Trade with China (2) Boxer Rebellion

Chinese opposition to the foreign intrusion in their country continued, just as American settlers got tired of British interference in the colonies. In 1900, the Boxer Rebellion broke out. Peasants who felt betrayed went on rampages against the foreigners who were taking advantage of them. Westerners only know about the Boxer Rebellion from the movie 55 Days in Peking, which gives a rather slanted view of the events.

The first clash was with the Germans, but the crisis quickly escalated and the largest international force that the world has seen was despatched to put down the rebellion. In June 1900, the Boxers laid foreign legations in the Chinese capital, including the embassies of Russia, France, Japan, the United States. By early August, a multinational coalition of nineteen thousand soldiers, including British, French, Japanese, Russian, German, Austrian, Italian, and American troops, was mobilized from Tianjin, which had been occupied in late July. The force reached Beijing on August and prepared immediately to attack the city gates. It entered the city on August 14 and by opening the way for British units to relieve the legation compound, quickly lifted the siege of the legation quarter and the Northern Cathedral.

The Europeans followed up by sending an even larger force to extract revenge. Vessels carrying roughly ninety thousand European, soldiers, among them twenty-two thousand Germans, arrived in Tianjin. Although the Chinese armies had been defeated, the allied army carried out seventy-five “punitive expeditions” around Beijing and Tianjin. These were directed against the general population.

Almost immediately after their arrival in China, members of the eight armies turned to looting. It began with the occupation of Tianjin in late July and stretched well into October 1900 in Beijing. Later, diplomats and missionaries joined the soldiers in looting. The sack of Beijing was similar to what had occurred at the Summer Palace forty years earlier, as “loot fever” took hold among the foreigners The ensuing phase of uncontrolled plunder affected not only Beijing and the new Summer Palace on its western outskirts, but many other cities and towns in the province of Zhili. The German commander Waldersee admitted quite frankly in a November 1900 diary entry the extent of damage and destruction inflicted by looters on Beijing and other wealthy, centuries-old cities.

By the permitted plundering for three days after the occupation, which was followed by private plundering the population of Beijing suffered great, not even quantifiable material damage. Each nationality assigns to another the palm in the art of looting; but the fact remains that they have plundered thoroughly... There is now a rich trade going on with the objects acquired in the plundering. Already traders, namely from America, arrived making fortunes... If one is so naïve at home to believe that all this was done for Christian culture and propaganda, he will be disappointed.

From 1900 to 1902, Beijing and Tianjin were placed under foreign occupation. Barracks were built in Tianjin to house thousands of foreign troops, and a provisional government was set up there by the allied forces. (185)

The Boxer Protocol was forced on the Chinese a year later.

The Chinese government also had to prohibit by law the founding of anti-foreign societies. The nations that had against the uprising gained the right to post permanent garrisons in North China. The most devastating clause, however, concerned the huge indemnity of 450 million tael, excluding interest, which far exceeded the Qing government’s annual budget of 250 million tael. This sum represented the sum submitted by other countries for military expedition costs, damages to property, and lives lost. There was, however, no process by which the validity of the claims and their amounts was assessed requirement to make this large annual payment mortgaged the budgets of Chinese governments tor decades to come, with significant consequences. (185)

The Chinese government was forced to pay all the expenses of the nations that had invaded them and looted their wealth. The collapse of the government a few years later led to the nation being split up and ruled by cruel warlords for a couple of decades.

The people of the United States and Europe have forgotten these events, although they enjoy seeing Chinese artefacts in their museums and antique shows. But the Chinese have not forgotten. So when they rip off Western companies, they are just doing what was done to them by Christian nations a century earlier.