Let’s remember the other side of the story.....which is that the boxers took to murdering foreigners (and Chinese Christians) wherever they could find them. Many completely peaceful and unarmed missionaries were among the victims - including women and children - and the Imperial German ambassador was murdered by a large crowd.
There is a reason why Austria-Hungary, Britain, France, Russia, Italy, Britain. America and Japan all allied against them. The Dowager Empress and her advisors were obviously playing a double game of publicly condemning the violence while privately encouraging the boxers. This fooled nobody. Whatever China’s grievances (some clearly legit), just murdering every foreigner they could get their hands on was barbaric, unjust and quite stupid.
A fascinating read is to read some books on the Taping Rebellion. Here is one I recommend
This tragedy is little known here in the US.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiping_Rebellion#History
Some historians claim more people died in this conflict then WWI & WWII combined.
It left the Chinese very leery of the west and set the stage for the Boxers and even Mao. Mao liked to compared himself to its leader Hong Xiuquan.
The demands of those missionaries were shockingly abusive and included land. Mark Twain documented it quite well. And the Germans were among the worst.
Dress it up however you want, beginning with the Opium wars where the Brits forced China to allow British dope in, there was a land rush where western powers invaded and carved up “spheres of influence”. They demanded subservience to their missionaries, and every offense was met with demands for silver and land or another port.
The Boxers were doing what anyone does to an invader.
And the effects of it ripple down to this day where we have a virulently anti-western China to deal with. Of all the abuses in China of that era, the Opium wars and the Germans were by far the worst.
“There is a reason why Austria-Hungary, Britain, France, Russia, Italy, Britain. America and Japan all allied against them.”
Yeah, to gain territory for their empires.
“Whatever China’s grievances (some clearly legit), just murdering every foreigner they could get their hands on was barbaric, unjust and quite stupid.”
What would you do if the African, Arab, Chinese and Mexican invasion here progressed to the point that those foreign nations began to carve up and administer the USA and demanded the US government enforce their edicts?
I’d plot, and kill everyone of them I could.
“...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.