A concise history of an uprising that took down a three-hundred-year-old dynasty and united the great powers. The year is 1900, and Western empires are locked in entanglements across the globe. The British are losing a bitter war against the Boers while the German kaiser is busy building a vast new navy. The United States is struggling to put down an insurgency in the South Pacific while the upstart imperialist Japan begins to make clear to neighboring Russia its territorial ambition. In China, a perennial pawn in the Great Game, a mysterious group of superstitious peasants is launching attacks on the Western powers they fear are corrupting their country. These ordinary Chinese—called Boxers by the West because of their martial arts showmanship—rise up seemingly out of nowhere. Foreshadowing the insurgencies of our recent past, they lack a centralized leadership and instead tap into latent nationalism and deep economic frustration to build their army. Many scholars brush off the Boxer Rebellion as an ill-conceived and easily defeated revolt, but in The Boxer Rebellion and the Great Game in China, the military historian David J. Silbey shows just how close the Boxers came to beating back the combined might of the imperial powers. Drawing on the diaries and letters of allied soldiers and diplomats, he paints a vivid portrait of the war. Although their cause ended just as quickly as it began, the Boxers would inspire Chinese nationalists—including a young Mao Zedong—for decades to come.

In the summer of 1900, bands of peasant youths from the villages of north China streamed into Beijing to besiege the foreign legations, attracting the attention of the entire world. Joseph Esherick reconstructs the early history of the Boxers, challenging the traditional view that they grew from earlier anti-dynastic sects, and stressing instead the impact of social ecology and popular culture.

A concise, detailed examination of the Siege of the International Legations and its aftermath, featuring special artwork and maps. In 1900 a violent rebellion swept northern China – the Boxer Rebellion. The Boxers were a secret society who sought to rid their country of the pernicious influence of the foreign powers who had gradually acquired a stranglehold on China. With the connivance of the Imperial Court they laid siege to the legation quarter of Peking. Trapped inside were an assortment of diplomats, civilians and a small number of troops. They were all Sir Claude Macdonald, the British Minister in Peking, had to defend against thousands of hostile Boxers and Imperial troops. It would now be a race against time. Could the rag-tag defenders hold out long enough for the gathering relief force to reach them? This book describes the desperate series of events as the multinational force rushed to their rescue.

This is an account of the ferocious uprising of Chinese peasants and the ensuing siege of Peking in the summer of 1900 - a 55-day confrontation between the Boxers (so-called for their martial-arts skills) and the Westerners they terrorized. The drama of this bloody battle is conveyed here through records of the personal experiences of trapped people in Peking, of missionary women confronted by Boxer mobs, chased from village to village, then savagely murdered, as well as those more fortunate, who were able to escape.

Part Two explores the thought, feelings, and behavior of the direct participants in the Boxer experience, individuals who, without a preconceived idea of the entire event, understood what was happening to them in a manner fundamentally different from historians.

In 1900 in China a peasant movement known as the Boxers rose up and tried to destroy its Western oppressors. The culminating event of the Boxer Rebellion was the siege of the Western legations in Peking. In isolated Peking, a horde of brightly dressed, acrobatic, anti-Western and anti-Christian Boxers surrounded the fortified diplomatic legation compound, and rumors about the torture and murder of 900 Western diplomats, soldiers, and missionaries swirled throughout the foreign media. Scholars agree that animosity toward Christian missionaries was a major cause of the Boxer Rebellion, but most accounts neglect the missionaries and emphasize instead the diplomats and soldiers who weathered the siege and defeated the Chinese in battle. This book gives equivalent attention to the missionaries, their work, the impact they had on China, and the controversies arising in the aftermath of the Boxer Rebellion. It focuses particularly on one of the most distinguished American missionaries, William Scott Ament, whose brave and resourceful heroism was tarnished by hubris and looting.

In the year 1900, an unprecedented co-operation occurred between the eight major military powers of the world. For more than a year military and naval personnel from Austria-Hungary, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States fought together against a common enemy. That enemy was a society whose goal was the extermination of all 'foreign devils' in China – the I Ho Ch'uan, or Righteous Harmonious Fists, better known to the West as the Boxers. This engaging account, packed with original photographs and full colour artwork, tells the story of this unique occurrence in military history.