The Boxer Rebellion Essay, Research Paper

The Chinese Boxer Rebellion

Around 1900, after many years of succumbing to the superior

military of the West, the Chinese stood up for their country. China

was a weak, backwards, country, exploited by the West. They felt that

they could counter the foreign domination, but reforms were useless

because they needed the West to help with the reforms. But something

sparked their confidence, and they believed themselves to be able to

conquer any foreign power. This spark was the Society of Harmonious

Fists, commonly known as “Boxers.” Combined with unhappy people, and

new weapons technology, the Chinese rebelled against the foreign

powers.

The first reason of this confidence was the Boxer Society, which

formed in North China after the Sino-Japanese war, but wasn’t well

known until 1898 in Shantung. This organization was actually a cult,

following strange and absurd practices of defense. It had no central

leaders, and the practices varied in different locations. Their goal

was to rid China of the foreign menace. The boxers were different from

most other rebels of their time. They would conduct public physical

exercises that were supposed to make a magical shield to protect one

against foreign bullets and shells. These looked similar to a boxers

training exercises so the westerners nicknamed the members of the

Society of Harmonious Fists “Boxers.” Rather then using foreign

weapons, they relied on magical spirits and swords, knives, staves,

and polearms to drive the foreign devils from their precious home

country. The membership of this group consisted of mostly the

criminals, poor, and illiterate of China who wore a simple uniform

consisting of a red armband, sash, or waistcloth. These people truly

believed that magic would protect them, and help remove the foreigners

from China. That gave them enough confidence to try to destroy the

foreigners. Missionaries were killed, railroads were destroyed, and

churches were burned all in the name of independence from foreign

rule.

Another key aspect in the rebellions against the west was a

series of natural disasters that swept China during the last decade of

the nineteenth century. Famine struck, droughts prevented the planting

of crops, and to top it all, the Yellow river flooded, causing the

destruction of 1,500 villages and 2,500 square miles of countryside.

These disaster lead to unhappiness of the people. In order to keep

them from turning on the government, the Dowager Empress, Tsu Hsi,

encouraged the peasants to rebel against the foreigners. Some of these

angry people joined the Boxers, and others rebelled alone, but they

had the Empress behind them, giving them encouragement, and making

them feel ready to take on the demons from the West.

The third reason that the Chinese felt ready to face the West,

was a new weapons technology. This was the machine gun, which had both

physical and symbolic power. It could physically kill many more people

then a regular rifle, because of its ability to spray bullets and fire

more then one round per pulling of the trigger. Symbolically, it

represented a method which the west had used to subdue the Chinese,

and now the Chinese were going to use it against the west. This

inspired confidence and made the people ready to fight, knowing that

they could fight machine gun with machine gun.

The Chinese were tired of being looked down at by the west. The

people were unhappy, armed, or bullet proof, and the Queen encouraged

them to fight the west. With all this support how could one not feel

ready to fight the West?