Boxer Rebellion

In 1840, the first Opium War broke out between Britain and China. This and the second Opium War were fought due to disputes over the importation of opium - the Chinese wanted to ban opium, while the British demanded they had a right to sell it to the Chinese population. France, Russia, and Japan also started to exert influence over China. Due to their inferior weapons and navy, the Qing Dynasty was forced to sign many agreements which became known as the "Unequal Treaties". These include the Treaty of Nanking (1842), the Treaty of Aigun (1858), the Treaty of Tientsin (1858), the Convention of Peking (1860), the Treaty of Shimonoseki (1895), and the Second Convention of Peking (1898). Such treaties were regarded as grossly unfair by many Chinese and increased their ill-will towards foreigners as well as their frustration towards the Imperial government. In the late 19th century such feelings increasingly spawned civil disobedience and violence towards both foreigners and Chinese Christians. Anti-western movement The uprising is named for the society known as the Righteous Harmony Society (???) or in contemporary English parlance, "Boxers", a group which initially opposed, but later reconciled itself, to China's ruling Manchu Qing Dynasty. Before the rebellion, there were many modest sources of tension between Chinese and foreigners. Chinese disliked the privileges they perceived foreigners enjoyed based on the new treaties. In Guizhou, local officials were shocked to see a cardinal using a sedan chair decorated in the same manner as one reserved for the governor. The Catholic Church's prohibition on some Chinese rituals and traditions were another issue of contention. The Boxer uprising was concentrated in northern China where the European powers had begun to demand territorial, railroad, and mining concessions. Imperial Germany responded to the killing of two missionaries in Shandong province in November 1897 by seizing the port of Qingdao. In the month after a Russian squadron took possession of Lushun, in southern Liaoning. Britain and France followed, taking possession of Weihai and Zhanjiang respectively. Boxer forces in TianjinBoxer activity developed in Shandong province in March 1898 in response to both foreign penetration and the failure of the Imperial court's "self-strengthening" strategy of officially-directed development, whose shortcomings had been shown graphically by China's defeat in the Sino-Japanese War (1894-1895). One of the first signs of unrest appeared in a small village in Shandong province, where there had been a long dispute over the property rights of a temple between locals and the Catholic authorities. The Catholics claimed that the temple was originally a church abandonned decades previously after the then Kangxi Emperor banned Christianity in China. The local court ruled in a favor of the Church, angering the villagers who claimed they needed the temple for various rituals and had traditionally used it to practice martial arts. After the local authorities siezed the temple and gave it to the Catholics, villagers attacked the church under the leadership of the Boxers. The early months of the movement's growth coincided with the Hundred Days' Reform (June 11–September 21, 1898), during which the Guangxu Emperor of China sought to improve the central administration, before the process was reversed at the behest of his powerful aunt, the Empress Dowager Cixi. After a mauling at the hands of loyal Imperial troops in October 1900, the Boxers dropped their anti-court slogans, turning their attention to foreign missionaries, such as Hudson Taylor, and their converts, whom they saw as agents of foreign colonialist influence. The Empress Dowager Cixi, who credited the Boxers' claim of magical imperviousness to both blade and bullet, decided to use the Boxers to remove the foreign powers from China. The court, now under Cixi's firm control, issued edicts in defence of the Boxers, drawing heated complaints from Western diplomats in January of 1900. A Boxer rebelThe conflict came to a head in June 1900, when the rebels, now joined by elements of the Imperial army, boldly attacked foreign compounds within the cities of Tianjin and Peking. The embassies of the United Kingdom, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, the United States, Russia, and Japan were all located on the same city block close to the Forbidden City, built there so that Chinese officials could keep an eye on the Ambassadors, and the embassies themselves were strong structures surrounded by walls. The embassies were hurriedly linked into a fortified compound, and became a refuge for Western citizens in Peking. However, the Spanish, Belgian, and German embassies were not on the same compound. Although the Spanish and Belgian embassies were only a few streets away and their staff were able to arive safely at the compound, the German embassy was on the other side of the city and was stormed before the staff could escape. When the Ambassador for the German Empire, Klemens Freiherr von Ketteler, was kidnapped and killed on June 20, the Western powers declared open war against China. The Chinese court in turn proclaimed hostilities against the powers, who began to prepare military forces to relieve the besieged embassies. In Peking, the fortified embassy compound remained under attack from Boxer forces. Under the command of the British minister to China, Claude Maxwell MacDonald, the embassy staff and security personnel defended the compound with one old muzzle-loaded cannon (it was nicknamed "International Gun", because the barrel was British, the carriage - Italian, the shells - Russian and the crew - American) and small arms. Wildly exaggerated rumours appeared in the Western media, describing the horrific torture and execution of embassy staff and Western citizens in Peking, and although nearly all of the propaganda was completely unfounded, it was effective in drumming up massive anti-Chinese sentiments in Europe, America, and Japan. Despite their efforts, the Boxer rebels were unable to break into the compound, which was relieved by the international army of the Eight-Nation Alliance in July.