The Boxer Rebellion

2 Pages 602 Words

When Japan defeated China in 1895, European powers answered with an order they
called, “carving up the Chinese melon.” Following the division of Africa among
European powers, they turned their sights to what they saw as an extremely weak
Chinese government. European powers and America began to scramble for what was
called “spheres of influence.” These spheres of influence involved holding leases for all
railway and public advantages in different regions of China. Russia got Port Arthur,
Britain got the New Territories near the Hong Kong region, Germany got Shandong and
America got nothing.
America was focusing largely on Guam and the Philippines and had missed the
opportunity and so insisted on the “open-door policy” in China where commercial
opportunities were equally available to all Western powers. In result, the political and
territorial integrity of China would stay intact. The imperial court responded to this
foreign threat by giving aid to various secret societies. Traditionally, secret societies had
been formed in opposition to imperial government; as such, they were certainly a threat
to the Qing government. However, anti-foreign sentiment had risen so greatly in China
that the Empress Dowager Ci Xi believed that the secret societies could be the leaders
in a military deportation of Europeans. This policy reached its crucial period in 1900 with
the Boxer Rebellion.
The Boxers, or “The Righteous and Harmonious Fists,” were a religious society
that had originally rebelled against the imperial government in Shandong in 1898. They
practiced an animistic magic of rituals and spells that they believed made them
invulnerable to bullets and pain. The Boxers believed that the expulsion of foreign devils
would magically renew Chinese society and begin a new golden age. Much of their
discontent, however, was focused on the economic scarcity of the 1890s. They were a
passionate and confident grou...