Case Study: The Boxer War - The Boxer Uprising

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

 A. Context

The terms “Boxer Uprising” and “Boxer War” refer to two different, but closely interconnected upsurges of collective violence that shook Northern China in the period between 1899 and 1901. The Boxers were a popular religious, social, and (at least indirectly) anti-imperialist group that came to threaten the presence of Westerners in China. The movement’s eventual support by the Chinese Imperial Court prompted international military intervention. Eight states (Austria-Hungary, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Japan, Russia, and the United States) were engaged in this war and representatives of another three governments (Belgium, the Netherlands, and Spain) participated in the subsequent peace negotiations. In its early phase, this was an inter-state war, while in its later stages, it came closer to the “punitive expeditions” that were a typical feature of 19th and 20th century colonialism (Walter, 2006).

The war was not planned by either side, but resulted from the mismanagement of the Boxer crisis by both the Chinese government and the Allied powers. However, four structural factors also underlie the outbreak and course of the war. The first was the Western informal empire in China, i.e. the forcible integration of China into the imperialist world order. Although China was never formally colonized, the Western powers, including the U.S. and Japan, had wrested a number of legal and economic privileges from the Qing court at Peking. Most notable were the principle of exterritoriality, which exempted foreigners from Chinese law, and the imposition of artificially low import tariffs that allowed Western products to compete favorably on the Chinese market. Moreover, in the late 1890s a number of foreign powers each seized at least one bridgehead along the coast to facilitate the economic penetration of the hinterland. For some years, Chinese and Western observers alike assumed that the partition of China into spheres of interest of the imperialistic nations was imminent. The so-called Hundred Days’ Reform of 1898 was a second factor behind the war whereby a handful of high officials and literati persuaded the young emperor to take the lead in a bold attempt to modernize China. However, they met with determined resistance from the conservative court faction around the Empress dowager Cixi, who staged a coup d’état, had some of the reformers arrested, and forced the rest into exile. The Emperor was placed under house arrest, but remained a symbol of change and a potential threat to the rule of the Empress dowager (Xiang, 2003: 129-133). At local level, meanwhile, the power of Christian missionaries was provoking anti-Christian hostility as the missionaries were exploiting the provisions of the unequal treaties to support Chinese Christians involved in lawsuits and other conflicts. Finally, a series of natural disasters in the late 1890s provided the fuel for the conflict to come.

Amid these background tensions, the Boxer movement began to grow out of the numerous boxing schools, first spreading across the Northern Chinese provinces of Shandong and Zhili (the province surrounding the capital, Beijing) and then across the entire North China plain from Shanxi to Manchuria. Their European name is derived from one particular group which referred to itself as Yihequan (“Boxers United in Righteousness”); the entire movement was subsequently renamed Yihetuan (“Militia United in Righteousness”) by the Chinese government, a name commonly used in Chinese and a few Western publications. The Boxers attacked Chinese Christians throughout 1899 and killed a foreigner for the first time on the last day of that year. Initially, the Qing government took steps to suppress the movement militarily. Owing to the heterogeneous structure of the movement, however, all attempts to check it were in vain.

In the spring of 1900, the spread of the Boxer movement caused considerable disquiet among the foreign community in China, leading to a spiral of escalation. The foreign diplomatic representatives pressured the Chinese government to instigate more energetic measures to suppress the Boxers. This attitude prompted the Beijing court to revise its policy and support the Boxers. The Chinese government’s increasing lenience towards the Boxers prompted more forceful action by the foreign powers: foreign warships were concentrated off Dagu in April, marines reinforced the legations in Beijing in late May, and, in June, an international expeditionary force commanded by British admiral Seymour made a futile attempt to relieve the legations, which were already being besieged by the Boxers. The point of no return was reached when the foreigners occupied the Dagu forts on 17 June. Three days later, the German minister was killed – not by a Boxer, but by a soldier of the Imperial army. Notwithstanding the disagreement among high-ranking Chinese officials about the necessity of the war, the Chinese Imperial court issued a series of edicts on June 21, stating that hostilities had begun and committing the regular Chinese army to join the Boxers in their fight against the Allied armies. Although war remained formally undeclared by both sides, this was a de facto declaration of war.

Yet the Allied intervention was limited as the provincial governors of Central and South China reached agreements with the foreign powers and hence remained aloof from the fighting. The Allies were therefore able to limit their strategy to North China, first relieving the foreign concessions in Tianjin and the legations quarter in Beijing between mid-July and mid-August 1900, then carrying out “punitive expeditions” against “Boxer” strongholds, and bringing the province of Zhili under their control by January 1901. On September 7 , the Qing court (which had relocated to Xi’an in Northwest China in the meantime) blamed the Boxers for the military disaster and reverted to its original policy towards them, ordering the provincial governors to suppress them militarily. By December 1900, most of the Allied contingents had withdrawn from the war, leaving the German and French troops to occupy the passes into the neighboring province of Shanxi. Throughout much of this period, Zhili was in a state of civil war, as pro and anti-Boxer factions fought against one another (Elvin, 1996). The Allied representatives negotiated with the Chinese government from October 1900 while the war was still going on. A final settlement, the Boxer Protocol, was signed on September 7, 1901 and imposed severe symbolic and material penalties on China: atonement missions to Germany and Japan (prior to Ketteler, a member of the Japanese legation had been killed by Boxers) were to be undertaken, a number of officials punished, State examinations for recruiting civil servants were suspended in cities in which foreigners had been massacred, a ban was imposed on the acquisition of weapons and war materials, a huge indemnity of £ 67.5 million was imposed, a glacis was to be built to protect the legations quarter against future attacks, a Western-style foreign ministry ranking ahead of all other ministries was to be created, and infrastructure measures were to be implemented to facilitate foreign commerce in China. This did not revolutionize Chinese-foreign relations and, instead, confirmed the status quo of imperialism in China.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7