The Boxer Rebellion
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From 1889 to 1900, China underwent a widespread and violent uprising. The revolt, a reaction against Chinese exploitation by foreign powers, was decades in the making. In response to the revolt, a group of eight nations joined together to put down the rebellion and ultimately subjected China to yet another humiliating treaty. The rebellion wasn't successful, but it did lay the groundwork for the seismic changes that would shape the country during the 20th century.

Learn more about the Boxer Rebellion and how it influenced China on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. This episode is sponsored by NerdWallet. When it comes to general knowledge and history, you know I've got you covered. But who do you turn to when you need smart financial decisions? If your answer is NerdWallet, then you're absolutely right. And if it's not, let me change your mind.

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The period from 1839 to 1949 is known in China as the Century of Humiliation. It began in 1839 with the First Opium War, which I covered in a previous episode. The British, trying to sell opium to the Chinese to balance their trade deficit, intervened militarily when China tried to ban the sale of opium and forced the Qing Dynasty to sign the first of what would be many unequal treaties.

In 1856, Britain, this time joined by France, fought the Second Opium War, which once again resulted in another unequal treaty in which European powers forced their terms upon the Qing Dynasty. While that was taking place, from 1850 to 1864, a massive civil war took place in China known as the Taiping Rebellion, which resulted in the deaths of approximately 10 million people. The Taiping Rebellion will be the subject of a future episode.

As a result of these unequal treaties, China became subject to Christian missionaries, Western traders, and a host of foreign ideas and cultural practices. And it wasn't just Europeans that were taking advantage of China. The first Sino-Japanese War, which took place in 1894 and 1895, resulted in a Chinese defeat and a similar lopsided agreement with Japan. The United States also had its finger in the China pie and managed to get its own trade concessions.

So it should come as no surprise that many Chinese found this deeply humiliating. This resulted in a rise of nationalism and anti-foreign and anti-Christian sentiment. And that wasn't all. Northern China had suffered from droughts, floods, and famines in the 1890s. These natural disasters, combined with foreign economic exploitation, caused widespread suffering. Railroads and other western infrastructure disrupted traditional farming communities, leading to unemployment and a sense of cultural loss.

The Christian missionaries in China enjoyed extraterritorial rights that gave them immunity from Chinese law, and many locals saw missionaries as agents of foreign exploitation. Some missionaries were buying Chinese temples and converting them into Christian churches. Railroads were built through cemeteries which required the removal of tombs of the local people's ancestors.

While this had several manifestations, what is relevant for this episode and this period of Chinese history was the creation of a group known as the Society of Righteous and Harmonious Fists. The name reflected their goal of defending China's honor and traditional way of life. The society wasn't just a political organization. It originated amongst martial artists and peasants in rural Shandong province, regions deeply affected by poverty, natural disasters, and social dislocation.

The society practiced martial arts, spiritual rituals, and folk beliefs that included the idea of gaining supernatural powers, such as invulnerability to bullets, through discipline and religious devotion. Spoiler alert, their martial arts could not stop bullets. The martial arts that they practiced looked like shadow boxing to foreigners, and so they called these people boxers.

At the time, the term martial arts didn't exist, so boxing was really the only word they had to describe their practice. In addition to being against foreigners, the boxers were also initially against the Qing Dynasty and the emperor because of what they had let happen to China. Local officials fearing groin unrest often turned a blind eye to the boxers' activities, hoping that the movement could relieve pressure on the government by channeling public anger towards foreigners.

By 1898, the Boxer movement had spread from rural areas into towns and cities, attracting disaffected peasants, workers, and unemployed individuals. In 1899, the Boxer movement kept growing and started to turn violent. Boxers began attacking everything that represented Western influence in China. They attacked railways and telegraph stations. At least initially, the Boxers lumped the Qing dynasty with all of the other foreigners that they were fighting against.

The Qing Dynasty was not ethnically Han Chinese. They were Manchurian. Despite the fact that the Qing had been in power for several centuries, many Chinese considered them to be outsiders. In addition to being outsiders, their corruption just made them unpopular with the common people who made up the vast majority of boxers. By 1899, the boxers had killed hundreds of foreigners and Chinese Christians and had destroyed dozens of Western-owned or associated facilities.

A major turning point in the rebellion occurred in January of 1900. The real power in China was the Empress Dowager, Siqi. Siqi had been the real power behind the throne for decades. Despite the problems the Qing Dynasty faced in the last half of the 19th century, Siqi managed to manipulate events and people to keep herself in power. She was incredibly shrewd.

She noted the boxers' popularity and finally changed the official imperial position on them. Instead of opposing the boxers, she was now going to support them. This was a calculated move. By throwing her support behind the boxers, she was aligning herself with a popular movement, but she was also able to deflect criticism away from the Qing and towards foreigners.

She hoped that the Boxers would completely remove the foreign presence in China, allowing her to reverse or at least mitigate the damage done over the last several decades of one-sided treaties. With the support of the Qing, the Boxers went into overdrive in the first few months of 1900. They spread out into the countryside, burning churches, attacking and killing Chinese Christians, and anything else that had attained a foreign influence. All the while, they were inching closer and closer to Beijing.

The Boxers moving closer to Beijing was an immediate threat to the foreign powers in China. This is where all the foreign embassies were located as well as their staffs. On May 30th, the foreign diplomats, under the leadership of the British ambassador Claude Maxwell MacDonald, requested a foreign military force of about 435 marines to be sent to Beijing to protect the foreign diplomats. The Empress reluctantly agreed to the request.

The military force would be a joint force involving Britain, France, Austria-Hungary, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, and the United States. These countries became known as the Eight Nation Alliance. And it was a rather odd alliance in that the parties had no agreements or treaties. They simply just worked in concert with each other.

On June 5th, the boxers cut the railroad ties at Tianjin, effectively cutting Beijing off from the rest of China, and hence the world. On June 10th, the first Allied relief force of about 2,000 men was sent under British Vice Admiral Edward Seymour. They marched towards Beijing, but were forced back after encountering resistance about 12 miles from the city. On June 13th, the first boxers appeared in Beijing's Legation Quarter, home to foreign diplomats.

Their slogan as they entered Beijing was, quote, support the Qing, destroy the foreigners. And that same day, the boxers killed a Japanese diplomat. On June 20th, a group of boxers supported by Qing soldiers began to lay siege to the legation quarter of Beijing. Trapped inside the quarter were 473 foreign civilians, 409 soldiers from the Eight Nation Alliance, and approximately 3,000 Chinese Christians.

they had only one artillery gun to defend themselves, which was dubbed the International Gun. It was called that because the barrel was British, the carriage it was on was Italian, the artillery shells were Russian, and the crew that was manning it were American. On June 21st, the Empress and the Emperor issued a declaration of support for the Boxers, which was a de facto declaration of war against the foreign powers.

The foreigners dug in and attempted to wait out the siege as they knew a relief force compromised of soldiers of all eight countries was on the way to rescue them. Already in April, foreign navies had begun collecting along the coast of China. British Lieutenant General Alfred Gaisley headed the main relief force. He led a force of close to 55,000 soldiers from all eight nations, but mostly consisting of Japanese. The relief force arrived in Beijing on August 14th and broke the siege.

The next day, the Emperor Staujer Sishi and the Guangxu Emperor fled the city dressed as peasants. While all of this was going on, Russia also used the Boxer Rebellion as a pretext for occupying northern Manchuria. They sent over 100,000 troops into the region and crushed the Boxer forces that were there. Peasant Boxers with little in the way of weapons and a martial art that couldn't actually stop bullets were no match for the combined armies of the Eight Nation Alliance.

In total, the Boxer Rebellion is estimated to have taken the lives of approximately 100,000 people, the largest number of which were Chinese Christians, both Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox. Ultimately, the gamble made by the Empress Dowager did not pay off. In September 1901, the Qing government was forced to sign the Boxer Protocol.

And the full title of this treaty is the Austria-Hungary-Belgium-France-Germany-Great Britain-Italy-Japan-Netherlands-Russia-Spain-United States-China Final Protocol for the Settlement of the Disturbances of 1900. Despite all of its efforts to break free of lopsided treaties with foreign powers, China became a victim of yet another one. The agreement posed several harsh terms on China.

For starters, it mandated the execution of at least 10 leaders of the rebellion who were responsible for the murder of multiple foreigners. Next, China was forced to pay reparations of 450 million taels of silver in reparations over a period of 39 years. At the 1901 exchange rate, this was approximately $330 million. Today, it would be worth about $19.6 billion. On top of that, the Chinese had to pay a 4% interest rate.

By the end of 1940, the total amount they paid, including interest, was the equivalent of $41 billion modern dollars. It should be noted that, years later, most of the countries actually put aside the reparations money to be invested back in China, usually for education. Payments to Germany and Austria were both suspended and cancelled after World War I. Additional penalties of the treaty included that the Chinese government would ban, with the penalty of execution, any secret society that was anti-foreigner.

The Chinese emperor had to issue personal apologies to both Japan and Germany who had diplomats who died in the uprising. Foreign nations were allowed to station troops in China in various cities around the country. And China was forbidden to import or manufacture any arms or ammunition for a period of two years. Ultimately, the Boxer Rebellion ended up making things worse regarding foreign meddling in China.

Despite the support given to the Boxers by the Qing government, it eventually hurt them because it made them look weak in the aftermath of the rebellion, signing yet another lopsided treaty. The end result of the weakening of the dynasty was the collapse of the entire imperial system in 1911. Both the Republic of China and the People's Republic of China have looked upon the history of the Boxers favorably as it was a major step towards the revolution of 1911.

While the Boxer Rebellion ultimately failed, it was an important milestone in China ultimately reclaiming its own fate in the 20th century. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Benji Long and Cameron Kiefer. I want to give a big shout out to everyone who supports the show over on Patreon, including the show's producers. Your support helps me put out a show every single day.

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