Key takeaways
- Wikipedia describes the Boxer movement as an uprising in North China between 1899 and 1901 by the Society of Righteous and Harmonious Fists.
- Its most common slogan, in Joseph Esherick's account, was 'support the Qing, destroy the foreign', which is why he calls 'Boxer Rebellion' a misnomer.
- The legations in Beijing were besieged from 20 June to 14 August 1900, 55 days, until the Eight-Nation Alliance arrived.
- The Boxer Protocol of 7 September 1901 set an indemnity of 450 million taels of silver, payable over 39 years with 4% interest.
- The US Office of the Historian says the conflict claimed the lives of hundreds of foreign missionaries and thousands of Chinese nationals.
The Boxer Rebellion was an anti-foreign, anti-Christian uprising in North China between 1899 and 1901, led by the Society of Righteous and Harmonious Fists, which besieged the foreign legations in Beijing for 55 days in the summer of 1900 and was crushed by an eight-nation military intervention. The settlement, the Boxer Protocol of September 1901, imposed an indemnity larger than the Qing government's annual tax revenue.
The name itself is disputed, which is a good place to start.
Not quite a rebellion
Wikipedia records that the historian Joseph W. Esherick calls "Boxer Rebellion" a "misnomer": the Boxers "never rebelled against the Manchu rulers of China," and their most common slogan was "support the Qing, destroy the Foreign." Esherick argues that the word "rebellion" took hold afterwards for political reasons — once the powers decided the Qing had to stay in place to keep order and collect the indemnity, it suited everyone to say the court had not backed the Boxers.
Other names in use, Wikipedia notes, are the Boxer Uprising, the Boxer War and, in Chinese studies, the Yihetuan Movement. The German scholar Thoralf Klein points out that every one of these terms is a "posthumous interpretation." This page uses the conventional English name while keeping that caveat in view — a small exercise in reading for bias.
Shandong, missionaries and the drought of 1898
The movement grew in inland Shandong. Wikipedia lists the pressures: fear of foreign spheres of influence after the First Sino-Japanese War; resentment of Christian missionaries who, it says, ignored local customs and used their power to protect their followers in court; and the floods and drought of 1898, which the Boxers blamed on foreign and Christian influence. In the Juye Incident of November 1897, rebels looking for the German priest Father Stenz killed two other missionaries, and the German Navy's East Asia Squadron was sent to occupy Jiaozhou Bay.
The Boxers practised a form of spirit possession and claimed invulnerability to bullets and blades. From 1899 they spread across Shandong and the North China Plain, destroying railways and attacking Chinese Christians and missionaries. The wider background of foreign pressure on China is in the Opium Wars and the unequal treaties, and the earlier internal crisis in the Taiping Rebellion.
June 1900: the court chooses a side
In January 1900, Wikipedia says, Empress Dowager Cixi changed her position and issued edicts defending the Boxers. On 5 June the railway to Tianjin was cut and Beijing was isolated. Foreign troops stormed the Dagu Forts on 17 June, and on 21 June an imperial decree directed the army to join the Boxers — a de facto declaration of war, though neither side formally declared one.
The court was split. Wikipedia notes that Prince Qing led those favouring conciliation, that the commander Ronglu later claimed he had acted to protect the foreigners and blocked artillery from reaching the besiegers, and that officials in the southern provinces simply ignored the order to fight.
The 55 days
Wikipedia dates the siege of the Legation Quarter from 20 June to 14 August 1900 — 55 days counted from start to finish. Inside were 473 foreign civilians, 409 soldiers, marines and sailors from eight countries, and about 3,000 Chinese Christians, defending with small arms, three machine guns and a single old cannon nicknamed the International Gun: British barrel, Italian carriage, Russian shells, American crew. The Northern Cathedral was besieged separately, defended by 43 French and Italian soldiers alongside about 3,200 Chinese Catholics.
After a first relief expedition was turned back, the Eight-Nation Alliance — American, Austro-Hungarian, British, French, German, Italian, Japanese and Russian troops — took Tianjin on 14 July and marched about 120 km to Beijing with 20,000 men, reaching the legations on 14 August.
The violence fell hardest on Chinese Christians. Wikipedia gives estimates of 136 Protestant missionaries and 53 children, 47 Catholic priests and nuns, 30,000 Chinese Catholics and 2,000 Chinese Protestants killed. The Office of the Historian's wording is broader: the conflict "claimed the lives of hundreds of foreign missionaries and thousands of Chinese nationals." The relief armies were also brutal; Wikipedia describes looting, summary executions of suspected Boxers and atrocities against civilians during the occupation.
The Boxer Protocol and the bill
On 7 September 1901 the Qing court signed the Boxer Protocol. It ordered the execution of officials linked to the outbreak, allowed foreign troops to be stationed in Beijing, and fixed reparations, Wikipedia records, at 450,000,000 taels of silver — roughly one tael for each of China's estimated 450 million people — to be paid by 1940 at 4% a year.
The figures show how interest changes a headline number:
| Figure | Taels |
|---|---|
| Principal | 450,000,000 |
| Scheduled total with interest | 982,238,150 |
| Actually paid, 1901–1939 | 668,661,220 |
The scheduled total is about 2.18 times the principal; what China actually paid was about 68% of the scheduled total, or nearly 1.5 times the principal. Wikipedia notes that much of the US share was diverted to the Boxer Indemnity Scholarship Program, whose preparatory school became Tsinghua University.
For Washington, the Office of the Historian notes, the crisis threatened the "Open Door." On 3 July 1900 Secretary of State John Hay circulated a note stressing China's "territorial and administrative integrity," aimed at stopping the powers from using the Boxers as an excuse to carve China into colonies — though it asked for no formal commitments.
What it did to the Qing
Wikipedia concludes that the Qing's handling of the crisis weakened its credibility and control, leading to the Late Qing reforms and, more broadly, to the 1911 Revolution. Judgements of the Boxers shifted too: Sun Yat-sen at the time called them "bandits" while praising their "spirit of resistance", and in 1918 praised their courage. Esherick observes that no major incident in China's modern history has produced so wide a range of professional interpretation.
World History Timeline Sim, our app, lets you browse events by country and era, placing 1900 between the Taiping war and the fall of the dynasty; Chinese dynasties in chronological order gives the long view. The app's what-if outcomes are simulations, and it works best alongside coursework. More is in education and brain training.
Good to know
Frequently asked questions
Why were the Boxers called Boxers?
What started the Boxer movement?
How much did China pay under the Boxer Protocol?
Did the Qing government support the Boxers?
Sources
- Secretary of State John Hay and the Open Door in China, 1899–1900 (opens in a new tab)Office of the Historian, US Department of State — accessed
- Boxer Rebellion (opens in a new tab)Wikipedia — accessed
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