How China Sees India and the World by Saran Shyam
Author:Saran, Shyam [Saran, Shyam]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2022-05-30T00:00:00+00:00
The defeat of Qing forces at the hands of the Japanese and the acceptance of humiliating terms at Shimonoseki led to an upsurge of anti-Qing and anti-foreign sentiment throughout China. There was particular resentment against the activities of Western missionaries, who by now had spread into the interior areas of China. Their religious ideas and conversion activities were regarded as alien and threatening to a deeply conservative and traditional society.
The Boxer Rebellion drew its strength from these sentiments and was fuelled by the acute economic distress caused by a series of severe floods and droughts that affected the north China plains during the last few years of the nineteenth century. The Boxers rose from the various secret societies already operating in the Shandong region. They were bands of young men, adept in the Chinese martial arts and believing themselves, like the Taiping warriors, to be invulnerable to harm from bullets, knives or even cannon fire. Theirs was the latest in a series of rebellions which had begun to preoccupy the Qing rulers and weaken their rule. However, the Boxers were somewhat different in that their ire was directed first and foremost at the foreigners, in particular the missionaries. Chinese Christian converts, whose numbers were also growing at this time, were considered to be turncoats who deserved to be eliminated.
During the year 1900, the Boxers began to gather close to the capital and had already begun to attack Western missionaries and merchants in several parts of northern China. They posed a real threat to the foreign legations situated in Beijing. Their slogan was âFuqing Mieyangâ (revive the Qing and exterminate the foreign). Within the Qing government there was ambivalence over the Boxer uprising. Some considered the Boxers as dangerous and violent rebels who would threaten the survival of the empire itself. Others calculated that unleashing the armed rebels against the hated foreigners may rid the country of the alien intruders.
On 21 June 1900, Empress Dowager Cixi issued an Imperial Decree declaring war on the foreign powers and ordering them to vacate the legation quarters and head towards Tianjin for their departure. The legation quarters came under siege, both from the Boxers and the imperial troops, and this lasted for fifty-five days until the legation was relieved by troops of the Eight Nation Alliance which came in from Tianjin. The Alliance consisted of 20,000 troops from the US, Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy, AustriaâHungary, Russia and Japan. The imperial Qing forces were routed while the Boxers melted back into the countryside. There was uncontrolled plunder of the capital by the invading troops and summary executions of Qing soldiers and the Boxer rebels. Unspeakable horrors were visited upon the ordinary people of the city and the surrounding countryside. The scale of the loot carried off by the victorious soldiers and their officers was far greater than the earlier plunder of the Summer Palace in 1860. Fortunes were made from the treasures carried off to the West. Empress Dowager Cixi escaped from Beijing, guarded by loyal troops, and took refuge in the western city of Xian.
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