not that powerful in the early 1900’s. This was the first time that foreigners were inside China, there was no recent experience with how to deal with outsiders because of China being
After the war, internal conflicts emerged. In 1899, the Boxer Rebellion started with the opposition to foreign spheres of influence. They were angry about the missionaries, and legalization of opium. The Boxers massacred Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox missionaries everywhere and their leader called for a brutal anti Christian policy. But soon, the Great Powers came in the way and defeated them. This event only made the spheres more powerful. Then in 1901, the Boxer Protocol was announced and its intent was to execute
During the Sino-Japanese War (1894-1895), China had tried to fight hard to resist the foreigners, but had lost, due to its lack of modernized technology. In the year of 1900, the Boxer rebellion had surfaced. During this time the Boxer movement had shifted to Beijing, where they killed millions of Chinese Christians and Christian missionaries, as well as destroying churches and railroad stations. During this time America had feared that the Boxers would apprehend Beijing, and the US would lose all access to their resources. This idea had been drafted by the current Secretary of State at the time, John Hay. Hay and his team concluded that America’s interests; economic, strategic, and cultural, were best served in the preservation of the Chinese Empire. This led to the US’s involvement in the Boxer Rebellion. While we did not send troops to help fight in the war, we did voice our disapproval of any crimes against the Chinese
The first cause for the Boxer Rebellion, was the anti-foreign stance in China. As a result of suffering humiliating defeats in both the first, and second Opium wars, China was forced to grant concessions to foreigners. Furthermore, they had to sign the “unequal treaties” which allowed the West to gain a significant amount of control over China. This left the Chinese population poverty-stricken, and angry at foreign powers. The economy became disrupted by the arrival of modernity and industrialism. According to historian David Silbey “Many Chinese worked in industries that were disrupted by the arrival of the railroad and the telegraph. There was a sense that China’s balance had been thrown out of whack by these modern innovations, and only by destroying the innovations and the foreigners who brought them could the balance be restored.”. The Chinese regarded the West as “foreign devils”, and wished to retain sovereignty and independence. They were extremely nationalistic. Mark Twain addressed the boxer rebellion in 1900.
For one, the common slogan of the Spirit Boxers, and by extension the rebellion, was, “Protect the Qing, destroy the foreign”, clarified all doubt of their loyalties (Escherick, pg.226). The fact that the Boxers never actively engaged Qing troops, unless assaulted, reinforced the notion that their only targets where those that have wronged China. These threats were targeted not only in Shandong but, major Chinese cities such as Bejing. Escherick also explores the relation between Boxers and the Qing Though initially pressured by foreign powers to suppress the Boxers, the Qing steadily chose to side with the Boxers with one of its first actions passing an edict that “tolerated peaceful formed in self-defense (Escherick, pg.286). Eventually, a variety of factors compelled to the Qing court to declare war on the foreign powers on June 21st ,1900, and to incorporate the Boxers into an official state militia (Escherick,
And even the Japanese operation against the Communists had opposite effect, because Three All Campaign’s aimed at turning people against the Communists by burning down their villages and crops, murdering the peasants made the peasants hate the Japanese even more and help the Communists attack them. The Japan-China war was a great success of the Communists because, by 1945, they controlled eighteen ‘liberation areas’ in the countryside. Invariably it was the Reds to whom the Japanese submitted.
The Boxer Rebellion was an uprising that occurred in China between 2 November 1899 – 7 September 1901, nearing the end of the Qing dynasty. There were several controversial causes that inevitably lead to the Boxer Rebellion, which are still debated between historians. Historians have argued however that the three main causes of the Boxer Rebellion were that it was an anti-foreign movement, an anti-Christian movement and/or an anti-Qing movement. Although all these causes are plausible and significant in their own manners, the most significant cause of the Boxer Rebellion was anti-foreignism, with the least significant cause being that it was an anti-Qing movement due to the evidence shown and the events leading to the Boxer Rebellion. These three causes put together, inevitably lead to the Boxer Rebellion occurring.
In reaction to the presence of the European armies in northern China to try to suppress or control the Boxer Rebellion in (1900), John Hay's second circular of 1900 stressed the importance of saving China's territorial and administrative
In the early stages of the Boxer Rebellion, their main goal was to overthrow the Qing Dynasty and restore the Ming dynasty, this lead to them going to many villages in China and killing the citizens and burning down the place. This caused for a lot of costs that Empress Dowager Cixi and China had to pay. In the later stages of the Boxer Rebellion, after Empress Dowager Cixi and the Boxer Rebellion joined forces to kill all the foreigners in the country, the 8 nation alliance was formed. United Kinddom was unhappy with their countrymen being killed and they were greedy for the riches of China, they were able to convince the alliance to all group together and gather some of the riches that they could salvage. After the siege of Beijing, China and the Boxer Rebellion were outnumbered and were defeated. The boxer protocol called for the execution of corrupt governments in China who supported the boxers and 450 million taels of silver. This weakened the originally very strong China who were perfectly fine without foreign influence to being prone to attacks, even to Japan, who at the time was a small but growing country. After being weakened, one of the more famous wars known as the Sino-Japanese war took place in the late 19th century, this left China bankrupt. Peasantry in China took a huge hit again after already weakened. China became vulnerable and unable to protect themselves against
With the belief being able to get rid of Western and Christianity spread, the Qing court supported the Boxers such as that Dowager Empress Cixi want to turn the Boxer into a real military force to help the Boxer put a stop to the invasion of Western’s building of churches and converting Chinese into Christian, we can see how the Qing court shaped foreign relations by facing the embarrassment of having to apologized for each nation’s loss of lives, and compensate for their crimes and it matters because this just shows that the powerful Qing court wasn’t able to protect its own government and economy, allowing bankruptcy to occurred and resulted in peace settlement such as the Boxer Protocol.
Historian Victor Purcell’s most widely held view of the Boxers is that they began as a conservative anti-Qing movement; in other words, they opposed the existing government that started to conform to Western powers. The efforts of the Boxer Rebellion was redundant in the sense that they led a reformation. Although the Chinese government was mainly conservative it was still being controlled by the foreign spheres of influence due to the unequal treaties signed to conclude the Opium and Sino-Japanese Wars. The Boxers were becoming well-known practice, as their continuous rampages and notable incidences linked to them gained the attention of conservative officials at the court, whom of which convinced the Empress Dowager Cixi to view the Boxers as a useful asset for resisting foreign pressure. Cixi had instructed provincial officials to not suppress the Boxers activities.
During the Boxer rebellion one of my cousins had two children and a wife. When the Boxer rebellion occurred Japan, Russia, Great Britain, France, USA, and Germany were apart of the Boxer rebellion. My cousin was born in 1882, he worked as a farmer. His name was Ho Ji and died 1953. During the Boxer rebellion Ho didn't like how foreign countries controlled China's trade. During the time he had a fear called xenophobia of foreigners. At the time he was anti foreigner and supported the Boxer rebellion. During the time China needed help to fight the Boxer rebellion they sent 50,000 marines to stop the rebellion. Then China had to sign the Boxer Protocol and had to pay 450 million taels in
The Boxer uprising erupted in China in the late 1890’s. After China’s loss to Japan in the Sino-Japanese war, many nations such as Japan, Great Britain, France, Russia, Germany, Italy and Austria began to encroach and claim areas referred to as the “spheres of influence” and demanded exclusive trading rights. With the Qing dynasty now weak and unable to prevent foreign domination, “Christian missionaries became more aggressive”[1]. The uprising began with the peasants who had grown tired of all the foreign influence, not only with the fight over ownership with respect to trade, but there was also a strong anti-Christian feeling among the Chinese who believed that western missionaries challenged its traditions and its society.
The Boxer Rebellion occurred as a result of both foreign and domestic internal tensions. These tensions were the causes of the Boxer Rebellion. China faced terrible natural disasters in 1899 and these was the main short term on the Boxer Rebellion. These included the flooding of the Yellow river then followed by the terrible drought. This lead to crops being destroyed and to farmers unable to pay their taxes which damaged the economy and millions of Chinese people faced starvation. These disasters were blamed on the Westerners and fuelled anti foreign feelings and the Chinese believed the famine was a punishment from the gods because they were abandoning their traditional ways and changing to European
“The Boxer Rebellion was a patriotic movement against imperialism and feudalism.” The sound of my middle school history teacher’s emphasis on Boxer Rebellion before the exam still lingered around my ears, and it interested me to learn more about this subject. With more and more researches and readings, I found that multiple China’s religious beliefs were employed, including buddhism, taoism, and other pre-existing beliefs. The Boxers took advantage of innocent Chinese people by manipulating these religious views to recruit more followers and expand their influence, and China’s religious views became the Boxers’ ideological weapons which they wielded during their uprising. Under this religious fanaticism, boxers were able to boost their morale and confidence in fighting against foreign powers, however,it also led to thousands of boxers dying in vain and the slaughter of missionaries and the Chinese whom had been converted by those missionaries.