Boxer Rebellion

The Boxer Rebellion was an uprising in China ifrom 2 November 1900 to 7 September 1901. It was led by the Boxers, a group of Chinese against the huge amount of foreign influence in China.

Boxer Rebellion
Part of the century of humiliation
A company of Boxers in 1901
Date 18 October 1899 – 7 September 1901 Location North China, Yellow Sea Result Eight-Nation Alliance victory
Belligerents
Eight Nation Alliance:  British Empire  Russia  Japan  France  Germany  United States  Italy  Austria-Hungary  Netherlands  Spain  Belgium Mutual Protection of Southeast China (after 1900)	Boxer movement  Qing dynasty (before 1900)
Commanders and leaders
Legations: Claude MacDonald Seymour Expedition: Edward Seymour Gaselee Expedition: Alfred Gaselee Coriolano Ponza di San Martino Vincenzo Garioni Yevgeni Alekseyev Nikolai Linevich Fukushima Yasumasa Yamaguchi Motomi Henri-Nicolas Frey Adna Chaffee Occupation Force: Alfred von Waldersee Occupation of Manchuria: Aleksey Kuropatkin Paul von Rennenkampf Pavel Mishchenko Mutual Protection of Southeast China: Yuan Shikai Li Hongzhang Xu Yingkui Liu Kunyi Zhang Zhidong	Boxers: Cao Futian  Zhang Decheng † Imperial government: Emperor Guangxu Empress Dowager Cixi Li Bingheng † Yuxian  Commander in Chief: Ronglu Hushenying: Zaiyi Tenacious Army: Nie Shicheng † Resolute Army: Ma Yukun Song Qing Jiang Guiti Gansu Army: Dong Fuxiang Ma Fulu † Ma Fuxiang Ma Fuxing
Strength
Seymour Expedition: 2,100–2,188[1] Gaselee Expedition: 18,000[1] China Relief Expedition: 2,500[2] Russian troops: 100,000[3]–200,000[4]	Boxers: 100,000–300,000 Qing troops: 100,000[5]

Foreigners in China

The rebellion happened while many foreign countries (Japan, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Russia) were scrambling for concessions in the Qing dynasty in the aftermath of the Opium Wars and the First Sino-Japanese War. These countries were Japan, Britain, Germany, and Russia.

Boxers

The Boxers were Chinese who were angry about the growing power of foreigners in China. They wanted to fight and drive out all foreigners and even the Chinese who helped the foreigners. The Boxers got many people to help them and drove their fight to Peking (now Beijing).

Two expeditions

The interior inner city of Beijing was known as the Tartar city because it was mostly Manchu and half of all Manchus in China lived there. Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, the United States, Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy made an alliance to conduct an expedition against the Boxers in Beijing. That made Empress Dowager Cixi declare war on all of them and send the Gansu Army to help the Boxers.

The first foreign expedition to Beijing, the Seymour Expedition, was defeated. The foreign legations in Beijing were surrounded for 55 days before the foreign reinforcements got through in the Gaselee Expedition, which got to the legations in Beijing. The Manchus suffered tremendously as the foreign soldiers went around raping the women and killing the men. The rest of China outside Manchuria and Zhili Province, was not affected since the Han governor generals such as Yuan Shikai, Li Hongzhang, Liu Kunyi and Zhang Zhidong, signed a pact, the Mutual Defense Pact of the Southeastern Provinces, to keep their provinces out of the war and not to help the Qing court. That made the foreigners not attack them.

Aftermath

The foreigners were very angry with the Qing and said that China had to pay them even more money and to execute the officials responsible for supporting the Boxers like the Manchu Bannerman Governor Yuxian, Qixiu, Captain Enhai (En Hai) and Manchu Zaixun, Prince Zhuang and Han General Dong Fuxiang. China agreed to execute all the Manchu officials like Yuxian, Qixiu, Enhai and Zaixun but refused to execute Dong Fuxiang. A few years later in 1911, the Qing dynasty collapsed, and China had a new government, the Republic of China, but the foreigners, especially the Japanese, still influenced the country.

Related pages

• Opium Wars
• First Sino-Japanese War
• Qing dynasty
• Empress Dowager Cixi
• Imperial Japanese Army
• Open Door Policy
• Imperialism

References

1. Harrington (2001), p. 29. sfnp error: no target: CITEREFHarrington2001 (help)
2. "China Relief Expedition (Boxer Rebellion), 1900–1901". Veterans Museum and Memorial Center. Archived from the original on 16 July 2014. Retrieved 20 March 2017.
3. Pronin, Alexander (7 November 2000). Война с Желтороссией (in Russian). Kommersant. Retrieved 6 July 2018.
4. Hsü, Immanuel C. Y. (1978). "Late Ch'ing Foreign Relations, 1866–1905". In Fairbank, John King (ed.). The Cambridge History of China. Cambridge University Press. p. 127. ISBN 978-0-521-22029-3.
5. Xiang (2003), p. 248. sfnp error: no target: CITEREFXiang2003 (help)