Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
outside world. By June 13 mobs of Boxers were rampaging freely
throughout Peking, burning foreign homes and churches, murdering
Chinese Christians on sight, and desecrating foreign graves. Most
ominously of all, on June 19, the empress dowager announced to the
legations that she was breaking off diplomatic ties with all foreign
nations and gave diplomats 24 hours to leave China under military
protection. Some left, but some were so worried about their personal
safety that they elected to remain behind in Peking. These concerns
were not entirely unwarranted; the next day, the German minister,
Clemens von Ketteler, was murdered by a mob.
The foreign legations, convinced that the Boxers and the empress
dowager meant to destroy their compounds and murder all foreigners,
had managed to get word out about their impending peril before
things got out of hand. Assembling an international relief force took
time, however, and until it arrived the diplomats and other foreigners
who had taken refuge in the legations had to endure a low-level,
muted siege. There was a lull in hostile demonstrations in July, and
at times the surrounding of the compounds was obviously halfhearted
and done more for show than anything else. By late July, real hostilities
against the legations were launched again, and the legations were not
relieved until August 14, when a combined force of 18,000 troops from
Japan, Russia, Britain, the United States, France, Austria, and Italy
arrived, lifted the siege against the legations, and then proceeded to
loot the city. Humiliated supporters of the Boxers committed suicide,
and the next day the empress dowager fled the city along with the
puppet emperor she dominated.
Li Hongzhang was left in Peking to negotiate with the foreigners.
Negotiations for a peace settlement and indemnities dragged on until
September 1901, when the Boxer Protocol was finally concluded. Its
provisions included huge indemnities for more than 10 nations.
Punishments were also specified for the hard-liners in the government
who had supported the Boxers and for the cities where Boxer activity
had been the most intense.
The Boxer Uprising and the allied relief expedition that quelled it
were both exceedingly humiliating to China. The predations of what
the Chinese dubbed the Allied Armies of Eight Nations robbed China
of much of its national esteem, and some Chinese turned from conde-
scension toward foreigners to outright fear of and toadying to them.
The onerous Boxer Indemnity payments impeded economic growth in
China, accelerated imperialistic designs to “carve up the Chinese
melon” among the foreign powers, and convinced many Chinese patri-
ots that the Qing government, which had done more than its share to
