The Boxer Uprising, an anti-foreigner movement, had developed in northwest Shandong between 1898-1900, as a response to the provocations of Western missionaries and their Chinese converts. Most of the Chinese population was not interested in the Christian message, especially in the evangelical and intolerant form that many of the Western missionaries were preaching. The Boxers were mainly peasants, who believed that their magic martial arts training made their bodies invulnerable to modern guns. With this belief, they viciously attacked Christian missionaries and converts, calling for the ending of the special privileges enjoyed by Chinese converts. The Dowager Empress Cixi, frustrated with the growing demands from the West, decided to support the Boxers against the foreign powers, which only invited a military suppression by an Eight-Nation Alliance in August 1900. The army, consisting of soldiers from Japan, Russia, Britain, the USA and France, managed to suppress the Boxers and drove Cixi and Emperor Guangxu to the West. A formal peace treaty, known as the Boxer Protocol,was signed in 1901, in which the Qing government agreed to pay indemnities for the damage caused to the lives and properties of the imperial powers. The Boxer Uprising laid bare the weaknesses of Qing China and severely weakened China’s position in regards with its relations to the West.
No comments:
Post a Comment