The Boxer Uprising: A Background Study 0208014411, 9780208014412

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THE BOXER UPRISING

THE

BOXER UPRISING A BACKGROUND STUDY

BY

VICTOR PURCELL

CAMBRIDGE AT T H E U N IV E R S IT Y PRESS I9 6 3

P U B L I S H E D BY T HE S Y N D I C S O F T H E C A M B R I D G E U N I V E R S I T Y P R E S S

Bentley House, 200 Euston Road, London, N.W. 1 American Branch: 32 East 57th Street, New York 22, N.Y. West African Office : P.O. Box 33, Ibadan, Nigeria CAMBRIDGE U NI VE RS IT Y PRESS

1963

Printed in Great Britain at the University Press, Cambridge (Brooke Crutchley, University Printer

CONTENTS Preface

page vii

Note

xi

Abbreviations

xiii

I

The Manchu government and its armed forces

i

II

Chinese society during the late Ch’ing period

32

III

The impact of the West

57

IV

The battle of the concessions

84

V VI VII VIII IX X XI XII

Reform and reaction

102

‘Anti-foreign* or ‘anti-missionary*?

121

Sects and rebellions

139

The reappearance of the Boxers

173

‘Pro-dynastic* o r ‘anti-dynastic*? I

194

*Pro-dynastic* o r ‘anti-dynastic*? II

209

Boxer beliefs and organization

223

Triumph and fiasco

240

Conclusion

263

Appendix A

Ching-shan’s ‘diary*

272

Appendix B

Missionary archives

285

Notes

292

Bibliography

326

Index

335 MAP S

1 The cradle of the Boxer movement 2

The provinces of China, 1900

xiv 8

v

PREFACE To the West in general the Boxer Uprising of 1900 is a half-forgotten episode in the history of China’s resistance to progress: to the historians of the People’s China it is the heroic resistance of the Chinese peasantry to foreign Imperialism, which failed in its object only because of its lack of dialectical awareness. But neither of these interpretations seems sufficient in itself to explain every aspect of its origin and development. After the suppression of the Uprising there was a flood of publica­ tions by foreigners giving their personal experiences, and there were nearly as many theories as to the origins of the trouble as there were authors. Dr W. A. P. Martin, for example, gave all the blame to the Empress Dowager, who ‘allying herself with the powers of darkness, entered into a diabolical conspiracy in order to keep her people in ignorance and to shield her family from the competition of superior light and knowledge’; Dr A. H. Smith (another American missionary) felt that the Roman Catholics deserved a major share of the blame and the Protestants only a minor one; Mr Broomhall (of the China Inland Mission) traced everything back to the Opium War and to foreign political and economic aggression, and considered that 'to place any responsibility for the outbreak on the missionaries was absurd’. The foreign diplomats, for their part, found it highly convenient to label the Uprising a ‘rebellion*, since this theory (or Action ?) restored the status quoy preserved the unilateral treaties, removed all blame from the Empress Dowager, and allowed the Powers to impose large indemnities, through her government, on the Chinese people. On the basis of these foreign accounts, the foreign-language press of Shanghai and Tientsin, and the diplomatic archives of Europe and America, Mr G. Nye Steiger, in 1927, produced a study of the Boxers, China and the Occident, which, in spite of many shortcomings due to incomplete information, is still in many ways an indispensable book. In it the author put forward a theory of his own, namely that the Boxers were not a religious sect or secret society at all but the legally consti­ tuted militia, raised in obedience to decrees of the Empress Dowager in 1898. •• vu

PREFACE

More recently (1959), Mr Peter Fleming has published a book, The Siege at Peking, based on the existing European material, but utilizing in addition the private papers of Sir Claude MacDonald and the diary of Dr G. E. Morrison. It is a graphic and entertaining account of the siege and the foreign personalities involved, but China itself figures in it only vaguely as a barbaric setting for the somewhat dubious exploits of European chivalry. In the meantime, published accounts of the Boxers in Chinese and Japanese were accumulating, though few of them were communicated to the West, but since the communists assumed power in China the publication of source material on Chinese history in general has been prodigious and already several collections dealing with the Boxers are available for study. The first Chinese collection to appear was I Ho T'uan T\ü Liao Tsung K ’an (Source Materials o f the Boxer War), Shanghai, 1951, in four volumes, edited by Chien Po-tsan and five others. These four volumes contain over a million characters and comprise fifty-six items. Many of them had appeared in print before, but five of the titles are those of hitherto unpublished manuscripts, including diaries and letters (‘more reliable as sources [remarks Fang Chao-ying] than the so-called Veritable Records"). The second collection, I Ho T ’uan Tang An Shih Liao (Sl

V. P U R C E L L

NOTE The romanization of Chinese here adopted is the Wade-Giles system except when departure from long-established usage may cause confusion (thus the character for ‘department’ may appear both as chou and chow in the same sentence). My capitalization tends to vary with the caprice of the authority followed. The translation of Chinese names for documents submitted to and issued from the Emperor gives rise to difficulty. In CKing Adminis­ tration (Harvard, i960), John K. Fairbank and Ssü-yü Têng give thirteen phrases translated ‘memorial*, four translated ‘commands’, four ‘decrees’, and four ‘edicts’, as well as a score or so translated *supplementary memorials ’, *endorsements ’, ‘instructions ’, ‘rescripts ’, etc. Nor do the authorities agree as to the correct translations. In consequence, the renderings given in this book are somewhat arbitrary. As for the maps, no two contemporary ones agree as to the location of a number of towns or villages, and a few places are to be found (if at all) only in sketch-maps in books. In designing the map on p. 8 a main reliance has been placed on the Chinese map in IH T , 1 (frontispiece).

ABBREVIATIONS BEFEO

Bulletin de VEcole Française d ’Extreme Orient.

B SO A S

Bulletin o f the School o f Oriental and African Studies (London University).

FC

Further Correspondence respecting the affairs o f China, printed for the use of the Foreign Office.

FEQ

Far Eastern Quarterly.

H JA S

Harvard Journal o f Asiatic Studies.

IH T

I Ho T'uan Tqu Liao Ts’ung Klan (Source Materials o f the Boxer War).

IH T T A

I Ho T'uan Tang An Shih Liao (Source Material in Despatches relating to the Boxers).

IR C E

International Relations o f the Chinese Empire, by H. B. Morse.

JA S

Journal o f Asian Studies.

JA O S

Journal o f the American Oriental Society.

K24/5/12

(as an example) = 12th day of the 5th month of the Kuang Hsii reign-period, i n t e r = Intercalary month.

P.R.O.

Public Record Office, London.

RA SJ

Royal Asiatic Society Journal.

SCC

Science and Civilisation in China, by Joseph Needham, 1954- .

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