Boxer Rebellion
TheBoxer Rebellionwas an uprising inChinaifrom 2 November 1900 to 7 September 1901. It was led by the Boxers, a group of Chinese against the huge amount of foreign influence in China.
Foreigners in China[change|change source]
The rebellion happened while many foreign countries (Japan,theUnited Kingdom,Germany,andRussia) were scrambling for concessions in theQing dynastyin the aftermath of theOpium Warsand theFirst Sino-Japanese War. These countries wereJapan,Britain,Germany,andRussia.
Boxers[change|change source]
The Boxers were Chinese who were angry about the growing power of foreigners inChina.They wanted to fight and drive out all foreigners and even the Chinese who helped the foreigners. The Boxers got many people to help them and drove their fight to Peking (nowBeijing).
Two expeditions[change|change source]
The interior inner city of Beijing was known as theTartarcity because it was mostlyManchuand half of all Manchus in China lived there.Japan,Russia,theUnited Kingdom,France,theUnited States,Germany,Austria-Hungary,andItalymade anallianceto conduct an expedition against the Boxers in Beijing. That madeEmpress Dowager Cixideclare war on all of them and send the Gansu Army to help the Boxers.
The first foreign expedition to Beijing, the Seymour Expedition, was defeated. The foreign legations in Beijing were surrounded for 55 days before the foreign reinforcements got through in the Gaselee Expedition, which got to the legations in Beijing. The Manchus suffered tremendously as the foreign soldiers went around raping the women and killing the men. The rest of China outside Manchuria and Zhili Province, was not affected since the Han governor generals such as Yuan Shikai, Li Hongzhang, Liu Kunyi and Zhang Zhidong, signed a pact, the Mutual Defense Pact of the Southeastern Provinces, to keep their provinces out of the war and not to help the Qing court. That made the foreigners not attack them.
Aftermath[change|change source]
The foreigners were very angry with the Qing and said that China had to pay them even more money and to execute othe fficials responsible for supporting the Boxers like the Manchu Bannerman Governor Yuxian, Qixiu, Captain Enhai (En Hai) and Manchu Zaixun, Prince Zhuang and Han General Dong Fuxiang. China agreed to execute all the Manchu officials like Yuxian, Qixiu, Enhai and Zaixun but refused to execute Dong Fuxiang. A few years later in 1911, theQingdynasty collapsed, and China had a new government, theRepublic of China,but the foreigners, especially the Japanese, still influenced the country.