Boxer Rebellion - Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Boxer Rebellion
Part of the century of humiliation

A company of Boxers in 1901
Date18 October 1899 – 7 September 1901
Location
Result Eight-Nation Alliance victory
Belligerents


Qing dynasty Mutual Protection of Southeast China
(after 1900)
Commanders and leaders
Legations:
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland Claude MacDonald
Seymour Expedition:
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland Edward Seymour
Gaselee Expedition:
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland Alfred Gaselee
Kingdom of Italy Coriolano Ponza di San Martino
Kingdom of Italy Vincenzo Garioni
Russian Empire Yevgeni Alekseyev
Russian Empire Nikolai Linevich
Empire of Japan Fukushima Yasumasa
Empire of Japan Yamaguchi Motomi
French Third Republic Henri-Nicolas Frey
United States Adna Chaffee Occupation Force:
German Empire Alfred von Waldersee
Occupation of Manchuria:
Russian Empire Aleksey Kuropatkin
Russian Empire Paul von Rennenkampf
border=no Pavel Mishchenko
Mutual Protection of Southeast China:
Qing dynasty Yuan Shikai
Qing dynasty Li Hongzhang
Qing dynasty Xu Yingkui
Qing dynasty Liu Kunyi
Qing dynasty Zhang Zhidong
Boxers:
Cao Futian Executed
Zhang Decheng 
Imperial government:
border=no Emperor Guangxu
border=no Empress Dowager Cixi
border=no Li Bingheng 
border=no Yuxian Executed
Commander in Chief:
Qing dynasty Ronglu
Hushenying:
Qing dynasty Zaiyi
Tenacious Army:
Qing dynasty Nie Shicheng 
Resolute Army:
Qing dynasty Ma Yukun
Qing dynasty Song Qing
Qing dynasty Jiang Guiti
Gansu Army:
Qing dynasty Dong Fuxiang
Qing dynasty Ma Fulu 
Qing dynasty Ma Fuxiang
Qing dynasty Ma Fuxing
Strength
  • Boxers: 100,000–300,000
  • Qing troops: 100,000[5]

The Boxer Rebellion was an uprising in China ifrom 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

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The rebellion happened while many foreign countries (Japan, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Russia) were scrambling for concessions in the Qing dynasty in the aftermath of the Opium Wars and the First Sino-Japanese War. These countries were Japan, Britain, Germany, and Russia.

The Boxers were Chinese who were angry about the growing power of foreigners in China. 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 (now Beijing).

Two expeditions

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The interior inner city of Beijing was known as the Tartar city because it was mostly Manchu and half of all Manchus in China lived there. Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, the United States, Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy made an alliance to conduct an expedition against the Boxers in Beijing. That made Empress Dowager Cixi declare 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

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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, the Qing dynasty collapsed, and China had a new government, the Republic of China, but the foreigners, especially the Japanese, still influenced the country.

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References

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  1. 1.0 1.1 Harrington (2001), p. 29.
  2. "China Relief Expedition (Boxer Rebellion), 1900–1901". Veterans Museum and Memorial Center. Archived from the original on 16 July 2014. Retrieved 20 March 2017.
  3. Pronin, Alexander (7 November 2000). Война с Желтороссией (in Russian). Kommersant. Retrieved 6 July 2018.
  4. Hsü, Immanuel C. Y. (1978). "Late Ch'ing Foreign Relations, 1866–1905". In Fairbank, John King (ed.). The Cambridge History of China. Cambridge University Press. p. 127. ISBN 978-0-521-22029-3.
  5. Xiang (2003), p. 248.