96 



CHINA. 



by the reform party, strong in the center and 

 the south, whose purposes she had frustrated. 

 The anti-foreign crusade begun by the secret 

 society known as the Boxers was begun at a time 

 when* the ignorant Manohu Conservatives in 

 Pekin were seriously considering the policy of 

 defying the powers and perhaps winning back the 

 alie'nated seaports, or at any rate checking further 

 encroachments, and by a firm anti-foreign atti- 

 tude regaining the wavering loyalty of the Chi- 

 nese provinces. The Government had purchased 

 128,000 Mauser rifles with 1,000 rounds of am- 

 munition, 105 field guns with 3,000 rounds, and 

 improved guns of large caliber for the Taku forts, 

 which Chinese gunners had been taught to handle 

 by German instructors. 



*The Boxer Uprising. The process of slicing 

 China alive, as the Chinese statesman Li-Hung- 

 ( hang calls the setting up of territorial claims 

 by European powers, seems to Chinamen to have 

 been started in retaliation for the killing of two 

 German missionaries by a mob in Shantung. In 

 that province a strong anti-foreign feeling was 

 evoked by the action of the Germans, which gave 

 an impetus to a certain secret society that had 

 already evinced strong opposition to the propaga- 

 tion oif Christianity by Roman Catholic mission- 

 aries, and now adopted a general anti-foreign 

 propaganda. Its name is I-Ho-Chuan the League 

 of United Patriots but the last word can also be 

 spoken so as to mean fists, and since athletic con- 

 tests were practiced by its members foreigners 

 gave them the name of Boxers. The Ta-Tao- 

 Hwei, or Great Sword Society of Shantung, whose 

 membership had been augmented in consequence 

 of the Hoangho flood, and the opportunities af- 

 forded for smuggling opium and salt as a relief 

 to the misery caused by it in southwest Shantung, 

 had already taken a threatening attitude toward 

 the missionaries in this province, which, as being 

 the native country of Confucius and Mencius and 

 of a long list of illustrious Chinese statesmen and 

 generals, and the home of a proud and stalwart 

 race, resented sorely the growing pretensions of 

 Germany and the presence of a foreign garrison. 

 This society took advantage of the effort of the 

 governor, in obedience to orders from Pekin, to 

 strengthen the constabulary, in which many of its 

 members enrolled themselves. Later it became 

 merged in the Boxer organization, which became 

 active in the latter part of 1899. The Boxers, 

 although originally hostile to the Manchus, 

 adopted as their tenets support of the heavenly 

 dynasty and death to all foreigners. The leaders 

 of the society were Chinese literati, and their se- 

 cret purpose may have been to bring about the 

 downfall of the Manchu Government by embroil- 

 ing it with foreign powers, as well as to wrest 

 the leased territories from the Europeans, and ren- 

 der their rule impossible in the spheres of influ- 

 ence that they had wrung from the Empress 

 Dowager 



The recrudescence of anti-foreign fanaticism 

 among the country people of Shantung and Pechili 

 and in Manchuria was caused not so much by 

 political sentiment as by the superstitious belief 

 that the foreign devils bring ill luck. They were 

 suffering from the effects of a prolonged drought 

 and with famine staring thorn in the face, when 

 the Boxers told them that the celestial powers 

 were angry because they permitted the presence 

 of devils, and could only be appeased by the ex- 

 termination of Christians, as had happened in 

 1870, when a massacre had brought rain; they 

 joined the society by thousands, those who were 

 less superstitious being moved by desperation and 

 the prospect of plunder, and by envy of the Chris- 



tian converts who were fed by the missions. In 

 diplomatic and commercial circles the rising anti- 

 foreign sentiment was, as on former occasions, 

 laid to the charge of the missionaries, who were 

 accused of interfering in local politics and in the 

 course of justice to secure privileges and advan- 

 tages for their converts, and of invoking the sup- 

 port of their legations when such activity brought 

 them into conflict with the authorities or pro- 

 voked the resentment of the populace. Protestant 

 missionaries, while denying that they attempted 

 themselves to exert undue influence or interfere 

 in lawsuits, affirmed that the Roman Catholics 

 were accustomed thus to intervene in local affairs. 

 The Roman Catholics on their part reversed the 

 accusation and exculpated themselves. There 

 were 800 priest missionaries who had 2,000.000 

 converts, while Protestant missionaries of various 

 nationalities, but chiefly English and American, 

 and of different denominations, numbered 1.700, 

 with 27,000 converts. The Chinese converts are 

 generally despised by their fellow-countrymen, 

 who say that they embrace the foreign religion 

 for selfish and mercenary reasons. 



The Boxers gained so many converts wherever 

 they carried on their propaganda, not among the 

 poor, the ignorant, and the disreputable alone, but 

 among merchants, learned officials, and people of 

 influence and standing, and especially among the 

 Manchu nobility and military class, that the Im- 

 perial Government did not and could not treat 

 them as members of one of the ordinary seditious 

 and lawless secret societies. They clothed their 

 doings with mysterious and spiritualistic rites, 

 besides practicing boxing and fencing, and the 

 movement had the aspect of a religious awaken- 

 ing. Every one looked on it as something strange 

 and supernatural, bringing deliverance not only 

 from foreign aggression but from the wrongs and 

 evils incidental to Chinese officialism. The rapid 

 growth of the sect, which gained millions of ad- 

 herents in the course of a few weeks, suggested 

 to the Governor of Shantung and to the bellicose 

 Manchu generals the plan of utilizing the Boxers 

 as a militia if it came to a war with the European 

 powers. In the earlier conflicts between the Box- 

 ers and the native Christians the Government 

 assumed an attitude of impartiality, and when 

 the Boxers committed depredations that called for 

 complaints from the foreign ministers the Govern- 

 ment characterized the culprits as bad Boxers who 

 had crept into the society by false professions. 

 When, later, their acts threatened to provoke 

 European intervention, they were spoken of as 

 rebels in the diplomatic correspondence, and at 

 the same time praised as patriots in secret edicts. 

 When military intervention actually resulted, they 

 were armed and organized as a militia. 



The Boxer society was over a hundred years 

 old when it took on new life and began to at- 

 tract attention in the beginning of 1899. For, 

 ninety years it had been under an imperial inter- 

 dict. In 1898 trouble arose in northwestern Shan- 

 tung over an old temple near Linchinchau which 

 the Roman Catholics claimed to have bought and 

 which they tore down in order to build a chapel 

 on the site. The people of neighboring villages 

 demolished the chapel and rebuilt their temple, 

 which was in turn pulled down and the chapel 

 was re-erected by the Government. In the sum 

 mer of 1899 a difficulty arose in the vicinity of 

 a station of the London mission in southeastern 

 Pechili, and serious trouble was only averted by 

 the vigorous action of the British consul at Tien- 

 tsin. In the autumn of 1899 the Boxers planned 

 a rising in northwestern Shantung, but at the 

 request of the United States consul at Tientsin a 



