The Boxer Rebellion: The Dramatic Story of China's War on Foreigners that Shook the World in the Summer of 1900 by Diana Preston
This is a simul-post of a review on Amazon.
The Boxer Rebellion as Witnessed by Americans and Brits should be a more accurate title for this book. The book is essentially based on English literature survey, and the author makes this clear. Her visits to China were more of symbolic than substantial. This does not mean the author is intentionally biased in her account. To the contrary, I feel there is an intentional effort of objectiveness. However, the limited sources of the book make it impossible to be a good history work, only a possible fascinating story one.
There are many sides of the event, at least three – foreigners, Boxers, Qing government. The foreigners were quite heterogeneous. The English speaking group is only a part, and a small part in many cases. For example, the Japanese contingent was the largest of the Eight-Nation Alliance; the second largest was the Russians. The book has few materials directly from the Japanese or the Russians. During the siege of the Legations, the Japanese seemed to shoulder the brunt of the fight. They fought in the front continuously for almost three weeks without even a chance to change their clothes. The account by the Japanese, the Russians or the Germans would probably be different, but not necessarily contradicting to the book. I am inclined to believe the brutal killing, raping and looting committed by the Japanese and Russians described by the book because it is consistent with other stories I have read.
The Boxer Rebellion was an anti-foreigner movement. However, like almost every other major historic event (including WWII) in the past 200 years, the Chinese managed to kill Chinese in very large numbers. In this case, the death toll of the Chinese is at least two orders of magnitude higher than that of foreigners. I should disclose here that I am a Chinese. When it comes to killing Chinese, Chinese people do not seem to have any hesitation. Though the killing of foreign missionaries and their Chinese converts by the Boxers was brutal and gruesome, but there was apparently a lot of hesitation in their killing foreigners during the siege of the Legations. Lack of good explanation for this hesitation is the most disappointing part of this book. This made some parts of the book seemingly illogical. The book indicates that the Boxers fought fiercely, and were later joined by Qing troops. There were only a few hundred foreign soldiers in the Legation quarter, but the Boxers and Qing troops must have numbered in tens of thousands. The Chinese soldiers also possessed modern guns and artillery. It is very hard to imagine how it was possible that they could not break the defense of a residential area in their city mounted by a few hundred soldiers if they truly wanted to without any hesitation. The book alluded to their incompetence as the reason for the failure. At one point, they needed a foreigner to teach them that they needed to aim their rifles low to kill enemies. This sounds like a fable. By 1900, guns had been around in China for at least 400 years. It is very hard to believe the soldiers in the capital city of Beijing did not have sufficient knowledge or intelligence to use rifles properly (i.e. aim them at enemies instead of the sky).
The documents reflecting other perspectives are out there. I know there are many Chinese materials because a friend of mine has collected a lot of them over the years, and been contemplating to write a book based on them.
The book refers to the opera Red Lantern a few times. This is a bit confusing. At one point, it clearly means the one of the model operas that Chinese people were forced to watch during the Great Cultural Revolution. I do not think it has anything to do with the Boxers. It is not related to the Boxer’s sister organization – the Red Lanterns. The red lantern in the opera is the handheld lamp used by railway workers for signaling.
The book does not indicate any meaningful effort by the author to dig materials beyond those available in English libraries. This should not be surprising considering the author is not a historian, but a writer and journalist.
The use of the obsolete Wade-Giles instead of Pinyin makes it difficult to relate the people and locations referred to in the book.
It is a very readable book. One can certainly get a very good sense about how Empress Dowager Cixi, a de facto dictator above the emperor, was ruining China. She traded Chinese lives, treasures and territories for her power.