A martial-arts movement of the north China plain, whose members believed ritual made them invulnerable to bullets (1899)
The Yihetuan, the Militia United in Righteousness, known in English for their boxing exercises.
History · Revolutions & empires
The Boxer Rebellion
1899–1901
Anti-foreign uprising in northern China, and the intervention of an eight-nation alliance
An uprising in Shandong and the north China plain by members of the Yihetuan, the Militia United in Righteousness, whose martial-arts training led Westerners to call them Boxers. Directed against foreign privilege, missionaries and Chinese Christians, it reached Beijing in June 1900, where the foreign legations and thousands of Chinese Christians were besieged for fifty-five days. The Empress Dowager Cixi threw the court's support behind the rebels and declared war on the powers; an eight-nation relief expedition took Beijing in August, the court fled to Xi'an, and the Boxer Protocol of 1901 imposed a huge indemnity and the stationing of foreign troops on the road to the sea.
How to spot them
- ▸A movement whose name is usually rendered as Righteous and Harmonious Fists
- ▸A fifty-five-day siege of the legation quarter of a capital in 1900
- ▸An eight-nation alliance whose contingents include Japan, Russia and the United States
- ▸An empress dowager who backs the rebels, then flees her capital in disguise
- ▸An indemnity of 450 million taels, part of which later funded scholarships
What happened
The fifty-five-day siege of the legation quarter in the capital, from June to August 1900 (1900)
The Siege of the International Legations, relieved on 14 August 1900.
The killing of the German minister in a Beijing street on 20 June 1900 (1900)
Clemens von Ketteler; his death hardened the powers' response.
The speech in which Kaiser Wilhelm II told departing troops to behave like the followers of Attila (1900)
The Hunnenrede, the Hun speech, at Bremerhaven in July 1900 — the origin of a later British nickname for Germans.
The eight-nation force that fought its way from Tianjin to relieve the besieged, under Alfred Gaselee (1900)
The Gaselee Expedition; the alliance was Britain, France, Germany, Russia, Japan, the United States, Italy and Austria-Hungary.
The settlement of 7 September 1901 imposing an indemnity of 450 million taels of silver (1901)
The Boxer Protocol, payable over 39 years with interest.
The 1963 epic starring Charlton Heston and David Niven, named for the length of the siege (1963)
55 Days at Peking.
Quick-fire facts
- •The movement arose in Shandong amid drought, flooding of the Yellow River and resentment of missionary privilege
- •Its slogan was, in effect, support the Qing and destroy the foreigner
- •Cixi issued a declaration of war on the foreign powers in June 1900; several southern viceroys refused to comply, in what is called the Mutual Protection of Southeast China
- •Japan and Russia supplied the largest contingents to the relief expedition
- •Tens of thousands of Chinese Christians and hundreds of foreign missionaries were killed
- •The court fled to Xi'an; the Guangxu Emperor's favourite, the Pearl Concubine, is said to have been thrown down a well
- •The Boxer Protocol also required the execution or punishment of named officials, the razing of forts and permanent legation guards
- •The United States remitted part of its share of the indemnity to fund the Boxer Indemnity Scholarship Programme, from which Tsinghua University grew
- •The humiliation contributed to the late Qing reforms and, within a decade, to the revolution of 1911
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Sources
- Diana Preston — The Boxer Rebellion: The Dramatic Story of China's War on Foreigners that Shook the World in the Summer of 1900
- Joseph W. Esherick — The Origins of the Boxer Uprising