Boxer Rebellion

The Boxer Uprising of 1899–1901 was a violent anti-foreign, anti-Christian movement that swept northern China, led by the 'Society of the Righteous and Harmonious Fists', whose members blamed foreign missionaries, traders and the privileges extracted by the powers for China's afflictions. By 1900 the Boxers were killing Chinese Christians and foreigners and besieging the foreign legations in Beijing. The Qing court, hollowed out by decades of defeat and indemnity, made the fateful choice to back them and declared war on the powers. The response was an Eight-Nation Alliance — including Britain, France, Germany, Russia, Japan and the United States — which marched on Beijing, lifted the siege, looted the capital and imposed the punitive Boxer Protocol of 1901, with a vast indemnity and foreign troops stationed on Chinese soil. The episode laid bare the near-total collapse of Qing state capacity — which the outside powers exploited rather than caused — and accelerated the loss of legitimacy that brought the dynasty down in the revolution of 1911.

• Year: 1899 CE
• Category: Rebellion