Today is an anniversary of sorts — actually two anniversaries — in the history of violence in China. June 21 marks the 110th anniversary of Empress Dowager’s fateful proclamation giving tacit support to the various groups known as “The Boxers” in their crusade of destruction and righteous anger against all things foreign. It is also the 140th anniversary of an earlier incident in the city of Tianjin, when tensions between local residents and the foreign community exploded into a day of violence that left at least 40 people dead. I’ll save the latter for a little thing I like to call “my dissertation.” Today, I’m talking Boxers.
I was looking at an electronic version of a Chinese high school textbook. Now, I’ve long been a critic of China’s so-called “Patriotic” Education policy but the account given in this textbook isn’t too off, at least in the parts of the story that are told.
The basic premise is that the “Chinese people,” having been pushed beyond endurance by the presence of foreign missionaries (“the spies of the imperialist powers”) began to organize self-defense groups in Hebei and Shandong. Eventually, these groups made their way to Tianjin and Beijing where they