The Boxer Rebellion

(1900)

The emperor of China (who had come to the throne in 1875 as a child) was at loggerheads with the dowager empress soon after his personal rule began in 1889. When, in 1898, the reforming party seemed at last to be getting somewhere and a stream of reforming edicts and laws was issued in what was known as 'The Hundred Days of Reform', the empress enlisted the support of Manchu officials and soldiers whose sinecures and privileges were threatened, seized the emperor, locked him up and swept the reformers aside. At about the same time, signs of popular support for sticking to old ways could be seen in an outbreak of troubles in the provinces where certain militia units had come under the influence of a widespread and secret society called (somewhat oddly to western ears) the 'Society of Harmonious Fists'. Its members were usually called 'Boxers', for short. They were violently anti-foreign. They attacked Christian Chinese converts and, soon, foreign missionaries.

The Boxers were secretly favoured by the Manchu officials and the court, which hoped to use them against the foreigners. When there were diplomatic protests and demands that they be suppressed by the government, a full-scale rebellion broke out, egged on by the dowager empress and her agents. European troops seized Chinese forts in order to secure the route to Peking, where there was a large foreign community to be safeguarded. The empress declared war on all foreign powers, the German minister at Peking was murdered and the legations there were then besieged for several weeks; elsewhere, more than two hundred foreigners - mainly missionaries - were killed.

Retribution was swift and disastrous. An international expedition fought its way to Peking and relieved the legations. The Russians occupied southern Manchuria. The court fled from the capital, but after a few months had to accept terms: the punishment of the responsible officials, the payment of a huge indemnity, the razing of forts, foreign garrisons on the railway to Peking, and the fortification of an enlarged legation quarter. The Boxer rising had not only failed, but had done further damage to the already shaky Manchu regime. The external outlook was now more uncertain than ever and there were now Chinese who had begun to think about revolution.

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