A martial society’s uprising drew eight foreign armies inland
From 1899 to 1901 the Society of Righteous and Harmonious Fists rose in North China against foreign spheres and missionary power as Qing rule faltered. After Boxers and imperial forces besieged Beijing’s Legation Quarter, an Eight-Nation Alliance fought inland to break a fifty-five-day siege.
The rebels' own society took its name from righteous, harmonious fists, and English speakers called its members Boxers because many practised Chinese martial arts, then known as Chinese boxing. American missionaries were probably the first to use the nickname. It grew in inland Shandong, a province long troubled by unrest, sects and fighting societies, where young men whirled swords, threw themselves to the ground and chanted to deities in rites of spirit possession that were supposed to make them invulnerable.
Anger had been building since the First Sino-Japanese War. Villagers feared foreign powers carving out spheres of influence and resented missionaries who flouted local custom and shielded converts in court. When the Yellow River flooded and drought struck in 1898, the Boxers blamed foreigners and Christians. From 1899 they swept across Shandong and the North China Plain, wrecking railways and other foreign property and attacking Chinese Christians and missionaries. In June 1900 they converged on Beijing under the slogan of backing the Qing and destroying the foreigners.
Foreign envoys, missionaries and troops, joined by some Chinese converts, holed up in the Legation Quarter under Boxer siege. An Eight-Nation Alliance drawing troops from the United States, Austria-Hungary, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Russia stormed the Dagu Fort near Tianjin on 17 June. Empress Dowager Cixi, at first hesitant, then backed the Boxers, and her decree of 21 June amounted to a declaration of war. The court was split, with Prince Qing leading those who wanted conciliation, and officials in the southern provinces simply ignored the order to fight.
Turned back at first, the Alliance returned with 20,000 troops, beat the imperial army at Tianjin and reached Beijing on 14 August, ending a 55-day siege. Looting and summary executions of suspected Boxers followed. The Boxer Protocol of 7 September 1901 required the execution of officials who had aided the rising, allowed foreign troops in Beijing and imposed an indemnity of 450 million taels of silver, more than a year's tax revenue, payable over 39 years. The fiasco eroded Qing authority and fed both the late Qing reforms and the Xinhai Revolution.
Source: Boxer Rebellion
