The Boxer Rebellion
- Date
- 1899–1901 (Boxer Protocol, 7 September 1901)
- Category
- Military & conflict
- Region
- Qing China (north China, Beijing, Tianjin)
- Era
- Modern
- Significance
The Boxer Rebellion (1899–1901) was an anti-foreign, anti-Christian uprising in northern China led by the Society of Righteous and Harmonious Fists, whose members—nicknamed 'Boxers' for their martial-arts practices—believed ritual training rendered them invulnerable to bullets.
Fuelled by resentment of foreign concessions, missionary activity and economic disruption, and by the drought and flooding that struck the region, the Boxers attacked railways, churches, foreign nationals and Chinese Christians. In June 1900 they converged on Beijing under the slogan 'support the Qing, destroy the foreigners,' and besieged the foreign Legation Quarter; the Empress Dowager Cixi controversially declared war on the foreign powers. An Eight-Nation Alliance—Britain, the United States, Russia, Japan, France, Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy—dispatched a relief expedition that captured Beijing on 14 August 1900, lifting the siege amid widespread looting and reprisals. The crushing of the rising culminated in the Boxer Protocol of 7 September 1901, which imposed a staggering indemnity of 450 million taels of silver, the execution or punishment of officials, the stationing of foreign troops, and further humiliations. The episode exposed Qing impotence and intensified the pressures driving China toward revolution.
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Empires active in 1899–1901 (Boxer Protocol, 7 September 1901)
- French Colonial Empire (Second)1830 CE – 1962 CE
- German Empire1871 CE – 1918 CE
- Empire of Japan1868 CE – 1947 CE
- Russian Empire1721 CE – 1917 CE
- British Empire1583 CE – 1997 CE
- Qing Dynasty1636 CE – 1912 CE
Related military & conflict events
- Russo-Japanese War and Japan's Rise as a Great Power1904–1905
- Assassination of Franz Ferdinand and the outbreak of World War I28 June – 4 August 1914
- The Franco-Prussian War, German unification and the Paris Commune19 July 1870 – 10 May 1871; German Empire proclaimed 18 January 1871
- Italy Invades Ethiopia1935–1936
- American Civil War and the abolition of slavery1861–1865 (Emancipation Proclamation 1 January 1863; 13th Amendment ratified 6 December 1865)
- Second Sino-Japanese War and the Nanjing Massacre7 July 1937 – 2 September 1945
Further reading
The wider story
China's Last Empire: The Great Qing
Readable synthesis of the Qing (Harvard History of Imperial China).
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