What Was the Boxer Rebellion in China? - 0 views
-
The Boxer Rebellion was an anti-foreigner uprising in Qing China, which took place from November of 1899 through September of 1901.
-
The Boxers, known in Chinese as the "Society of Righteous and Harmonious Fists," were ordinary villagers who reacted violently against the increasing influence of foreign Christian missionaries and diplomats in the Middle Kingdom.
- ...8 more annotations...
-
During the nineteenth century, Europeans and Americans gradually imposed themselves and their beliefs more and more intrusively on the ordinary people of China, particularly in the eastern coastal region.
-
Suddenly, rude barbarian foreigners had arrived and begun to push Chinese people around, and the Chinese government seemed unable to stop this grave affront.
-
In reaction, the ordinary people of China decided to organize a resistance. They formed a spiritualist/martial arts movement, which included many mystical or magical elements such as the belief that the "Boxers" could themselves impervious to bullets.
-
The English name "Boxers" comes from the British lack of any word for martial artists, thus the use of the nearest English equivalent.
-
Initially, the Boxers lumped the Qing government in with the other foreigners who needed to be driven from China. After all, the Qing Dynasty was not ethnically Han Chinese, but rather Manchu.
-
Caught between the threatening western foreigners on the one hand, and an enraged Han Chinese populace on the other, the Empress Dowager Cixi and other Qing officials were initially unsure how to react to the Boxers.
-
the Qing and the Boxers came to an understanding, and Beijing ended up supporting the rebels with imperial troops.
-
Although the rulers and the nation survived this assault (barely), the Boxer Rebellion really signalled the beginning of the end for the Qing. Within ten or eleven years, the dynasty would fall and China's imperial history, stretching back perhaps four thousand years, would be over.