|
| |
The Boxer Rebellion, 1900: A Selection of Books, Prints and Photographs
From: The British Library
| By:
Frances Wood |
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION |
In China in 1900, rebels calling themselves Boxers attacked foreign missionary settlements and then the diplomatic quarter in Peking. Their rebellion was brutally suppressed by an international army. It was a defining event in the relationship between the Qing dynasty in its final years and the western powers. Frances Wood, author and curator in the Chinese section at The British Library, introduces a display from the library's collections of western and Chinese images of the rebellion, and of literature inspired by it. |
 | |
| Detail from a Chinese nianhua print of the Boxer Rebellion. | |
 n late nineteenth-century China, popular unrest was provoked by famine, an enfeebled central government, and the perception that foreigners were taking control of the country. In the north-eastern province of Shandong, a rebel group which practised martial arts, called 'The Boxers United in Righteousness', launched attacks on German missionaries. |
The movement spread through North China. Isolated missionary settlements were attacked; railway stations and lines were destroyed and, with official support, the Boxers besieged the Legation or diplomatic quarter in Peking (Beijing) between June 20 and August 14 when a joint force of British, American, French, German, Japanese, Russian, Italian and Austrian troops arrived. |
Books by survivors of the Siege of the Legations or missionary massacres rarely acknowledge that most victims of the Boxers, whether Christian converts or simply innocent residents, were Chinese; and the Chinese government was humbled and financially crippled by the terms demanded by the foreign powers. |
 | |
| From Barrow's photographs 'with the China Expeditionary Force' (Shelfmark: Ms.Eur D 1114/3). | |
|
The British commanders
General Sir George de Symons Barrow (1864-1959) served in China under General Sir Alfred Gaselee (1844-1918). Barrow's volume of photographs 'with the China Expeditionary Force' depict many of the main characters of the rebellion. Gaselee, seated, managed to get his British and Indian troops into Peking ahead of all the others. |
The China Martyrs
 | |
| R.C. Forsyth, The China Martyrs, London, 1904. | |
R.C. Forsyth's 'complete roll of the Christian heroes martyred in China in 1900' is characteristic of the many volumes published shortly after the Boxer uprising, offering graphic detail of the murder of missionaries, especially women and children. It was also a matter of some pride that 'the Boxer massacres produced more Protestant martyrs than all the previous decade of the Protestant Church's history in China'. |
Chaplain to the relief forces
 | |
| F. Brown, From Tientsin to Peking with the Allied Forces, London, 1902. | |
The Rev. Frederick Brown of the Methodist Episcopal Mission in Tianjin volunteered as a chaplain since, as he said, British soldiers fought better if they felt they had the chance of a Christian burial nearby. Brown listed General Barrow's marching orders for the British force which included Royal Welsh Fusiliers, Royal Engineers, Bengal Lancers, with Sikhs and Rajputs bringing up the rear. Brown described how 'The British race had relieved the legations, notwithstanding that they had given an undertaking "not to lead the column"; but they had carried off the honours' and must have been heartily disliked by their comrades-in-arms as a result. |
Fictionalised Boxers
 | |
| Captain Charles James Louis Gilson, The Lost Column: a story of the Boxer rebellion, London, 1909. | |
Captain Gilson wrote a number of adventure stories with Chinese settings. His Boxer-inspired ripping yarn starts in Meadows Road, Tianjin, where rumours of wild-eyed swordsmen lurking in the marshes with their 'yellow skin' and 'cruel cunning slanting eyes' are dismissed as 'Bosh! Unmitigated bosh!' by the comfortable inhabitants of the Treaty Port with all its western conveniences and eastern servants. Gilson served with the post-Boxer Allied Army of Occupation in China when he acquired much misinformation, declaring quite erroneously that there was no word for 'sympathy' in the Chinese language. |
Chinese Christians
In this frontispiece to yet another version of the plight of Shanxi missionaries on their flight to Hankou, the grouping is unusual as it shows some of the missionaries stationed in Pingyao, numerically overwhelmed by Chinese Christians.  Many more Chinese than missionaries died, but Saunders concentrates on such as 'Mrs Cooper who said, "I just want to rest awhile." God gave her rest indeed' and Miss Huston who passed away silently but of whom Miss Gates reported, 'On that dreadful journey, after she had been most cruelly treated, she said to me again and again that it was a great joy to her to be counted worthy to have fellowship with Christ in His Sufferings.' |
A perilous adventure
 | |
| G.A.Henty, With the Allies to Pekin: a story of the relief of the legations, London, 1904. | |
One of the best-known authors of books for boys, G.A.Henty (1832-1902) 'prided himself on his historical fidelity and manly sentiments'. His hero, from a Tianjin trading family, expresses unusually liberal views. He condemns 'the game of grab' in which foreign powers 'seized ports and territories' in China. He also sees missionary activity as possibly contributing to Boxer anti-foreignism: 'our people interfering with their customs and religions all over the country.' |
Sir Robert Hart and the Boxers
 | |
| Sir Robert Hart, The Peking Legations, Shanghai, 1900. | |
Sir Robert Hart (1835-1911) worked for the Chinese government as Inspector-General of the Imperial Customs Service. He might have considered himself safe from attack by the Boxers, but had to take refuge in the Legation quarter. His pamphlet begins with the words, 'We cannot say we had no warning' and he presents some of the Chinese background to the siege: the recent defeat of reformers at court, the unlucky omen of the intercalary month falling in the eighth month of that year and the widespread belief that the Boxers, through their martial arts, were impervious to foreign bullets. |
Pony-steak and stew
 | |
| Rev. Z. Chas Beals, China and the Boxers, New York, 1901. | |
An American Baptist missionary, the Rev. Z. Chas Beals, explained the causes of the Boxer uprising as hatred of foreigners which arose from 'abuse from foreigners themselves' and 'political land grabbing'. He echoed a common (Protestant) complaint, accusing Chinese Christians of entering the church (especially Roman Catholic) for the purpose of raising law-suits and obtaining support from their pastor. Beals described the siege diet of 'pony-steak and stew' and included 'The Song of the Siege' by the Rev. C. H. Fern, sung to the American tune 'Tramp, tramp, tramp, the boys are marching'. |
A Boxer leaflet
 | |
| A Boxer leaflet (Shelfmark Or. 5896/21). | |
Picked up from the flagstones on August 28 1900, when foreign troops marched into the Forbidden City after the imperial court had fled, this is a sort of 'chain leaflet'. It orders the faithful to copy it and distribute the copies (or face beheading). The leaflet accuses the Christian churches of failing to produce rain to end the disastrous drought in north China, and offers a remedy in the case of ingesting foreign poison. |
The translation of the leaflet was made by the Rev. Arthur Henderson Smith, a missionary who also wrote of his experiences of the siege and produced two sociological studies of Chinese life. |
Attack on a Russian paddle-steamer at Shanhaiguan
Coloured woodblock prints like this were commonly made in China to decorate houses at the New Year; they are often known as nianhua or 'New Year prints'.  From the middle of the nineteenth century, nianhua were also produced as broadsheets, to be pasted on walls to bring news to an illiterate or semi-literate public. Here, popular sentiment is being stirred up against the Russians with whom the Chinese were losing negotiations over territory. The paddle-steamer has been damaged by submarine mines laid by the troops of Dong Fuxiang (1839-1908) and there appear to be many casualties. It was Dong Fuxiang's Gansu army that subsequently attacked the Legation quarter during the Boxer uprising. |
Donations to help Zeng Guoquan destroy the Russian Army
Towards the end of the nineteenth century,  China faced territorial erosion on all sides, as foreign powers demanded 'spheres of influence' in China. As soon as one foreign power gained a concession, others demanded parity. Such pressures helped to fuel anti-foreign feeling which was part of the Boxer ideology but also permeated the imperial court. Boxes and baskets full of silver ingots are presented to Zeng Guoquan and he salutes his supporters with his hands clasped within the long sleeves of his robe. |
The taking of the Dagu forts
Nianhua prints present the Chinese version of the Boxer uprising, in contrast to the many books published by Westerners.  This nianhua, with its lake-side willows, plum blossom and pine-covered mountains, celebrates the attack by Dong Fuxiang's troops on the Dagu (Taku) forts which guarded the coast near Tianjin. Encouraging news of this temporarily successful attack encouraged the Dowager Empress to declare war, putting the Chinese government firmly behind the Boxers. |
The recapture of Tianjin
After gaining access to the city arsenal,  the Boxers bombarded Tianjin in June 1900, as Admiral Seymour and his expeditionary force, bound for Peking, were attacked by Dong Fuxiang's forces just outside the city. The bombardment inflicted considerable damage, especially on the Chinese houses inside the walled Chinese city. The more solid, western buildings of the foreign concessions fared better. This nianhua is dominated by the city walls and there is a group of soldiers with tiger shields in the bottom right-hand corner. |
Dong Fuxiang's great victory over the Western troops
In another version of the attack on Tianjin,  Dong Fuxiang is credited with victory. Bodies and limbs are hurled skywards in explosions, and foreign troops in flat caps retreat before the turban-wearing Boxers. At the bottom, a Japanese lady is helped to safety. The relationship between Boxers and Chinese imperial troops was confused: some imperial generals continued to suppress them, others, like Dong Fuxiang, openly supported the Boxers. |
Foreigners die endlessly
 Beneath the tiger flag, a Boxer, labelled quanmin (one of the 'fist people'), holds up a foreigner's head to be exchanged for boat-shaped silver ingots, offered as a reward. In the background is a group of officials and soldiers presiding over the ceremony. In the bottom left-hand corner is a scene inscribed 'foreigners die endlessly'. |
Dong Fuxiang's victory at Beicang
A great victory was achieved on August 1 (converted from the lunar calendar)  on the outskirts of Tianjin by Dong Fuxiang's forces, presumably harrying the foreign forces that were assembling there to march to Peking and relieve the siege. The joint force took time to assemble (the British were concurrently preoccupied with the Boer War) and even longer to organise itself due to internal rivalries. When it did set out, on August 4, it moved swiftly and decisively through Boxer and imperial army resistance. |
Interrogation of Russian and Japanese prisoners
 A line of officials wearing red-topped hats preside in judgement over captured soldiers. The Japanese are referred to by the derogatory term of 'dwarfs' used in traditional China. The prisoners are kept in a cage on the left. Such official occasions are unlikely to have taken place often. A French surgeon photographed the interrogation of Boxers captured by foreign troops, and noted that they were invariably shot afterwards. |
The Great Yongle collectanea
The Yongle emperor of the Ming dynasty presided over a vast manuscript project intended to copy and preserve 'all known literature up to that day'. By 1408,  the project had been completed, in nearly 23,000 sections or juan, of which only about 700 survive today. A copy was kept in the Hanlin academy, which adjoined the British Legation and which burned down on the June 23, 1900. There are still arguments about how the fire started, but the precious manuscripts were destroyed or scattered. One volume was presented to The British Library by C.H. Brewitt-Taylor of Robert Hart's Imperial Maritime Customs Service who survived the siege with his family. |
|
| |
