Название: Boxer Rebellion: A History from Beginning to End
Автор: Hourly History
Издательство: Hourly History
Год: 2021
Язык: английский
Формат: pdf, mobi, epub
Размер: 10.18 MB

Discover the remarkable history of the Boxer Rebellion...

The Boxer Rebellion saw impoverished Chinese peasants strike a blow against the Western powers, particularly the British, who had come to challenge China’s sovereignty. The uprising was both a harbinger of things to come for China and a by-product of simmering decades of friction between the Chinese and the British. The Chinese had been able to call the shots during the initial engagement of trade with the West but lost control after the British began smuggling opium into the country. What was a lucrative product for British trade was devastating to the Chinese as addiction began to take its toll on the population. The British fought and won the Opium Wars, and with the victory came trade advantages that eroded China’s autonomy.

By the late 1800s, humiliated by Chinese military defeats, enraged by the encroachment of Christian missionaries, and alarmed at the role that Western influence played in China’s politics, a group of rebels known as the Boxers, so-named because of their emphasis on physical fitness and the martial arts, rose up against the foreign enemy and set the stage for cataclysmic changes to come in China’s history.

The Boxer Rebellion began in 1899, but its roots went deeper into the fertile but rocky soil that harvested the lucrative commerce between the Empire of China, which for centuries had been the dominant country in Asia, and Great Britain, which by the middle of the nineteenth century had built an “empire on which the sun never sets.” Many of the Western powers were engaged in trade with a sometimes-reluctant China, but it was Great Britain, flexing its imperial muscle, which took center stage in the conflict.

Great Britain had been on the losing end of the trade with China, as the British and the Western world were ardent buyers of Chinese goods, but the Chinese did not reciprocate when British goods were offered for sale. The financial future of the British East India Company was at risk. Then the Portuguese discovered a highly potent form of opium in India, one that was much more powerful - and addicting - than what the Chinese used in their medicines. The poppy which produced this opium was grown in Bengal, which was under the control of the British.
The Chinese tried to legislate the problem by making opium use illegal, but smugglers managed to bring in the powerful substance and sell it anyway. The British would go to battle against the Chinese twice in efforts to force China to legalize the opium trade. William Gladstone, a future British prime minister, regarded the Opium Wars as a disgrace upon the British nation. Still, profit ruled over principle, and the Chinese eventually capitulated to the British. This led them to open up more ports to British trade and grant Britain most-favored-nation trade status as well as legalize the sale of opium, despite the harm it inflicted on the Chinese who were becoming addicted to it.

The weakness of the Chinese military, combined with the fact that the Chinese government was powerless to keep the foreigners out of the Forbidden City, Beijing, was demoralizing for the Chinese, and the Qing Dynasty was held to blame. Resentment against foreigners mounted, and social unrest increased. Tensions between those in the government who saw advantages in encouraging trade with the West and those who recognized the threats to the Chinese way of life challenged the Qing Dynasty’s effectiveness and power. In the late 1890s, as northern China dealt with natural disasters which led to drought, depriving the citizens of employment and food, a group known as the Boxers arose.

The name “Boxer” probably came from the Christian missionaries in the area and referred to the Boxers’ emphasis on physical fitness and the martial arts. Yet the Yihequan, or the Society of Righteous and Harmonious Fists, the Boxers’ official name, were about much more than shadow boxing. They were determined to purify China by ridding it of the Western foreigners whose influence was dominating the Chinese government and sullying their ancient and cherished traditions. They resolved to purge the country of the missionaries whose Christian beliefs diminished the long-held Confucian precepts which had formed the Middle Kingdom, as China called itself.

Table of Contents:
Introduction
Trade with the Mighty Middle Kingdom
The First Opium War
The Second Opium War
The Self-Strengthening Movement
Rise of the Boxers
The Fight for Beijing
The Legacy of the Boxer Rebellion
Bibliography