THE Qing dynasty ruled China between 1644 and 1912AD. This dynasty rose from its nomadic lands in Manchuria to sweep across China. They took Peking in 1644 and gained control of the central government establishing ultimately what came to be known as the ‘celestial empire’ extending from Mongolia to Burma.
The last century of their rule was a period of introvertionism and conservatism imposed on the Chinese society through strict Confuciasism. It was also a century of incursions by European nations through trading concessions extracted by them from a weakling Chinese central authority. The first half of the 19th century saw en mass drug addition among the Chinese populace aided by an inflow of opium as a barter commodity for Chinese tea, silk and porcelain.
The British, safeguarding their opium trade, forced the first opium war in 1840 on China, which resulted in degrading treaties imposed on it. Soon, European nations, after dividing the continent of Africa, dispensed the same colonial dose on a weak China. This is where the carving up of China started.
The Russians acquired Port Arthur and later the Liayong peninsula, the British got leasehold of Hong Kong and new territories around it. The Germans got hold of Shantung. Tong King was made a French protectorate, and Burma was ceded to the British in 1886.
Profitable leases for all railways and mining interests in China were further acquired by western nations at gun-point. When in 1895, the neo-colonialist power that existed close by, that is, the rising Japan, defeated China, it also got its share of the country’s goodies. They got control of the Dairen peninsula, Weihaiwei, Shatung and Seoul. China also ceded Taiwan to Japan.
Such was the degradation inflicted upon the Chinese nation by the foreigners that it altered the traditional structure of the Chinese society causing many upheavals. An uprising against the usurping European commercial and political influence arose in the countryside and secret societies were formed to overthrow the Qing dynasty, and to destroy the foreigners.
During the final years of the 19th century, a revolutionary society by the name of “boxers” in American parlance, but called “Pinyin Yihetuan Qiyi”, literally meaning “fist of righteous harmony”, surfaced. Western nations called the boxers a terrorist movement and dubbed it as a “rebellion” in the true jargon of colonial justification for curbing the independence movement. Some called them “urban thugs”.
The boxers’ belief in facing up to European peccadilloes was soon translated into a message of death to the foreigners and their supporters. In 1900, the boxers started raiding western outposts, missionaries and Chinese converts. There was carnage and cruelties and killing at the hand of the boxers in the countryside. With tacit approval from the withering Qing court, the boxers launched further attacks burning churches, offices and murdering some diplomatic officials.
By June 1800, foreigners and Chinese converts were held in captivity in Peking. To relieve their co-religionists and collaborators in custody of the boxers, a multinational force of 9,000 consisting of American, Russian, British, French, German, Italian and Japanese troops was raised, which fought its way inland and captured Beijing on 14 August, 1800. This force annihilated the defending boxers.
German troops under direct orders of Kaiser Wilhelm II were the main torturer of the fallen boxers. Foreign troops began to loot Peking till there was nothing left to loot.
The boxer uprising ended in forcing the imperial government to agree to very humiliating terms of the so-called Boxer Protocol of 1901. Under the protocol, European powers got the rights to keep their troops in Peking.
The protocol suspended the import of arms into the country. A huge sum of $300 million was imposed as indemnity on the Chinese government. Under the terms of the protocol all Chinese officials who had a role in the rebellion were to be executed.
The indignities of the Boxer Protocol ultimately led to a general uprising in 1911, when the ruling Qing dynasty was dethroned and the Republic of China was established.
So, to this day, the boxer rebellion is known as an important historic landmark in the political history of China.
