Boxer Rebellion in China
The Boxer Rebellion was an anti-foreign and anti-Christian uprising in northern China that peaked in 1900. It ended with a military intervention by an alliance of foreign powers and a humiliating settlement for the Qing dynasty. The episode deepened China's semicolonial subordination and weakened a ruling house that would fall little more than a decade later.
The movement grew out of the pressures of the late nineteenth century. After defeat in the Opium Wars and the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-95, China had granted foreign powers treaty ports, spheres of influence, railway and mining concessions, and protection for missionaries. In Shandong province, where German influence was strong, these resentments combined with floods, drought, and economic hardship. Missionary activity and conflicts between Christian converts and their neighbors added to the tension. Local martial-arts and ritual groups, known to outsiders as "Boxers" because of their fighting exercises, began to attack missionaries and Chinese Christians. They called themselves the Society of Righteous and Harmonious Fists, and many believed ritual practices could make them resistant to bullets.
In spring 1900 the movement spread into the area around Beijing and Tianjin, destroying railways and telegraph lines and killing Christians and missionaries. Foreign governments sent troops to protect their nationals, and the Qing court, divided between hardliners and moderates, wavered before leaning toward the Boxers. In June, Boxers and imperial troops besieged the foreign legation quarter in Beijing, where diplomats, soldiers, and many Chinese Christians took shelter. The German minister was killed, and the court issued a declaration of war against the foreign powers. Several provincial governors in central and southern China refused to follow the order and kept their regions out of the conflict.
An international force of about eight nations, including Britain, Russia, Japan, the United States, France, Germany, Italy, and Austria-Hungary, fought its way inland from the coast. It relieved the legations in August after a siege of roughly two months. The empress dowager Cixi and the court fled Beijing. Foreign troops then occupied and looted the capital, and punitive expeditions in the surrounding countryside caused many civilian deaths. Estimates of total casualties vary widely, but Chinese deaths, including Christians and civilians, far exceeded foreign losses.
The Boxer Protocol of 1901 required China to pay a very large indemnity over decades, punish officials who had backed the uprising, and allow foreign troops to be stationed between Beijing and the sea. Some powers, notably the United States, later redirected part of their share to education programs for Chinese students. The Qing court returned and undertook belated reforms, but its prestige was badly damaged. The uprising remains debated: it has been seen as patriotic resistance, as xenophobic violence, and as both at once.