Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Peking 1900: The Boxer Rebellion
    Peking 1900: The Boxer Rebellion
    Peking 1900: The Boxer Rebellion
    Ebook213 pages1 hour

    Peking 1900: The Boxer Rebellion

    By Peter Harrington and Michael Perry

    5/5

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    A concise, detailed examination of the Siege of the International Legations and its aftermath, featuring special artwork and maps.

    In 1900 a violent rebellion swept northern China – the Boxer Rebellion. The Boxers were a secret society who sought to rid their country of the pernicious influence of the foreign powers who had gradually acquired a stranglehold on China. With the connivance of the Imperial Court they laid siege to the legation quarter of Peking. Trapped inside were an assortment of diplomats, civilians and a small number of troops. They were all Sir Claude Macdonald, the British Minister in Peking, had to defend against thousands of hostile Boxers and Imperial troops. It would now be a race against time. Could the rag-tag defenders hold out long enough for the gathering relief force to reach them?

    This book describes the desperate series of events as the multinational force rushed to their rescue.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBloomsbury Publishing
    Release dateMar 20, 2013
    ISBN9781472803047
    Peking 1900: The Boxer Rebellion
    Author

    Peter Harrington

    Peter Harrington, a native of Manchester, England, is currently the curator of the Anne S. K. Brown Military Collection at the John Hay Library of Brown University, Rhode Island, USA. He is an authority on artists and war and has written extensively on the subject, including British Artists and War: The Face of Battle in Paintings and Prints (1993), as well as organising a number of exhibitions on war art.

    Read more from Peter Harrington

    Related to Peking 1900

    Titles in the series (100)

    View More
    View More

    Related ebooks

    Asian History For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      The Destruction Of C Force

      Mar 5, 2019

      The Destruction Of C Force
      11 min read

    • Article

      Byzantine Empire

      Jan 20, 2022

      Byzantine Empire
      3 min read

    • Article

      The Byzantine Navy

      Jan 20, 2022

      The Byzantine Navy
      3 min read

    • Article

      A Strategic Victory?

      Nov 28, 2019

      A Strategic Victory?
      3 min read

    • Article

      A Timeline Of The Impaler

      Sep 7, 2021

      A Timeline Of The Impaler
      1 min read

    • Article

      Bolivarian Wars

      Jun 13, 2019

      Bolivarian Wars
      2 min read

    • Article

      Behold, Emperor Xi

      Oct 13, 2022

      Behold, Emperor Xi
      6 min read

    • Article

      Fear And Loathing In Damascus

      May 9, 2024

      Fear And Loathing In Damascus
      3 min read

    • Article

      Battle Of Malakoff

      Nov 25, 2021

      Battle Of Malakoff
      12 min read

    • Article

      Teacher Of War

      Feb 17, 2022

      Teacher Of War
      1 min read

    • Article

      Blood and Sugar

      May 4, 2021

      Blood and Sugar
      9 min read

    • Article

      Kulikovo

      Dec 23, 2021

      Kulikovo
      11 min read

    • Article

      Hitler’s Two Armies

      Jul 7, 2020

      Hitler’s Two Armies
      9 min read

    • Article

      Clash Of Cultures

      Dec 19, 2017

      Clash Of Cultures
      3 min read

    • Article

      Hidden Histories

      Nov 23, 2023

      Hidden Histories
      2 min read

    • Article

      Eastern Enmities

      Feb 27, 2020

      Eastern Enmities
      5 min read

    • Article

      Eastern Promises

      Aug 1, 2024

      Eastern Promises
      9 min read

    • Article

      The Global Home Front

      Nov 30, 2023

      At the time of World War II, Britain still had a large empire, can these countries be said to have had ‘home fronts’ of their own? Absolutely. The ‘home front’ is a reified cultural presence in Britain; to ensure the kind of capture of the war’s impe

      4 min read

    • Article

      Hidden Histories

      Jul 9, 2020

      In the 1860s, the world watched in horror as the United States slid into the most deadly conflict in that nation’s history. One and a half centuries later, and the memory of the American Civil War, Abraham Lincoln and the great armies that fought in

      3 min read

    • Article

      Hong Kong Vice

      Jun 20, 2019

      Hong Kong Vice
      8 min read

    • Article

      VJ Day & The End Of The War

      Jul 10, 2020

      VJ Day & The End Of The War
      9 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Peking 1900

    5/5

    1 rating0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Peking 1900 - Peter Harrington

      READING

      The last stand of the Chinese at Langfang drawn by Frank Craig from a sketch by a British naval officer, and published in the Graphic on 25 August 1900. According to the officer who made the sketch, the train carrying around 900 British and Germans was attacked as it was going down to Yangtsun. The fighting lasted two hours and the scene shows Chinese troops trying unsuccessfully to save their banner. (Anne S.K. Brown Military Collection, Brown University Library)

      BACKGROUND TO THE SIEGE OF PEKING

      Simply put, the Boxer outbreak in North China in the summer of 1900 can be attributed directly to Chinese hatred of foreigners and foreign interference in their country. While there were other reasons for the revolt such as economic hardships brought on by poor harvests, floods and drought, they were all blamed on the ‘foreign devils’ who were encroaching on China in increasing numbers. In short, the Boxer Rebellion was a last gasp attempt to throw off the foreign yoke and preserve the Chinese culture, religion and way of life once and for all.

      While the immediate causes can be traced to various events in 1898 and 1899, these were merely a culmination of over 60 years of Chinese frustration of mounting foreign interference in their country. Following the Napoleonic Wars, the victorious nations were looking to expand their foreign markets through the acquisition of foreign lands, a phenomenon that would only end with the First World War. Britain in particular looked towards China as an untapped resource worth exploiting and fought two wars between 1839 and 1860 in order to secure a foothold in the vast country. The first conflict, known today as the Opium War, lasted from 1839 until 1842 and was the result of disagreements between Chinese officials and British merchants in the port of Canton particularly concerning the supply of opium from India. Success was achieved by British forces with the capture of Shanghai and Chinkiangfoo in the summer of 1842 resulting in the Treaty of Nanking, in which Hong Kong was ceded to Britain, a war indemnity of $20 million was levied on the defeated, and various Chinese ports were opened up to British trade. Seventeen years later, a combined Anglo-French force attacked the Taku (Dagu) Forts at the mouth of the Peiho (Baihe) River in order to force the Chinese emperor to grant further trade concessions. Peking (Beijing) was entered by allied forces on 12 October 1860.

      The Chinese encampment in the North Fort at Taku on the Peiho River photographed in 1860. On 25 June 1860, the British bombarded the forts at Taku but landing parties were beaten back with heavy casualties. Two months later following a short bombardment, the North Fort was stormed by British and French troops, and the other forts quickly surrendered. Peking was entered on 12 October 1860. (Anne S.K. Brown Military Collection, Brown University Library)

      French soldiers fighting Chinese on a bridge during the Tonkin War of 1884, in a drawing by E. Bouard. France had been trying to establish a colony in Indochina (present-day Vietnam) since the Anglo-French campaign against China in 1860. China regarded the region as her own and fought a number of small wars to try to repel the French. The latter scored a major victory over the Chinese at Son-Tay in December 1883. (Anne S.K. Brown Military Collection, Brown University Library)

      In the wake of the European military victories and the economic opportunities which they brought, came merchants and businessmen, arms dealers and engineers, missionaries and concessionaires, advisers and an odd assortment of unsavoury characters eager to make money at the expence of the Chinese. Both sides viewed the other with contempt, the Chinese poking fun at the physical characteristics of the Europeans such as their red hair and large noses, the Europeans seeing the Chinese as backward, racially inferior, and proof of Darwinian theories regarding the supremacy of the white race. The two sides did not mix well and the Europeans who moved into China created little enclaves where they lived apart from the Chinese. A few scholars and intellectuals tried to understand the natives by adapting to their dress and customs but the Chinese held them in contempt. The Catholic and Protestant churches felt it was their duty to ‘civilise’ the Chinese by introducing them to the Bible and the words of Jesus; and while they had some success in converting the local populations, most Chinese were highly cynical towards the Christian religion and ridiculed it. Both sides displayed absolute ignorance towards the other. Chinese reaction towards the foreigners took various forms, from violence and terrorism to passive resistance and xenophobic literature such as a publication entitled The Death Blow to Corrupt Doctrines in which the author poked fun at the Europeans in a derogatory fashion.

      ANTI-FOREIGN RIOTS

      It was in the southern provinces that the first anti-foreign incidents occurred during the decade 1886 to 1896. Earlier in 1875 a westerner had been murdered in Yunnan but it was the foreign presence in the south after 1884 which brought about the first significant developments. France had extended its empire into Tonkin by military conquest and the British were on China’s border in Burma, and through a series of treaties both were allowed to build railways in China, obtain mining concessions, open up routes and create trading stations. In the wake of the traders and businessmen were the missionaries. It was too much for the Chinese at Chungkung in Szechuan Province who destroyed the British consulate and other foreign buildings in July 1886. Three years later the foreign concession and consulates at Chinkiang were plundered and ruined by a Chinese mob. Next it was the turn of Hankow, where a riot led by students was swiftly put down, but these were just the beginning of a rapidly spreading movement which now began to attack Christian sites. A French Catholic orphanage was assailed but saved by French officials, and in May and June 1891 there were uprisings along the Yangtse River resulting in the death of several British citizens. While some of these attacks may have been spontaneous outpourings of Chinese hatred towards foreigners, there is evidence that some secret societies such as the anti-government Kao Lao Hui carried out attacks on missionaries hoping to embarrass the Manchus in Peking and bring about their fall. To many Chinese the Manchus were viewed as foreign usurpers – non-Chinese people from beyond the Great Wall who had conquered China as far back as 1644; they were to rule the country until their overthrow in 1912.

      The overall impact of these disturbances was slight but they brought about a marked shift in the policies of the western powers who built up significant naval forces to patrol the region in the early 1890s at the same time making it very clear that they would not tolerate any further outrages committed against their citizens. Nonetheless, serious anti-foreign outbreaks occurred especially in the north, which up till then had been relatively immune from foreign incursions. Furthermore, in 1895 the various western missionary organisations made a concerted effort to bring the message to every Chinese, an act viewed by many as a portent of worse things to come.

      SINO-JAPANESE WAR

      Further evidence of foreign interference in Chinese affairs was Japan’s invasion of Korea. This was in direct response to China’s landing of 2,000 troops near Asan, Korea, on 10 June 1894 to suppress the Tonghaks, a group of Korean nationalists opposed to the Korean government. China regarded Korea as a satellite; by contrast Japan wanted the country under her sphere of influence in order to westernise and modernise it. The showdown on the Korean peninsula led to a humiliating defeat for China as Japan’s western-trained and modelled army, and her British- and French-built ships proved more than a match for the large but ill-trained Chinese forces. After major defeats in September 1894 at Pyongyang and the Yalu River and in 1895 at Weihaiwai, the Chinese were forced to sue for peace and a treaty was signed at Shimonoseki on 17 April 1895. The victorious Japanese were granted concessions in China many of which were subsequently claimed by the other world powers. Large areas of the country had been devastated and many parts of the north were now subjected to occupation troops, resulting in serious economic disruptions and poor harvests. Compounding this were the thousands of returning Chinese soldiers who had not been paid and had no money, many of them resorting to crime to survive. Outrages against foreigners were on the rise in the north and there was an increase in membership of secret societies which actively sought out disgruntled veterans of the war.

      Chinese dead on the field of battle during the Sino-Japanese War. The war was a humiliating defeat for China’s armed forces, who were completely outmatched by the western-trained Japanese Army and Navy. (Anne S.K. Brown Military Collection, Brown University Library)

      While there was considerable anti-Japanese feeling in the north, this began to include all foreigners, who were regarded as the advance guard of a foreign invasion. There were rumours that missionaries had been seen importing and hiding cannon and stockpiling forage for the use of cavalry, but the cannon turned out to be galvanised iron stove pipes and the straw was for thatching. Nonetheless, it demonstrated the paranoia of the Chinese which was to some extent justified by the actions of the foreign powers. With China defeated and vulnerable they began to make more demands for special privileges, trade routes and railways, more mining concessions and even changes in the Chinese government. China had some success in resisting these demands but tensions developed in 1897 following the murder of two Germans in Shantung (Shandong) Province, a region identified as the centre of anti-foreign and anti-Christian activity. Germany was outraged and demanded territory as compensation. This presented Germany with the opportunity and excuse to finally secure a port on the Chinese coast and, sanctioned by the Kaiser, a German naval squadron occupied Kiaochow (Jiaozhou) Bay in Shantung Province forcing the Chinese to evacuate. To the Chinese, this was an outrage for

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1