Body Overview
1. Outline: Understand the beginning and end of the Boxer Rebellion in the late Qing Dynasty and the bad behavior of the Eight-Power Alliance in invading China
2. Time span: 1895-1901
3. Important terms: Boxer Rebellion, Supporting the Qing Dynasty and Destroying the West, the Eight-Nation Alliance, the Great Victory of Langfang, the Treaty of Xinugu
4. Important people: Cixi Li Hongzhang Zhang Decheng Cao Futian West Moor Vadesi
The origins of the Boxers
The Boxers were a secret non-governmental organization active in the Shandong, Hebei, and Beijing-Tianjin regions at the end of the nineteenth century, organizing the masses to struggle in the form of practicing boxing, and the main purpose in the early days was to oppose the Qing, which was suppressed and forbidden by the Qing government.
The composition of the Boxers was extremely complex, including the poor peasants, craftsmen, urban poor, small traders, dock workers and other lower-class people, as well as some officers and soldiers, rich gentry and even declining aristocrats, and at the same time mixed with many rogues and scoundrels, making the Organization of the Boxers extremely loose, not easy to manage, and without a unified and clear political program and leaders, it was difficult to form a strong fighting force.
After the Sino-Japanese War, imperialism set off a frenzy of division in China, snatching mining rights and road rights, colluding with local officials to plunder land, and carrying out illegal activities under the guise of religion, which aroused the hatred of the broad masses of the people.
Fu Qing extinguished the ocean
After the change of law, Empress Dowager Cixi had the idea of deposing the Guangxu Emperor and establishing a new monarch. The British and French envoys stationed in Beijing were worried that the change of the Qing government would cause civil unrest and damage their interests in China, so they issued a warning to Empress Dowager Cixi and demanded that the old situation be maintained; coupled with the fact that the British helped Kang Youwei and other reformists to flee, Empress Dowager Cixi even suspected that there were foreigners behind the Penghu Reform Law, and the contradiction between Cixi and the foreigners became sharp.
Just at this time, the Boxer Rebellion re-emerged, and the Qing government headed by Empress Dowager Cixi came up with the idea of replacing "suppression" with "appeasement" and using the Boxer Rebellion against foreigners. They recognized the legitimacy of the Boxers and allowed them to openly enter the Beijing-Tianjin area for their activities.
Therefore, the Boxers put forward the slogan of "supporting the Qing Dynasty and destroying the foreigners", distributed leaflets in various places, developed organizations, and completely destroyed the foreigners' churches, railway facilities, and communication facilities in the Beijing-Tianjin area, and by June 1900, the Boxers had set up more than 800 boxing rings in Beijing, guarded the city gates and traffic arteries, expelled and attacked foreigners, and completely controlled the Beijing-Tianjin area.
The Eight-Power Coalition invaded China
After the Qing government issued a telegram to expel foreign emissaries and a notice to kill foreigners to receive silver rewards, the Boxers launched an attack on foreign embassies in Beijing, killing and wounding more than a hundred foreigners.
The siege of the embassy district of the foreigners gave imperialism an excuse to invade China. On June 10, 1900, Britain, Russia, Japan, France, Germany, the United States, Italy, and Austria formed a coalition of more than 2,000 people, under the leadership of British Admiral Seymour, from Tianjin to Beijing. Since the railway along the way had long been destroyed, the coalition army had to walk, and was constantly blocked by the Boxers along the way, and Seymour saw that the attack was hopeless, so he led his army to retreat to Langfang.
Langfang Victory
The Boxers called on the group to besiege Langfang. Seymour's invading army was forced to hold out for 5 days, and there was no rescue army outside the grain and grass, so it had to make a desperate bet and desperately break through.
On June 18, as soon as the invading army had left Langfang, it was besieged by the Boxers and some patriotic Qing troops of about 2,000 people, who launched a continuous charge against the invaders, killing and wounding a large number of enemy troops, and the remaining invading troops had to retreat and flee, and fled back to Tianjin a few days later.
The battle that took place in Langfang this time, known as the "Langfang Great Victory", showed the great strength and fighting spirit of the Chinese people to resist foreign aggression spontaneously.
The atrocities of the Eight-Power Alliance's burning and looting
After the fiasco at Langfang, the Eight-Power Coalition mobilized tens of thousands of troops and launched another attack on Tianjin and Beijing.
The boxer leaders Zhang Decheng, Cao Futian, Yang Shouchen, Liu Nineteen, and Lin Hei'er led a large army to resist and fought a bloody battle with the Eight-Nation Alliance on the outskirts of Tianjin; Song Qing, the Beiyang minister in Tianjin, commanded the Qing army to counterattack and specifically encircle and suppress the Boxers. The Boxers were caught off guard and could not resist the two-sided attack of the Qing army and the Eight-Nation Alliance, and suffered heavy losses, and Tianjin fell.
The Eight-Nation Alliance immediately attacked Beijing, and Empress Dowager Cixi was so frightened that she fled from Beijing with the Guangxu Emperor. On the one hand, he issued an order to hang the Boxers to show favor to the foreigners, and on the other hand, he sent the minister Rong Lu and other ministers to negotiate peace with the invaders.
On August 14, the coalition forces captured Beijing, carried out a brutal massacre of the Boxers and the innocent people in Beijing, and openly looted for three days, and all the treasures and antiques in the Summer Palace and other places were looted!
Treaty of Sim ugly
Under the joint strangulation of imperialism and the authoritarian rule of the Qing government, the vigorous Boxer Patriotic Movement failed. After the Eight-Power Alliance invaded Beijing, it accepted the negotiations of the Qing government, and on July 25, 1901 (September 7, 1901), the representatives of the Qing government of China, Yi Xi and Li Hongzhang, together with the diplomatic representatives of Britain, the United States, Russia, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Austria, Belgium, Belgium, Spain, and the Netherlands, signed the "Xinugu Treaty", also known as the "Peace Treaty of the Xinugu Countries" and the "Beijing Protocol".
This is the most unequal treaty in China's modern history, which shows that imperialism has comprehensively controlled and plundered China, that the Qing government has completely become a tool for imperialist rule over China, and that China has completely fallen into the abyss of semi-colonial and semi-feudal society.
Triangular relationships
In this catastrophe, which has overwhelmed all Chinese, imperialism has wantonly plundered everything in weak old China. Here we see a triangular relationship: imperialism, the Qing government, the Chinese people, and the three form two strange circles.
1. Imperialism cracks down on intimidating the Qing government through military diplomacy, and the Qing government has become a tool of imperialism by suppressing and exploiting the working people through the tools of dictatorship, while the brave Chinese people are not afraid of violence and constantly attack the imperialist aggressors in various forms!
2. Through the Boxer Rebellion, imperialism truly understood and understood the grass-roots strength of the Chinese people and felt fear, and the grass-roots people were easily exploited by the Qing government's autocratic rule and credulous belief in the lies of the rulers, and the Qing rulers were begging for mercy and being frightened in front of imperialism!
The special significance of the Boxer Rebellion
The Boxer Rebellion was an anti-imperialist and patriotic movement, in which the Chinese people showed the heroic spirit of not fearing violence, following the footsteps of the former servants, treating death as a homecoming, and daring to fight a bloody battle with a powerful enemy, attacking and teaching the shameless imperialist aggressors, objectively preventing them from wantonly dividing Up China and saving China's fate of being divided.
In a letter to Emperor Wilhelm II, the commander-in-chief of the Eight-Power Alliance, the German Wadesi, said: "We cannot regard the Chinese congregation as people who have weakened or lost their moral character, but in fact, they still contain infinite vigor and vitality"; "All the belligerent spirit in China has not yet been completely lost, and can be seen in this "Boxer Movement"; therefore, he believes that "no matter Europe, The United States, and Japan, without brainpower and strength, can rule a quarter of the living beings under this world", "Therefore, dividing up one thing is really a next policy, and it is like a dream."
It can be seen from this that the aggressors also believed that the boxers' fighting had prevented imperialist ambitions to divide and destroy China and influenced imperialist tactics toward China.
The Boxer Rebellion also marked the awakening of national consciousness in modern China, and the enthusiasm of the Chinese, who had always been weak and moderate, was aroused, and the remnants of their continued struggle lasted longer and had a more far-reaching impact.
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