The Boxer Rebellion

27.1.6: The Boxer Rebellion

The Boxer Rebellion, a violent anti-foreign and anti-Christian uprising that took place in China between 1899 and 1901, both exposed and deepened the weakening of the Qing dynasty’s power.

Learning Objective

Discuss the reasons for and consequences of the Boxer Rebellion

Key Points

  • The Righteous and Harmonious Fists (Yihetuan) arose in the inland sections of the northern coastal province of Shandong long known for social unrest, religious sects, and martial societies. American Christian missionaries were probably the first to refer to the well-trained young men as Boxers because of the martial arts they practiced. The excitement and moral force of the group’s rituals were especially attractive to unemployed and powerless village men.
  • International tension and domestic unrest fueled the spread of the Boxer movement. A drought followed by floods in Shandong province in 1897–1898 forced farmers to flee to cities and seek food. Another major cause of discontent in north China was Christian missionary activity. The killing of two German missionaries in 1897 prompted Germany to occupy Jiaozhou Bay, which triggered a scramble for concessions by which Britain, France, Russia, and Japan also secured their own spheres of influence in China.
  • The early growth of the Boxer movement coincided with the Hundred Days’ Reform (June 11 – September 21, 1898). The Guangxu Emperor’s progressive reforms alienated many conservative officials. The opposition from conservative officials led Empress Dowager Cixi to intervene and reverse the reforms. The failure of the reform movement disillusioned many educated Chinese and thus further weakened the Qing government.
  • In January 1900, Empress Dowager Cixi issued edicts in the Boxers’ defense, causing protests from foreign powers. The Boxer movement spread rapidly. After several months of growing violence against both the foreign and Christian presence in Shandong and the North China plain in June 1900, Boxer fighters converged on Beijing. Foreigners and Chinese Christians sought refuge in the Legation Quarter. The Eight-Nation Alliance sent the Seymour Expedition to relieve the siege. The Expedition was stopped by the Boxers at the Battle of Langfang and forced to retreat.
  • The Alliance’s attack on the Dagu Forts led the Qing government and the initially hesitant Empress Dowager Cixi to side with and support the Boxers. On June 21, 1900, she issued an Imperial Decree officially declaring war on the foreign powers. The Alliance formed the second, much larger Gaselee Expedition and finally reached Beijing. The Qing government evacuated to Xi’an. The Boxer Protocol ended the war.
  • As a result of the rebellion, the European powers ceased their ambitions to colonize China. Concurrently, this period marks the ceding of European great power interference in Chinese affairs, with the Japanese replacing the Europeans as the dominant power. Empress Dowager Cixi reluctantly started reforms known as the New Policies despite her previous views. The question of the historical interpretation of the rebellion remains controversial.

Key Terms

Boxer Protocol
A treaty signed on September 7, 1901, between the Qing Empire of China and the Eight-Nation Alliance that provided military forces (Austria-Hungary, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States) plus Belgium, Spain, and the Netherlands, which ended the Boxer Rebellion. It provided for the execution of government officials who supported the Boxers, foreign troops to be stationed in Beijing, and 450 million taels of silver to be paid as indemnity over the next 39 years to the eight nations involved.
Hundred Days’ Reform
A failed 103-day national cultural, political, and educational reform movement from June 11 to September 21, 1898 in late Qing dynasty China. It was undertaken by the young Guangxu Emperor and his reform-minded supporters. The movement was short-lived, ending in a coup d’état by powerful conservative opponents led by Empress Dowager Cixi.
Boxer Rebellion
A violent anti-foreign and anti-Christian uprising in China between 1899 and 1901, toward the end of the Qing dynasty. It was initiated by the Militia United in Righteousness (Yihetuan), known in English as the Boxers, and was motivated by proto-nationalist sentiments and opposition to imperialist expansion and associated Christian missionary activity.
Boxers
A martial society, known as the Militia United in Righteousness (Yihetuan), motivated by proto-nationalist sentiments and opposition to imperialist expansion and associated Christian missionary activity in China at the end of the 19th century. Its members practiced martial arts and claimed supernatural invulnerability towards Western weaponry. They believed that millions of soldiers of Heaven would descend to purify China of foreign oppression, a belief characteristic of millenarian movements.
Seymour Expedition
An attempt by a multi-national military force to march to Beijing and protect the diplomatic legations and foreign nationals in the city from attacks by Boxers in 1900. The Chinese army forced it to return to Tianjin (Tientsin).
New Policies
A series of political, economical, military, cultural, and educational reforms implemented in the last decade of the Qing dynasty to keep it in power after the humiliating defeat in the Boxer Rebellion. The reforms started in 1901.
Gaselee Expedition
A successful relief by a multi-national military force to march to Beijing and protect the diplomatic legations and foreign nationals in the city from attacks in 1900. The expedition was part of the war of the Boxer Rebellion.
Legation Quarter
The area in Beijing, China, where a number of foreign legations were located between 1861 and 1959. It is located in the Dongcheng District, immediately east of Tiananmen Square.
Juye Incident
The killing of two German Catholic missionaries, Richard Henle and Franz-Xavier Nies of the Society of the Divine Word, in Juye County Shandong Province, China on November 1, 1897.

 

The Righteous and Harmonious Fists (Yihetuan) arose in the inland sections of the northern coastal province of Shandong long known for social unrest, religious sects, and martial societies. American Christian missionaries were probably the first to refer to the well-trained, athletic young men as Boxers because of the martial arts and calisthenics they practiced. Their primary practice was a type of spiritual possession that involved the whirling of swords, violent prostrations, and chanting incantations to deities. The excitement and moral force of these possession rituals were especially attractive to unemployed and powerless village men, many of whom were teenagers.

The Boxers believed that through training, diet, martial arts, and prayer they could perform extraordinary feats. 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 to blows of cannon, rifle shots, and knife attacks. Furthermore, the Boxer groups popularly claimed that millions of soldiers of Heaven would descend to assist them in purifying China of foreign oppression.

Although women were not allowed to join the Boxer units, they formed their own groups, the Red Lanterns. Popular local lore reported that they were able to fly, walk on water, set Christians’ homes on fire, and stop foreign guns, powers which the male Boxers themselves did not claim. The only reliable account of their actual activities comes from the 1900 Battle of Tientsin, when they nursed wounded Boxers and did work such as sewing and cleaning.

 

Causes of Rebellion

International tension and domestic unrest fueled the spread of the Boxer movement. First, a drought followed by floods in Shandong province in 1897–1898 forced farmers to flee to cities and seek food. Another major cause of discontent in north China was missionary activity. The treaties signed after the Second Opium War granted foreign missionaries the freedom to preach anywhere in China and buy land on which to build churches. In 1897, a band of armed men who were likely members of the Big Swords Society, a traditional peasant self-defense group widespread in northern China, stormed the residence of a German missionary and killed two priests. This attack is 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 the Shandong peninsula. Germany’s action triggered a scramble for concessions by which Britain, France, Russia, and Japan also secured their own spheres of influence in China.

“China — the cake of kings and… of emperors” (a French pun on king cake and kings and emperors wishing to “consume” China), Henri Meyer, an illustration from supplement to Le Petit Journal, January 16, 1898, Bibliothèque nationale de France.

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.

In 1898, a group of Boxers attacked the Christian community of Liyuantun village where a temple to the Jade Emperor had been converted into a Catholic church. This incident marked the first time the Boxers used the slogan “Support the Qing, destroy the foreigners” that would later characterize them. The Boxers called themselves the Militia United in Righteousness for the first time at the Battle of Senluo Temple (1899), a clash between Boxers and Qing government troops. By using the word militia rather than Boxers, they distanced themselves from forbidden martial arts sects and tried to give their movement the legitimacy of a group that defended orthodoxy.

The early growth of the Boxer movement coincided with the Hundred Days’ Reform (June 11 – September 21, 1898). Progressive Chinese officials, with support from Protestant missionaries, persuaded the Guangxu Emperor to institute reforms that alienated many conservative officials by their sweeping nature. Such opposition from conservative officials led Empress Dowager Cixi to intervene and reverse the reforms. The failure of the reform movement disillusioned many educated Chinese and thus further weakened the Qing government. After the reforms ended, the conservative Empress Dowager Cixi seized power and placed the reformist Guangxu Emperor under house arrest.

Despite the obvious internal weaknesses, the national crisis was widely seen as being caused by foreign aggression. Foreign powers had defeated China in several wars, asserted a right to promote Christianity, and imposed unequal treaties, under which foreigners and foreign companies in China were accorded special privileges, extraterritorial rights, and immunity from Chinese law, causing resentment and xenophobic reactions among the Chinese. When France, Japan, Russia, and Germany carved out spheres of influence, it appeared that China would be dismembered, with foreign powers each ruling a part of the country. By 1900, the Qing dynasty was crumbling and Chinese culture was under assault by powerful and unfamiliar religions and secular cultures.

 

Spreading Rebellion

In January 1900, with a majority of conservatives in the imperial court, Empress Dowager Cixi changed her long-standing policy of suppressing Boxers and issued edicts in their defense, causing protests from foreign powers. The Boxer movement spread rapidly. They burned Christian churches, killed Chinese Christians, and intimidated Chinese officials who stood in their way. After several months of growing violence against both the 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. Foreigners and Chinese Christians sought refuge in the Legation Quarter. The Eight-Nation Alliance sent the Seymour Expedition of Japanese, Russian, Italian, German, French, American, and Austrian troops to relieve the siege. The Expedition was stopped by the Boxers at the Battle of Langfang and forced to retreat. Due to the Alliance’s attack on the Dagu Forts, the Qing government in response sided with the Boxers and the initially hesitant Empress Dowager Cixi supported the Boxers. On June 21, 1900, she issued an Imperial Decree officially declaring war on the foreign powers. The Alliance formed the second, much larger Gaselee Expedition and finally reached Beijing. The Qing government evacuated to Xi’an.

A Boxer during the revolt, Department of the Army, Office of the Chief Signal Officer, 1899/1900. Chinese officialdom was split between those supporting the Boxers and those favoring conciliation, led by Prince Qing. The supreme commander of the Chinese forces, the Manchu General Ronglu (Junglu), later claimed that he acted to protect the besieged foreigners.   

The Boxer Protocol ended the war, signed on September 7, 1901, between the Qing Empire of China and the Eight-Nation Alliance that provided military forces (Austria-Hungary, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States) plus Belgium, Spain and the Netherlands. It provided for the execution of government officials who had supported the Boxers, for foreign troops to be stationed in Beijing, and 450 million taels of silver—more than the government’s annual tax revenue—to be paid as indemnity over the course of the next 39 years to the eight nations involved. A large portion of the reparations paid to the United States was diverted to pay for the education of Chinese students in U.S. 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 serve as a preparatory school. When the first of these students returned to China they taught subsequent students. From this institute was born Tsinghua University. Some of the reparation due to Britain was later earmarked for a similar program.

 

Consequences

The European great powers finally ceased their ambitions to colonize China, having learned from the Boxer Rebellion that it was best to deal with China’s ruling dynasty rather than directly with the Chinese people. Concurrently, this period marks the ceding of European great power interference in Chinese affairs, with the Japanese replacing the Europeans as the dominant power for their lopsided involvement in the war against the Boxers as well as their victory in the First Sino-Japanese War (1894-95). With the toppling of the Qing that followed and the rise of the nationalist Kuomintang, European sway within China was reduced to symbolic status. After taking Manchuria in 1905, Japan came to dominate Asian affairs both militarily and culturally.

In 1900, Russia occupied Manchuria, a move that threatened Anglo-American hopes of maintaining what remained of China’s territorial integrity and the country’s openness to commerce under the Open Door Policy. Japan’s clash with Russia over Liaodong and other provinces in eastern Manchuria, due to the Russian refusal to honor the terms of the Boxer protocol that called for their withdrawal, led to the Russo-Japanese War when two years of negotiations broke down in 1904. Russia was ultimately defeated by an increasingly confident Japan.

Besides the compensation, Empress Dowager Cixi reluctantly started some reforms despite her previous views. Under her reforms known as the New Policies started in 1901, the imperial examination system for government service was eliminated and as a result the system of education through Chinese classics was replaced with a European liberal system that led to a university degree. Along with the formation of new military and police organizations, the reforms also simplified central bureaucracy and revamped taxation policies. Internal ideological differences between northern-Chinese anti-foreign royalists and southern-Chinese anti-Qing revolutionists further deepened.

President William McKinley’s decision to send 5,000 American troops to quell the rebellion without consulting Congress marked a crucial shift in the presidential employment of armed force overseas. In the 19th century, military force committed without congressional authorization was typically used against nongovernmental organizations but was now used against sovereign states.

From the beginning, views differed as to whether the Boxers were better seen as anti-imperialist, patriotic, and proto-nationalist or as violent, irrational, and futile opponents of inevitable change. More recently, Chinese historians have undermined the dominant history textbook narrative in China, which presents the Boxer Uprising as an admirable expression of patriotism. The historians emphasize the damage and suffering that the rebellion caused and note that the majority of the Boxer rebels were both violent and xenophobic. This reinterpretation remains controversial in China.

Attributions