Some time ago, I was idle and found out "Towards the Republic" again, and I will revisit this drama every few years. This time, I noticed a detail, that is, when the Boxer Boxers performed the spell of "please God to descend, sword and gun" in front of Empress Dowager Cixi, Cixi showed disdain.
Cixi looked disdainful
In fact, not only Cixi, but also most officials of the Qing Dynasty at that time did not believe in the nonsense of "sword and gun", but it is very strange that Cixi still ordered the Boxers to enter Beijing and carry out the "Supporting the Qing and Extinguishing the Yang" movement, so why is this?
Regarding the Boxers, the texts have always positioned it as a spontaneous movement against Christianity and Western imperialist oppression, so why did this movement not break out in the coastal areas with the largest number of foreigners, but in the inland agricultural areas of the eastern and western parts of the mountain? It stands to reason that the more foreigners, the more oppression they receive, and the more movements should break out.
Not only that, but I also have questions: why did the Boxers oppose Christianity and kill missionaries, knowing that Christianity has always been very "minority" in China, and the parishioners have never exceeded 3% of the population, so it is logical that it will not cause such a large-scale uprising, so what is the real reason?
To clarify these problems, we must first start with the situation in the last years of the Qing Dynasty.
I am 90,000 Tianbing, an anti-trend, long-form blogger, independent self-media who loves to write in-depth and long-term articles is becoming less and less, since they met, it is better to pay attention.
(1) Daqing supermarket
The Qing Dynasty, starting with the Daoguang Emperor, is basically a history of "losing power and humiliating the country", and in the eyes of many people, this is a rotten regime that is bound to collapse. But in fact, the real decline of the Qing Dynasty's national fortunes began after the Sino-Japanese War, and before the Sino-Japanese War, due to the huge size of the Qing State and the decoration of the façade of the foreign affairs movement, it looked quite bluffing.
It is very interesting that at that time, Western countries often made a "national strength ranking", each country ranked differently, but no matter how it was ranked, the Qing country was in the forefront. Japan, which is also in East Asia, is simply despised by the West, which sees Japan as just a small island country on the edge of Chinese civilization.
But the Sino-Japanese War changed all this, and the West was surprised to find that the seemingly powerful Qing Empire could not even defeat Japan, so what reason was there to fear him?
The door of Daqing Supermarket has been opened, hurry up and grab it. Although it was a public robbery, there had to be an excuse, and the best excuse at the time was: the teaching case, that is, the conflict between the Chinese and the Christian missionaries and parishioners.
Why are lesson plans a good excuse? First, the act of preaching is different from smashing, looting and burning, it looks very "harmless", and secondly, Christianity itself has a missionary and redemptive mission, in the eyes of the unknown Western people, I will save you, if you are not grateful, forget it, and kill my missionary, then you must be cleaned up, and the legitimacy will be there.
The first to attack was the Germans, the famous "Juye Teaching Case". The process of the teaching plan is clear in one sentence: a German missionary who has been oppressing the people for many years and causing trouble, "Yang Tianzi" Xue Tianzi, whose German name is Stenz, was attacked by a group of people who called themselves the Dao Society, but by coincidence, they mistakenly killed two other missionaries, but let Xue Tianzi run out, so the matter was revealed.
The case was reported by the church to the German Kaiser Wilhelm II, who jumped up from his chair excitedly, what a godsend. In fact, the last emperor of the German Empire was a great careerist, he had been looking for a supply base in East Asia for the German navy, and after probing, he targeted Jiaozhou Bay in Shandong.
The last emperor of Germany, Wilhelm II
After repeatedly asking the Qing Dynasty for Jiaozhou Bay to no avail, the Germans finally waited for the opportunity of the Juye Teaching Case, and soon they forcibly occupied Jiaozhou Bay under the pretext of protecting missionaries, forced the Qing court to sign the Jiaozhou-Macao Concession Treaty, and extended their tentacles to the mining areas inland of Shandong.
To make matters worse, two missionaries were able to get the Qing Dynasty to make such concessions, which made other powers see an opportunity, so Russia coaxed and forced leases of Lushun and Dalian, Britain leased Weihaiwei, France leased Wan Chai Chung, Guangdong, and the Qing Dynasty was in turmoil.
(2) Bad religious people
In fact, the Qing Dynasty's officials at all levels are most afraid of handling the teaching case, once it is not handled properly, not only will they be discredited but also have a different head, Zeng Guofan is not a living example, after the Tianjin teaching case, Zeng Wenzhenggong died in the scolding of the whole country.
Teaching cases generally occur in conflicts between Christian missionaries or parishioners and local people, and the underlying logic is that the Qing Dynasty gave up the right to manage the rule of law involving foreigners. That is to say, as long as a case involves foreigners or Christian parishioners, then it is not subject to the laws of the Great Qing Dynasty, and the foreigners have the final say.
Those missionaries who went deep into the countryside of the Qing Dynasty were equivalent to having a "country within a state", and the attraction of this privilege was too great, that is, if you committed a crime, the government wanted to arrest you, you just shouted "I am a parishioner", and the government could not help you.
This is also the case, especially for those who have been excluded and marginalized in the original social order, and they need the protection of the clergy, such as displaced people, bandits, and even the "illegal organization" of the White Lotus. The foreigners are the umbrella under which they can obtain more benefits.
Let me give you an example and you will understand, at that time, there was a bandit group in Shandong, who had just finished killing people and crossing goods, and heard that the government was about to come to the door to arrest them, so the gang turned around and joined Christianity, and the government could not arrest them. For example, in some villages, disputes over land and property occur, and the weaker party can choose to join Christianity and let the Yang people help them back.
These people don't even know who Jesus is, and they are greedy for worldly gains.
The missionaries' indiscriminate absorption of the parishioners fueled the xenophobia of the Qing dynasty
In this case, because of the absorption of too many such people, the confrontation between Christian parishioners and traditional Chinese society is becoming more and more intense, which is a time bomb buried at the bottom of society, and it is only necessary to wait for a time to ignite it.
You may ask, why are missionaries willing to accept such a group of bandit bullies? The answer is that missionaries also had KPIs for developing parishioners, especially after the Qing Dynasty opened its doors.
Since spreading Christian teachings to China has always been the dream of European bishops, they believe that only by fully accepting Christianity can the Qing Dynasty people live a happy life, but this process has not been carried out very smoothly in history, we may wish to look at the history of the spread of Christianity in China.
(3) It is not just a matter of faith
The first large-scale introduction of Christianity to China was in the Tang Dynasty, then called "Nestorianism", and was later mistakenly injured by Emperor Wuzong of Tang when he destroyed Buddha. The second large-scale introduction was in the Yuan Dynasty, we know that the Mongol rulers have always believed in polytheism, so they did not reject foreign "gods", but after the fall of the Yuan Dynasty, the Ming Dynasty adopted a closed policy and rejected all foreign religions, so Christianity fell silent again, until the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, the Italian Matteo Ricci came.
Matteo Ricci's use of "God" to refer to the "God" of Christianity is actually a fusion of the traditional Chinese concept of "heaven" with Christianity
Matteo Ricci greatly promoted Christianity, and his approach was simple, that is, he combined Christianity with local Chinese culture, for example, he allowed Christians to "worship the heavens and ancestors" when worshipping God, and even "worship Confucius".
Don't underestimate this change, you must know that in traditional Chinese Confucian culture, if you do not worship the sky, do not worship the ancestors, do not go to the Temple of Confucius, it means that you break with the entire society and family, but the problem is that the "monotheistic" nature of Christianity only allows the existence of a god "God", whether it is "Tian", "ancestor" or "Confucius", in the eyes of Christianity, it is "heretical", which is the conflict between the two cultures.
Therefore, Matteo Ricci's localization adjustment, although contrary to Christian teachings, solved the conflict and promoted the spread of Christianity. At that time, there were also many Ming officials who believed in Christianity, the most famous being Xu Guangqi. To say more, Xu Guangqi planned to recruit Portuguese artillery in Macao to fight the Qing army in the northeast, but was ultimately vetoed by Chongzhen on the grounds that "foreigners are plotting against each other". If Chongzhen had listened to Xu Guangqi, history would probably have been rewritten.
In the early years of the establishment of the Qing Dynasty, there was a honeymoon period between Christianity and the Qing Dynasty, for example, John Tang was Shunzhi's "wisdom tank". During the Kangxi period, the number of Christians in China reached an unprecedented 300,000.
In the late Kangxi period, the Holy See felt that the teachings could be tampered with at will, and "worshiping the heavens and ancestors" were all heretical acts, so they forbade Chinese parishioners to participate in Confucian sacrifices, which is the famous "liturgical dispute". This is equivalent to declaring war on Confucian culture, but also on the Qing court behind Confucian culture, we must know that the Qing Dynasty can incorporate Han, Manchu, Mongolian, Hui, and Tibet into the territory, there are many ruling skills, such as "respecting Confucianism and filial piety" is the means of ruling the Han people in the Central Plains, which is the basis of rule and cannot be touched.
So Kangxi began to restrict the activities of missionaries, and by the Yongzheng period, missionary activities were simply banned altogether. Until after the Opium War, the Qing was kicked open by foreigners.
If it is only the conflict brought about by Christianity, it will only trigger a "lesson plan" at most, and it is not enough to trigger such a large-scale xenophobic movement as the Boxers. If the ordinary people of the Qing Dynasty can still live, they generally will not do anything.
But the problem is that the economy of the Great Qing Empire also has a big problem.
(iv) The British-Indian-Chinese Trade Triangle I
Influenced by textbooks, we have always believed that the Qing Dynasty was "closed to the country" and had no communication with the world system, but this is actually wrong, and the Qing Dynasty's every move has long been inseparable from the world.
It has been forcibly integrated into the world trade system since the founding of the Qing Dynasty, when the British shipped silver dollars mined from South America to Zhoushan, Xiamen and Guangzhou, where they exchanged tea for sale and returned to Europe to sell for profit. Later, this foreign business was monopolized by the famous Guangzhou Thirteen Banks, and the scale of the business was also very large, and in the 18th century alone, 150 million silver dollars flowed into the Qing Dynasty.
The 13 Lines of Guangzhou monopolized foreign trade in the middle of the Qing Dynasty
Don't underestimate tea, which was also a profiteering industry in Britain at that time, monopolized by the East India Company. During the Jiaqing period, the East India Company could net more than £1 million a year from the tea trade alone, and the British government took up 3 million pounds in import taxes, accounting for 10% of the total revenue of the British treasury.
I believe you can also see the key point of the tea trade, that is, Britain needs cheap silver, once the supply of silver in the Americas is cut off, this trade model cannot continue. In fact, with the depletion of silver resources in the Americas, coupled with the fierceness of the independence revolution, the supply of silver became more and more difficult.
In order to continue to secure the purchase of tea, the British tried to find a commodity that could replace silver, and they did find it: Indian cotton.
So a new trade model was formed, the British colonized India to grow cotton, and then transported the collected cotton to Guangzhou to sell to the Qing Dynasty, and then bought tea from the Qing Dynasty and shipped it back to China. However, there is also a problem with this model, that is, the value of cotton is far less than that of tea, and there is a set of data recorded on the East India Company bill for you to feel:
In 1827, the East India Company exported 470,000 pounds worth of Indian cotton and 350,000 pounds of other goods to the Qing Dynasty, but bought 1.7 million pounds of tea from the Qing Dynasty, which caused a trade deficit of 880,000 pounds.
The British soon found a commodity to compensate for the deficit: opium.
(5) The UK-India-China Trade Triangle II
Before it was colonized by the British, India was already the world's largest producer of opium, because the water and soil conditions here are most suitable for growth. But the usage at that time was mainly swallowing, so it was not very addictive, and it did not make any waves. However, by the middle of the Qing Dynasty, swallowing was "improved" into smoking, and the addiction was doubled.
The British first sold opium to Southeast Asia, but at that time the population of Southeast Asia was not as large as it is today, and sales were far less than the Qing Dynasty, which had a population of nearly 400 million. From the end of Qianlong, the British began to ship opium to Guangzhou, because opium import would cause silver outflow, so in the first year of Jiaqing, that is, in 1796, the Qianlong Emperor (Emperor Taishang) issued a smoking ban to prohibit the import of opium.
But this ban was a blank sheet of paper for corrupt Qing officials, and after more than 20 years, opium imports increased year by year, finally turning the Qing Dynasty from a trade surplus to a deficit, silver began to flow out in large quantities, and from Jiaqing, the Qing Dynasty fell into a "silver shortage", and the government ran out of money.
In order to control the outflow of silver, there was a later anti-smoking campaign, but most of them only thundered, did not rain, and finally in the Daoguang year, Lin Zexu made a large, one-time destruction of more than 10,000 boxes of opium, which is close to the annual opium production in Bengal, India. For a while, the opium trade finally stopped.
But after only a year, the opium trade returned to normal, because the opium smuggling trade has formed a huge network covering the whole country in the past few decades, and opium imported from the coastal areas can enter the interior of China through the sales network, and even this network has reached as far away as Tibet.
Finally, because of the ban on the opium trade, the Qing Dynasty and Britain went to war, and then China and Britain signed the Treaty of Nanjing, and the Chinese market was officially opened to the world. The core clause in the Treaty of Nanjing is not actually the reparations for land cession, but the abolition of the trade monopoly of the 13 lines of Guangzhou, the addition of 5 trade ports, and the Qing Dynasty tariffs must be formulated under the "guidance" of the British, so British goods can enter China with zero tariffs, and Qing Dynasty goods want to export to Britain to impose 100% tariffs, which further aggravates the outflow of silver.
In this historical context, the hinterland of Shandong, which seems to be far from the coastline of the Qing Dynasty, has also been greatly affected: first, British goods are dumped into China in large quantities, such as yangbu, which makes earthen cloth and cotton lose the market, and the southwest of Shandong is the cotton production area, and the peasants who rely on cotton handicrafts have lost their source of income.
The second is the outflow of silver, the government has no money, can only tighten the belt to live, such as cutting the army to maintain local security, which has caused bandits in northern Shanxi.
Okay, now let's turn our attention to Shandong, where the Boxers broke out.
(6) Boxers vs parishioners
The northwestern Shanxi region where the Boxers broke out has always been unpeaceful, and it is a place where it is easy to "punch", "teach" and "bandit", such as Huangchao, Shuibo Liangshan, Wang Lun Uprising, etc., which have not stopped. Whether it is China or a foreign country, places that are prone to "disorderly people" generally have to meet two conditions: one is easy to hide, and the other is that there is a certain population base.
The north of Shanxi is a perfect fit for these two points, saying that it is easy to hide, because this is the junction of the four provinces of Shandong, Anhui, Zhizhi and Henan, and due to historical reasons, there are many "enclaves" between the provinces, bandits are easy to run to neighboring provinces, Qing Dynasty officials are "sweeping the snow in front of each door", as long as you don't make a crime in my territory, so it is very difficult to exterminate.
It is also important to have a certain population base, because in order for the team to develop, it is necessary to absorb fresh blood, and the bandits also need to eat, and someone needs to provide military supplies, and the local population is too small.
It is precisely because it has not stopped here, so the people are very martial, so various martial arts groups have emerged one after another, and before the Boxers, there were organizations such as "Golden Bell Hood", "Dao Society", "Plum Blossom Fist", which had a common goal: to defend the homeland.
Note that since it is to defend the homeland, then at least there must be an industry, so the first boxers to participate in these martial arts groups are not poor and displaced people, but local landlords and farmers, some landlords will also arrange tenants and housekeepers to participate, these people often gather around the leaders of the village with strong martial arts to form small groups, once there are bandits or disputes in the village, it is time for them to go out.
After the Christian missionaries infiltrated the hinterland of Shandong, they absorbed many bandit bullies and "uneasy elements" into the religion, and these parishioners clashed with the boxers, and the adjustment of the conflict involved the parishioners, so the foreigners would intervene. On one side are parishioners and foreigners, on the other hand, the people and the Qing Dynasty official office, this result can be imagined, the contradictions between the two sides are getting bigger and bigger, and small-scale conflicts occur from time to time.
If there are no other variables, then these conflicts will only stay on the scale of the "Juye Teaching Case", and there is no lethality behind.
In 1898, the Yellow River burst, thousands of villages were flooded overnight, people were displaced, and floods followed by droughts, and crops were lost. These displaced people turned into boxers, and "killing foreigners, raining in the sky" became the belief of these boxers, and they raised the slogan of "Helping the Qing and Extinguishing the Yang" and aimed the spearhead at the parishioners and the missionaries behind them.
(6) Duanwang Group
Having said such a lot, we can see that the reason for the Boxer Rebellion outbreak is not only "xenophobic", it requires many factors, but when the Boxer Rebellion first rose, no one in the imperial court seriously analyzed it, and even Cixi did not take it seriously at all.
But the Boxer banner of "Fuqing and Annihilation of the Yang" aroused the interest of another group of people, and before they knew it, the boxers became pawns in the factional struggle in the imperial court.
At that time, there were probably several factions in the imperial court: one was the Han Humanities Official Group, led by Li Hongzhang, and Zhang Zhidong and Yuan Shikai were actually from this large group, they were not exclusive, on the contrary, they were very close to foreigners; The second group was the Duanwang clique headed by Duanwang Zaiyi, whose demands were to make Cixi Duanwang's son Pujun "big brother", and then force Cixi to abolish Guangxu and return the government to Pujun, so that Duanwang would become emperor, but his claim was opposed by foreigners. The third group was officials loyal to Cixi, both Manchu and Han. In this situation, Cixi subtly maintained the balance of power among the various factions.
The Boxers were introduced to Beijing by the Duanwang clique, and the actual executor was Yuxian, the governor of Shandong, who was also Duanwang's person. The purpose of the introduction of Beijing was to attack the embassy and wage war against the foreigners. Duanwang is not crazy, his purpose is twofold: one is to teach the foreigners so that they no longer oppose the abolition of Guangxu; The second was to use the Boxers to force Gong Cixi to declare war on the foreigners.
Boxers were secretly released into Beijing by conservatives in the imperial court
The Boxers entered Beijing in this way, and all the churches, foreign companies, and foreign goods became their targets, such as pulling out all the power poles and train tracks in their path, and then they targeted the foreign embassies in Dongjiaomin Lane, which angered the foreigners and gave them an excellent excuse to invade Beijing.
Throughout the whole process, Cixi has always avoided direct conflict with foreigners, so we see a peculiar phenomenon in the history books: tens of thousands of Qing soldiers and Boxer Boxers fought around Dongjiaomin Alley for dozens of days but did not capture it, the reason is easy to explain, Cixi did not want to fight it down at all.
But what Cixi didn't know was that the foreigners didn't plan to negotiate peace at all, because the eight-nation coalition army was not monolithic.
(7) Tragedy is doomed
A few months earlier, Britain and its younger brother Japan had received intelligence that the Russians had increased their purchases of beef and canned food and transported soldiers to Lushun and Dalian, a situation that was so obvious that the Russians, already deeply penetrating the northeast, would extend their tentacles to northern China, most likely targeting Beijing.
The Russians did this partly because their imperialist expansion was strongly resisted by the British in Eastern Europe, the Mediterranean and Central Asia, and if you are interested in this history, you can read my History of Tsarist Russia, so Russia aimed at the Far East, where British forces were weak.
On the other hand, the British had a lot of economic interests in the Qing Dynasty and had abundant capital, which made it impossible for the Russians to penetrate, for example, Russia was just about to borrow 6.8 million taels of silver to build the Zhengtai Railway in Shanxi, and was cut off by the British with 10 million taels.
Since the economy and capital cannot be played, then let's be tough, Russia intends to send troops directly.
Britain must not let Russia succeed, but the embarrassing thing is that although Britain had huge commercial interests in the Qing Dynasty, it did not have the political and military strength equivalent to it, for example, we all know that the British Hurd controlled the customs gate of the Great Qing for decades, but his identity was only an employee of the Qing Dynasty. In addition, the British did not have many garrisons in the Qing Dynasty, and if they really let the Russians in, there was really nothing they could do.
On the one hand, the British encouraged Japan to enter the war, and in fact Japan was an agent of British support in the Far East, specifically to suppress Russian expansion in the East. On the other hand, actively mediating other imperialist countries to send troops to Beijing together, everyone is wet with rain and dew, and this is why there is an eight-nation coalition army, and everyone goes together, so that Russia will not be allowed to swallow the fruits of victory alone.
The eight-nation coalition army entered Beijing, relying on the traitors to lead the way, and climbed into Beijing from the sewer of Guangqumen
So you can see that no matter how friendly Cixi is, the entry of the eight-nation coalition into Beijing is a foregone conclusion, and the Boxer Rebellion's siege of the embassy is just an excuse.
We all know the story after that, the eight-nation coalition army entered Beijing, burned and looted, Cixi fled to Xi'an with Guangxu Canghuang, and put the responsibility on the Boxers, ordered the arrest of boxers and eliminated the Boxers, but also took the opportunity to dispose of the Duanwang clique behind the Boxers.
The Boxers have never been simply xenophobic, nor are they simple peasant movements, if you have to summarize the reasons for the Boxer outbreak, you can probably write like this:
Natural disasters + peasants' grain harvest + unemployment of handicraftsmen caused by foreign trade + "fist" culture in northern Shanxi + perennial conflict between missionaries and parishioners + financial problems of the Qing government + mismanagement of the area where the four provinces converged = Boxers.
The Boxer Rebellion lifted the last fig leaf of the empire, and the collapse of the empire seemed inevitable, but he also achieved a person, that is, the governor of Shandong who was ordered to suppress the Boxer Rebellion: Yuan Shikai, whose story we will tell later.
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