Boxer Rebellion (1898-1900)

A violent antiforeign revolt that occurred in north and northeast China between 1898 and 1900, launched by “the Righteous Harmony Fists” (Yiheqnan in Chinese) or Boxers.
A secret society that originally emerged in Shandong Province, the Boxers represented rural Chinese nativist resentment against increased Western enterprise and missionary activity, which it saw as posing a fatal threat to traditional Chinese village life. With peasants and lower classes as the backbone of membership, the Boxers detested the weak-kneed policy that the Qing (Manchu) government pursued toward foreign powers. The organization deemed Chinese martial arts and traditional superstitious rituals as the means to terminate foreign presence and influence in China. Pressed by foreign powers, the Qing court austerely suppressed the antiforeign terror committed by the Boxers under the slogan “Oppose the Qing Dynasty, Exterminate the Foreigners.” In 1900, the main forces of the Boxers shifted to Hebei Province, especially the Beijing and Tianjin regions, and undertook as their the strategy “Uphold the Qing, Exterminate the Foreigners.” This attitude won the support of conservatives in the Qing nobility and officialdom then under the ruling Empress Dowager Cixi, who seized the opportunity to rid China of foreign powers through this rebel group. With the
Qing government’s connivance and acquiescence, the Boxers launched a large-scale rebellion against railroads and telegraph lines that stood as symbols of Western imperialism, burned churches, and massacred foreign diplomats, missionaries, Chinese Christians, and other Chinese with foreign ties. The uprising culminated in a siege of foreign diplomatic legations in Beijing. To protect their interests and citizens, foreign powers including the United States dispatched an international expeditionary force to China in June 1900 and broke the siege in August. They forced the Qing government to accept the Protocol of 1900, which banned antiforeign activities in China and allowed foreign troops to be stationed in Beijing to protect the diplomatic legation and in 12 other major cities along the railroad from Beijing to Shanghai Guan Pass. In addition, it called for China to pay for the damages caused by the Boxers.