The Boxer Rebellion erupted in China in late 1899 and really reached a peak in
the early part of 1900. The Boxers came from the north of China. They were
largely peasants. About 70 percent of all the Boxers were peasants, it seems
like. And they particularly were concerned about the westernization of their
land. They targeted western railroad entrepreneurs. They targeted foreign
missionaries. The Boxers actually had, as many Chinese had, great doubts about
railroads. They weren't sure that they wanted railroads and one of the reasons
they did not want railroads is because they identified railroads with
westernization and they weren't sure they wanted westernization. As a
consequence, by the early part of 1900, the Boxers have killed a number of
foreign missionaries. They are beginning to kill engineers, foreign engineers,
foreign business people, and they begin to move out of the north and in the
spring of 1900 this mass movement this mass Chinese revolutionary movement is
targeting Beijing, the capital of China, and particularly the foreign compound
in Beijing where all of the foreign diplomats and many of the foreign business
people live and in the early summer of 1900 they lay siege to this foreign
compound. And everyone understands that if this siege succeed, that they are
probably going to massacre all of the foreigners that they can get their hands
on. It's a very dramatic moment in the United States in the summer of 1900,
because for a period of weeks in July and early August the McKinley
Administration lost touch with the US minister in China, a man named Edwin
Conger, and as a consequence, we didn't know whether the Americans, including
our top diplomatic representative there, was alive or whether they were dead.
In the early part of August of 1900 we finally got a telegraph message through
and Conger responded. The Secretary of State, John Hay, was so surprised that
he thought that the Chinese were trying to fool him and so Hay cabled back to
Conger "Tell me what your sister's name is." And Conger responded, "My
sister's name is Alta." And at that point Hay said he knew that Conger was
safe and Alta became one of the most popular names in America in the summer of
1900.
In the summer of 1900, as the Boxers are besieging the foreign ligation in
Beijing and threatening to kill all of the foreigners they can get their hands
on, McKinley has to make a historic decision. And the decision is whether or
not to send US troops out of Manila and onto the mainland of Asia. Obviously,
American troops had never fought in this theater before and what McKinley does
is not only order the troops onto the Asian mainland to fight in China, but he
does it without consulting anyone. He essentially goes to war without asking
Congress anything about it. He uses his commander-in-chief powers and it
becomes a very important point historic precedent, the kind of precedent that
later American Presidents will use to order American troops around the world.
So American troops are now on the China mainland fighting with other imperial
powers. We have never been able to figure out exactly what the command
structure of this was. It was so complex. But in the end, the foreign forces
won simply because there were 20,000 of them, they had overwhelming power,
particularly fire power, and they were absolutely brutal in the way that they
used it. There are now vivid pictures of the Boxers rebels who were captured
being decapitated with their heads put on poles outside the ligations. So that
the Chinese would get the idea that they were never to try this again.
McKinley participated fully in this. He understood that unless the United
States became involved in this intervention, that the other powers would do
what they wanted to do in China. And McKinley found that intolerable. He
believed that we had a role in China, that, indeed, we had a destiny in China,
that we had to keep China whole, and he was willing to commit American forces
so that he could preserve the China market for American goods and for American
missionaries.
When McKinley ordered the American troops into China in the summer of 1900, he
found himself and he found American soldiers marching shoulder to shoulder with
the Germans and Japanese and French and -- and British troops. These troops
had been involved in China for a long time. They had their own agenda. Their
agenda was to carve up China, colonize parts of China, to make sure that they
had parts of China that they would have a secure market for the selling of
their goods. McKinley wanted something quite different. He wanted a whole
China for American interest, but he, nevertheless, had to associate himself
with the devil. And the Chinese people were very quick to conclude that there
were no difference among the barbarians, that the Americans were the same, they
were fighting alongside these other imperial powers. And, as a result, when
the Manchu Dynasty joined with the Boxers, when the Chinese government joined
with the Boxers the United States found itself at war and the Chinese declared
war against the United States just as they declared war against the European
powers. They saw no difference.
The outcome of the Boxer Rebellion is in a short term the United States and the
other imperial powers won and beat back the Boxers and massacred a number of
the Boxers. In the long term, we can now see that it was the beginning of the
Chinese Revolution, that the Chinese saw this as something that they would have
to organize themselves to defend against. If you go to Beijing now, this is
not called the Boxer Rebellion. What happened in 1900 is called the Foreign
Intervention. And the Chinese are very quick to tell you that one of the
reasons for the Chinese Revolution and the anti-foreignism in the Chinese
Revolution that erupted within the next 20 years in China was in large part the
result of the foreign brutalities, the foreign missionaries, the foreign
industrial entrepreneurs who moved into China in the wake of the Boxers and who
essentially tried to act as if nothing had happened. Quite clearly, something
very profound had happened in China. What had happened had been that the
Chinese for the first time had been able to organize themselves in a way and on
a military level to drive back foreign influences. In the end they didn't
succeed, but they had shown that it could be done. And, as a result, the Boxer
Rebellion now is looked at as the beginning of this long Chinese Revolution
that finally climaxed in 1949.
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