You Did What?: Mad Plans and Great Historical Disasters by Edited by Bill Fawcett & Brian M. Thomsen

Author:Edited by Bill Fawcett & Brian M. Thomsen [Fawcett, Bill]
Language: zho
Format: epub
Tags: #genre
ISBN: 9780060532505
Publisher: New York : Perennial Currents, c2004.
Published: 2004-08-05T17:32:32+00:00

You Unleashed What?

“Never start something you can’t finish” is an old proverb. A pity that those who think their power is unlimited forget it so often. The Boxer Rebellion took place during the summer of 1900. By the time the conflict was over tens of thousands of people lay dead. The uprising led to the end of the Manchu dynasty and had such a negative impact on the Chinese psyche that it still colors that country’s attitude toward the rest of the world.

TZU HSI, EMPRESS DOWAGER OF CHINA

CHINA, 1900

William C. Dietz

Who screwed up? The answer is Tzu Hsi, the sixty-five-year-old Empress Dowager of China, also known to her subjects as the Old Buddha. When the Boxer Rebellion began, Tzu Hsi had ruled one way or another for nearly half a century. Things had not gone well for the Chinese, starting with their loss of the Opium War in 1840–1842 and continuing with a long list of humiliating concessions as the great powers robbed China of Hong Kong, Manchuria, Burma, what is now Vietnam, and ended their longtime domination of Korea. Germany, Russia, France, Britain, Japan and the United States all took turns carving profitable slices off the once-great empire.

That’s why Tzu Hsi hated the foreigners almost as much as the Boxers did and sought to use the Boxers as the means not only to cleanse China of foreign influence but to preserve the Manchu dynasty. It was a terrible mistake.

The Boxers were a little-known, poorly organized cult that was born of two earlier groups, the Big Swords, which was a group of landlords, farmers and peasants organized to protect themselves from bandits, and the Spirit Boxers, who drew their members from the poorest of the poor, and routinely practiced martial arts in public places. Hence the name Boxers. During their demonstrations members would call upon well-known spirits to enter their bodies and participate in scenes of mass possession. The displays, which incorporated traditional folktales, drew large enthusiastic crowds.

Much like the French underground in World War II, or the shadowy terrorist organizations of today, the movement referred to as the Boxers was actually an amalgamation of smaller groups having no central leadership. Religion, in the form of the traditional gods that practitioners allowed to possess them, plus the Chinese folk operas that they borrowed for use in their demonstrations, allowed the Boxers to tap into a common vocabulary of deities, superstitions and fears.

As a result, the Boxers were able to convince many members of the populace that their rites rendered them invulnerable to bullets and other weapons — claims that adherents sought to prove during wild demonstrations, when members of the audience were challenged to attack them. The wounds they sometimes suffered were dismissed as a failure to use the correct techniques and had little or no effect on recruiting.

The movement spread quickly and became especially popular in Shantung province, the place where Confucius was born. During the late 1800s not only was the area devastated by a series of natural

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