Boxer Uprising

Boxer Uprising

1. 100 Days of reform

   • Emperor Guanxu
     • took throne in 1898
     • leadership
       • speech impediment, panic attacks, health problems
       • shy and withdrawn
   • reasons for reform
     • 'China is in imminent peril' Kang
     • Imperial institutions and conservative officials to blame for China's lack of progress
     • 'if the institutional reform is undertaken now it can avert future disaster' kang
       • Sino-Japanese war losses
     • beginnings
       • On 11 June, an edict told officials to commit themselves to propelling China towards 'wealth and power'
       • 40 decrees in 103 days June-Sep
   • reforms undertaken
     • education
       • The 'eight-legged' examination system would be overhauled, with more attention paid to practical subjects and less to poetry, which was dismissed in an edict as 'the hollow, useless and unpractical method' of an obsolete age.
       • Youths were to be sentabroad to be trained in subjects for which there were no teachers at home.
       • each district town getting a primary school
       • Between 1895 a n d 1898, 103 study societies, 183 modern schools and 62 publishing houses were set up
       • outcomes
         • questioning of Sons of Heaven through new knowledge
         • "challenged the foundations of the Chinese world" Fenby
     • military
       • Armyschools were opened, and foreign instructors recruited.
       • A fleet of thirty-four warships was to be built
       • Soldiering was no longer looked down on as it had been forcenturies, and the new armies, much influence by the Japanese example, became seedbeds for reformist and revolutionary movements.
     • bureaucracy
       • streamlined
       • national cash currency
       • agriculture + industry
       • openness
         • write freely on political subjects
         • court officials and censors warned not to place obstacles in the way of memorials
         • those who denounced others for putting forward ideas for reform were punished
   • reasons for failure
     • opposition
       • Manchu nobles outraged to learn that they would lose their privigliges
       • end of the examination system would destroy the defining feature of the gentry-scholar class.
       • Changes in the administrative structure would costthousands of bureaucrats their jobs.
       • Freedom of information and greateraccountability would undermine the power of the civil service.
       • mperor had ordered astudy of opening the whole of the coast and the Yangzi to international trade
     • Guanxu lack of power
       • Most seriously, the senior court official, Weng Tonghe, was dismissed four days after the promulgation of the edict of 1 1 June launching the Hundred Days, which he had drafted
       • he had neither the strengthnor the administrative apparatus to make reform stick, made some bad political mistakes, and had to cope with the lurking presence of Cixi at the Summer Palace
     • role of foreigners
       • Kang = cantonese
       • seek counsel from the Japanese politician Ito Hirobumi,
       • the reformer Tan Sitong had meetings with armyofficers from Tokyo, while two of Kang's associates produced proposals for an alliance between China, Britain and Japan.
       • led critics to allege that the reformers wereready to sell out the nation.
     • The 1898 reformers might speak of democracy, but their prime aim was to strengthen China by decree without bothering to seek popular support, following in the age-old pattern of top-down authority
       • The lack of the kind of middle class which was playing such a major role in Europe and the United States meant there was no natural constituency for change.
       • The reform programme, and the headlong way it waspromulgated, was bound to arouse the fearful opposition of officials and power holders.
   • coup
     • 21 September 1898
     • Cixi received petitions from conservative officials self-pityingly pleading for action
     • · At first, Cixi offered cautious support of the initiatives “As long as you do not cut off your queue, I will not interfere.”
     • nobody to stage a counter-coup on his behalf.
     • undermining of reforms
       • progressive governor of Hunan was sacked;but so was the hardline Manchu governor of Hubei
       • further modernized under the influence of the ubiquitous ZhangZhidong, with the traditional curriculum removed from its pedestal and classes taught in medicine, law, agriculture and scienc
       • t the heart ofthe new philosophical line was the ti-yong system, set out by Zhang, which embraced the study of Western ways but insisted that Chinese learning was essential

2. Uprising

   • background
     • growth in power of Boxers
       • Viceroy of Shangdong gave the Boxers large amounts of secret funding
       • late 1899 o Viceroy of Shangdong went to Beijing and lauded the Boxers to Cixi with the support of the Ironhats
       • Manchu princes hired them as guards
       • 'Today China is extremely weak. We have only the people's hearts and minds to depend upon. If we cast them aside and lose the people's hearts, what can we use to sustain the country? Cxi
     • anti-foreign sentiment
       • n the spring of 1899, the Germans caused further angerby launching a military expedition to protect their mine prospectors.
       • Shandong saw an estimated 1,000 anti-foreign incidentsand protests.
     • Bocer beliefs
       • they supported the dynasty and madeviolent hostility to the foreigners
       • Against
         • Westerners
           • corrupting the people
           • correputing the nationa's feng shui - shown in floods and drought in Shandong
         • Chinese Christians
           • engaged in incest
           • discouraged Chinese beliefs
           • cast away stractsd on ethics
       • The simple nature of their rituals and roots in thecountryside and market towns made them both familiar and accessible to ordinary people.
   • war
     • Early June 1900 – ‘precautionary force’ dispatched from Britain moved to Beijing
       • taken as an act of war
       • beaten by Boxer forces
     • · 17 June 1900 – British forces capture coastal forts and prepare to assault Beijing
     • · 21 June 1900 – Qing Dynasty declares war on all foreign powers
     • 21 June-14 August 1900 siege
       • 14 August 1900 – Chinese forces defeated easily by Europeans; Cixi, Guangxu and officials flee
       • · Allies and foreigners rape, loot and pillage Beijing and the Forbidden City
     • reasons for defeat
       • o Cixi calls for regional warlords to send troops, but “realizing the futility of the conflict and anxious to preserve their lucrative financial ties with western merchants, most refused and instead employed their armies to protect foreigners in their regions.” (Ryan)
       • · Boxers fight back but refuse to use western weaponry, sticking to swords, blunderbusses, bows, spears and martial arts
       • foreigners had 54,000 soldiers, 51 ships
       • Jung-luhad never been keen on the alliance with the Boxers, and his troops allowed flour, vegetables and water melon to be taken through their lines for a time
     • north-west, 32,000 converts were reported killed.
   • outcome
     • Boxer Protocol
       • o Indemnity (war reparations) of 450,000,000 silver dollars = twice annual govt revenue
       • o Coastal defences not to be rebuilt
       • foreign troops perpetually stationed in China
       • 2-year ban on arms imports
       • imperial examinations suspended in all Boxer regions
     • consequences
       • humiliation
       • unfulfillment of rising nationalist tenderncies
       • empire was pepperedby twenty-five concessions and leases
       • China was obliged to get new foreign loansand commit more future revenue from customs, salt duties and other sources as collateral, further impoverishing the state.
       • taxes