Boxer Rebellion 1898-1901

Boxer Rebellion 1898-1901. Hillsborough County Veterans Memorial Park. , The Boxer Rebellion, Boxer Uprising or Yihetuan Movement, was an anti-foreign, pro-nationalist movement by the Righteous Harmony Society in China between 1898 and 1901, opposing foreign imperialism and Christianity. The uprising took place against a background of drought and economic disruption in response to growing foreign spheres of influence. Grievances ranged from political invasion ranging back to the Opium Wars and economic incursions, to missionary evangelism, which the weak Qing state could not resist. Concerns grew that missionaries could use the sponsorship of their home governments and their extraterritorial status to the advantage of Chinese Christians, appropriating funds and property of unwilling Chinese villagers to give to the church. , , After several months of growing violence against foreign and Christian presence in Shandong and the North China plain, in June 1900, Boxer fighters, convinced that they were invulnerable to foreign weapons, converged on Beijing with the slogan "support the Qing, exterminate the foreigners." They forced foreigners and Chinese Christians to seek refuge in the Legation Quarter. In response to reports of armed foreign landings and demands, the initially hesitant Empress Dowager Cixi, urged by the conservatives of the Imperial Court, supported the Boxers and on June 21 authorized war on foreign powers. , , A unit of 10,000 Hui Muslims from Gansu province under the command of the Han Chinese, General Dong Fuxiang had been stationed with The rest of the imperial army at Beijing since 1898. They were known as the "Kansu (Gansu) Braves". [98] Dong was extremely anti-foreign, and gave full support to Cixi and the Boxers. General Dong committed his Muslim troops, to join the Boxers to attack the Fight-Nation Alliance. They were put into the rear division, and attacked the legations relentlessly. Foreigners referred to them as the "10,000 Islamic rabble". (99) Casualties suffered be the Alliance at the hands of the Muslim troops were high enough that the United States Marine Corps, which was tasked with guarding U.S. ambassies, as it is today, was involved |100|[101] A Japanese chancellor, Sugiyama Akira was killed by the Muslim warriors who also assaulted and beat up several other foreigners. , , On 6 June 1900 the Times of London used the term "rebellion" in quotation marks, presumably to indicate their view that the rising was in fact instigated by the Empress Dowager. The historian Lanxin Xiang refers to the "so called Boxer Rebellion," and explains that while peasant rebellion was nothing new in Chinese history, a war against the world's most powerful states was" [138] The name "Boxer Rebellion,” concluded Joseph Esherick, another recent historian, is truly a "misnomer," for the Boxers "never rebelled against the Manchu rulers of China and their Qing dynasty" and the “most common Boxer stogan, throughout the history of the movement, was “support the Qing destroy the Foreign." He adds that only after the movement was suppressed by the Allied Intervention did both the foreign powers and influential Chinese officials realize that the Qing would have to remain as government of China in order to maintain order and collect taxes to pay the indemnity.