Posted on 05/31/2019 6:56:45 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Despite the U.S. declaring an “Open Door Policy” in support of China’s sovereignty, U.S. Marines on May 31, 1900 invaded China to help defeat the Boxer Rebellion.
With imperial Great Britain, Germany, Austria-Hungary, France, Japan, and Russia trying to carve China into colonies, Secretary of State John Hay in the fall of 1899 declared the United States would honor an “Open Door Policy” that respected Chinese territorial and administrative integrity and allowed equal trading privileges for all nations.
Nineteenth-century imperialists had forced China’s ruling Qing Dynasty to accept foreign dominance over much of China’s economic affairs. Two Opium Wars with the British between 1839-42 and 1856-60, the Taiping Rebellion from 1850-1864, and the Sino-Japanese War between 1894-95 caused extensive economic and political decline.
China's population had tripled to 450 million by 1899. The combination of land shortages, cyclical famines, and an increasingly impoverished rural population, coupled with heavy taxes, inflation, and greedy local officials worsened the farmer's plight.
Chinese hatred of foreign influences was spurred to action in the 1890s by the "I Ho Ch'uan." Known as the “Boxers,” the secret society of "Righteous and Harmonious Fists" believed their fighting rituals gave them supernatural powers to oppose the Qing Dynasty and all foreign influences, especially foreign missionaries and Christians.
Provincial leaders and the Chinese Imperial Court led by the Empress Dowager Tzu Hsi initially opposed the Boxers. But the 1896-97 drought across east-central China caused millions of farmers to turn their support the Boxers by 1898.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
Indeed. I know the history of it quite well.
Thank you though, for laying it out; there’s many folks who do not know the history.
“55 Days At Peking” was a very good movie.
I’m sure it twists some millennials panties if they watched it... Or knew what “Boxer Rebellion’ was about.
Probably envision Mike Tyson vs. Holyfield...
3 Marines on a 3 day liberty pass becomes a Marine Invasion when the history is written.
There were about 50 Marines in the Legation Siege with 19 casualties (3 dead, 16 wounded). A Marine battalion was engaged in Tiensin with the 9th U.S. Infantry Regiment. The Relief of Peking including the 14th U.S. Infantry Regiment, the 6th U.S. Cavalry, elements of the 5th U.S. Artillery and a battalion of Marines. They had light casualties. The Americans was about 3,000 in total with 1,000 of them Marines. The relief column came from many nations including Great Britain, Germany, Japan, Italians.
RE in 1920s China:
Yes, I believe it was 1926, if I remember the intro correctly.
The battle on the river blockade is classic... facing Steve McQueen with a Browning Automatic Rifle in his hands ... truly a terrifying prospect :^)
“...twists some millennials panties ...”
Yeah, that’s a for sure certainty...
But then again, EVERYTHING twists the Cyberdyne Systems Type 101 “Snowflake” Models’ panties.
Great movie
Sounds like a nationalistic, right-wing populist uprising!!!
I don’t know about the millennials, but I do know that those who were around when the movie came out in 1963 didn’t take to it, since it bombed at the box office.
It’s a decent action film, with some romance thrown in. Personally, I am more partial to Heston’s effort from three years later, as General Gordon in Khartoum. Though it is even more historically inaccurate than 55 Days, it was a thrill when I saw it as a kid in the theater. And I swear when I saw it they actually showed Heston’s severed head on a pole at the end, not the edited version that has been around for years.
Oppressive invaders must die, that’s just how it is. Nat Turners slave revolt is another example. People complain that he killed innocents. If I was captured and made a slave in some ISIS stronghold, in my escape/revolt I would kill any and all ISIS I could without much discrimination.
Not every missionary or every foreigner was spearheading another opium war. It was not only brutal and unjust to just murder every foreigner in sight, it was also stupid. In making enemies of the rest of the world, they managed to get their asses kicked extra hard.
“...the boxers took to murdering foreigners (and Chinese Christians) wherever they could find them. Many completely peaceful and unarmed missionaries were among the victims...” [FLT-bird, post 5]
A strictly Western interpretation, and a self-serving one.
The fists of Righteous Harmony (to give them their title in local parlance) was a movement composed principally of peasants from northern regions and other rural provinces. They objected to modernization and economic exploitation in general, but the spiritual imperialism of Christian missionaries loomed larger. Railroads didn’t merely deprive indigenous boatmen and carters of livelihood, they violated sacred burial grounds. Telegraph lines hummed and whirred in the winds - an affront to native spirits of the air.
Proselytizing missionaries were a more serious cultural incursion: Chinese converts to Christian beliefs were not welcomed as bearers of “Good News,” they were traitors to the unconverted. Missionaries weren’t brightening the lives of peasants with enlightenment, they were fifth columnists and pre-invasion special forces, ridiculing traditional beliefs.
Imperial German seizure of Tsingtao in Shantung Province on the pretext of the murder of two German missionaries is considered the immediate cause of the Boxer Rebellion. With characteristic Prussian thoroughness, functionaries began an extensive program of “Germanization,” including punitive expeditions that destroyed local villages, provoking reactions from Shantung’s peasantry in 1898; the first counter-moves made by the Boxers were murders of Christian converts among their countrymen. Assassination of Western missionaries came next.
Long displeased by the high-handedness of Western powers but seemingly powerless to stop it, Dowager Empress T’zu-hsi saw in the Boxers a means to defeat the imperial exploiters. First, she ordered Imperial Chinese troops to avoid suppressing Boxer uprisings in outlying districts, but when the Boxers entered Peking she told her soldiers to help.
Floods and drought in 1900 exacerbated tensions in northern China, precipitating harvest failures. Attacks on Chinese Christians and foreign missionaries rose sharply; survivors and panicked Westerners flocked to Peking. They crowded into the Legation Quarter; the British minister in charge telegraphed the allied fleet anchored 100 miles downriver. Almost 350 sailors and marines arrived on 31 May 1900.
Boxers decapitated the Japanese Legation Chancellor and cut out his heart on 9 June; on 20 June, a Chinese soldier shot the German Minister to the Imperial Chinese government. This act marked the official start of the Siege of the Legation.
Some 3000 people had taken refuge inside the compound, of whom more than 2000 were Chinese Christian converts seeking sanctuary. Over 600 non-Chinese civilians were present; all were defended by 409 soldiers, sailors, and marines. Beyond personal-issue rifles, they were armed with three machine guns and four light artillery pieces. Food & water were adequate; fresh meat was available from the 150 polo ponies that had been brought in for Race Week.
A relief force of 2000 allied troops set out from Tientsin but was turned back and had to fight its way to Tientsin, which itself had been besieged by 20,000 Boxers. Among the wounded were John Jellicoe and David Beatty, who both commanded the Royal Navy’s Grand Fleet during the First World War.
The Legation remained secure, thanks in part to the inability of Boxers and regular Chinese troops to coordinate attack or to employ more than two Krupp field pieces out of dozens on hand; many were found, still in packing crates, after the siege was lifted.
Deprived of information, the Western press multiplied fictions, mostly horror stories of how the Legation had been overrun and all survivors slaughtered.
Another allied relief expedition, 25,000 strong and commanded by a Russian general, set out from Tientsin on 5 August. British and Japanese troops entered the city on 14 August, raising the siege. Total losses in the Legation were 66 dead, 150 wounded.
The Imperial Chinese court fled, the Boxers melted away, and some 75 percent of Peking’s population retreated into the countryside; Westerners (including many civilians who had just been rescued) took revenge by looting.
there is no doubt the Opium Wars were awful. Its certainly true that foreigners had bitten off chunks of China with the British and French foremost among them.
However, butchering unarmed civilians, cannot be seen as anything but a barbarous act guaranteed to incur universal opprobrium. Had they merely expelled them it would be one thing but that is not what they did. Also, murdering an ambassador is not something that is going to be looked upon favorably by anyone. Doing this to every other significant power on earth all at once was just downright stupid. In the end, it got a lot of boxers mowed down and the cost to China was far far greater than had they acted with more restraint.
If you must fight, try not to take on the whole world. That tends to not turn out very well.
“...Japan invaded China in 1937 and declaration of its Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere in 1940 ( that was also the start of the infamous Rape of Nanjing0...”[SeekAndFind, post 6]
Wrong.
Imperial Japan invaded Manchuria - then as now part of mainland China - in September 1931. The Japanese had already badgered the Chinese into many concessions, but wanted to expand control and claim larger shares of Chinese resources. They set up a puppet state, occupied the region and extended their takeover of territory in other areas until surrendering in 1945; many historians date the start of World War Two to the 1931 invasion, though academics seem to have retreated from this interpretation in recent years.
The Rape of Nanking or Nanjing Massacre began in December 1937 and went of for six weeks. This depredation was characteristic behavior of the Imperial Japanese Army after taking a city, and stands out only in terms of extent.
The entire notion that the United States provoked Japan to start warring is absurd. As a quick-maturing industrial nation cursed with a booming population Japan had been searching ever more desperately for additional resources, and subject populations. Its critique of European and US colonial actions can be argued both ways, but its treatment of natives in Korea, China, Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, New Guinea, and other spots gives the lie to any claim that the Japanese were really interested in justice for locals, or in removing the oppressive imperial yoke. In every instance, their mastery and exploitation was far more cruel, oppressive, and unjust. And their historical attitudes are the stuff of actual history and legend, dating back centuries: well before America existed to be blamed.
Much like Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan’s assertions that it was being cornered and felt threatened were a joke. And an excuse.
Americans of 1940 didn’t possess the guile nor the patience to scheme in the manner some conspiracy theorists believe. We still don’t.
“...Its certainly true that foreigners had bitten off chunks of China with the British and French foremost among them...
...butchering unarmed civilians, cannot be seen as anything but a barbarous act guaranteed to incur universal opprobrium...Also, murdering an ambassador is not something that is going to be looked upon favorably by anyone. Doing this to every other significant power on earth all at once was just downright stupid..it got a lot of boxers mowed down...”
Factually wrong and conceptually narrow.
Britain did have the longest history of incursion into Imperial China, but the French were barely present (they concentrated on Northwest Africa and Southeast Asia). I have no knowledge of Austrian actions there.
By 1900 the largest imperial players in China were the Russians and the Japanese. Portugal had a longstanding coastal presence but by 1900 was moribund. The Germans, still brimming with confidence from their unification, were feeling adventurous at unpredictable moments, and muscled their way into Tsingtao as a challenge to the British more than anything.
The Americans had recently acquired large territories from a receding Imperial Spain; no one trusted their noisy moralizing and their protestations of kindly intent. All the powers present in China were polite to each other on the surface, but tensions seethed just below. The United States was looked on by the rest as the least stable element.
Your devotion to Western conventions about the innocence of civilians and the diplomatic niceties are precious, but they do not enjoy the universality you seem to have bestowed on them. Not so long ago, they did not exist; even after the rise of Europe and America, societies with a longer history like China could look on us as barbarians full of nothing save pretense.
Considering what the Western imperialists did to the Chinese, I suspect it’s unwise to denigrate them for any perceived lack of rationality in dealing with foreigners. Just because they’ve often been quieter and more polite than many Westerners doesn’t mean they did not feel insulted. Nor outraged. Straight-up rationality doesn’t come easy to someone whose entire nation and society has come under assault to that degree.
Certainly the central government of China behaved problematically in the late 19th century. One must recall that much of it was paralyzed by corruption and ossification in the face of Industrial-Age modernity. Doesn’t mean that they lacked valid gripes.
It’s probably a waste of time to be upset about the Chinese lack of reverence for human life, innocent or otherwise. Claim a superior understanding of absolute truth, or Divine Inspiration as you like, but the great mass of Chinese simply won’t take you seriously. They’ve such a surfeit of humanity that each individual matters less to them. We might disapprove of their take on things, but I do not foresee that will sway them, any time soon.
After reading the comments on utube, is quite different from not being interested in it.
Anyhow, to each their own. I liked it!
That was a very impressive scene. As was the shot out at the missionary school.
Historically inaccurate and really, quite a foolish take.
Backward, primitive, ultra nationalist Chinese chose to go miles out of their way to turn every other significant power on earth against them with their barbaric wanton murders of civilians and diplomats. By supporting that, the Chinese government managed to get China's ass kicked extra special hard. Foreign military forces rolled in, CRUSHED the boxers with gusto, then set about sacking China's palaces. Then China was forced to pay a heavy indemnity.
That was all foreseeable when a country decides to try to take on every single other significant power all at once. Adolf would follow this same recipe later and would get Germany's ass kicked extra special hard by everybody else.
The morons even managed to make enemies of countries that did not have colonial possessions in China - like America. Your devotion to Mao-ist and current Chicom propaganda is cute and all but its not historically accurate and its extra special stupid - and led to disaster before and would lead to disaster again. If they follow the same policy prescriptions again, they'll get their asses severely kicked again. Hopefully, they've actually learned a thing or two from their last bitter experience.
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