BOXER WAR

The court had been "vacillating" and they were pushed from two sides to make a decision; to legitimise the foreign suppression of the Boxers or to legalise the Boxer uprising and collaborate with them. The Empress Dowager, it seems, chose the latter and on the 21^st June, issued an edict declaring war on eight powers. This is a very simple summation, the circumstances were much more complex and even the country’s state of war was often left open to personal interpretation. By 1900, the Qing court was in an unstable position: rumours were persistent and factions within the government were rife, leaving the Empress Dowager and her followers desperate for popular support to keep her in power. Hence her reaction in the face of the Boxers’ patriotism and her apparent decision to support them by turning on the foreigners. Certainly, her move to resist the Western powers was a popular one from nearly all groups of the court, as for years China had been the target for their trade and their ‘Scramble for Concessions’, and one could argue that they had provoked a conflict. One cannot overlook the possibility also that the court declared war because they thought that they would win. Whether the Empress Dowager ever actually felt so positive about the Boxers’ ability is doubtful and also immaterial: a familiar pattern of the war, which is fitting with the bizarre manner of declaration, is the lack of a clear-cut policy. The Tsungli Yamen’s position was a result of circumstances, often unrelated to the Court’s wishes.

At the time when Boxer activity became noticeably more intense, inching closer to the capital and thus panicking the foreign residents, the Empress Dowager and her court were in a politically weak position, dramatically lacking popular support. Having usurped the Emperor in 1898 and countered his reformist measures, she alienated herself from the conservative and reformist factions within the government. The distrust of her was further aggravated and extended by her move to make her son Heir Apparent in early 1900:

As a result the factions within court increased, against her favour; she lost the support of officials, urban gentry groups, merchants and literate students. Also exiles became increasingly vocal, and in light of the attacks committed on foreigners within Chinese borders, they attracted the attention of concerned (and arguably opportunist) Western leaders, thus posing a big threat to the Qing court. This explains why the court responded favourably to the Boxers and seemed to condone them as "good protectors". The Boxers, though on the whole young and uneducated peasants, were staging a massively popular movement; with their rhetoric of "Support the Qing, Destroy the Foreigner", they provided the Empress Dowager with much needed support. Therefore it would have been foolish for the court to reject their loyalty, as Esherick says:

Yet, what became their desperate attempt to cling to power rendered them almost as puppets to the Boxer rising and practically powerless during the war.

If it would have been unwise for the Qing court not to respond to the Boxers’ rhetoric, it would have been humiliating, if not political suicide in the face of their new supporters, to not respond to the powers’ aggressive pressure. Indeed, it was arguably their "bullying" to suppress the Boxers that provoked the Empress Dowager and her court to declare war. The Boxers were rebelling against the foreign presence in China, and they demonstrated this through attacks on foreign institutions and, in some cases, people. Western governments, understandably, pressured the government to act, but when dissatisfied with the Qing court’s non-committal, they deliberately overlooked the court’s wishes and sent in an excess of troops. Such was the case when the Tsungli Yamen agreed that 75 surplus guards should be sent to relieve the legations from potential attacks, but the powers instead sent in several hundred. This seems particularly excessive when one considers Steiger’s 3 point that at the time all these guards were summoned, late-May 1900, there had been only one foreigner killed and that it was while the guards were on their way that the French and Belgian engineers were killed on the 1^st June. The powers also ordered the government to surrender the Dagu Forts to ensure safe evacuation; a rather unnecessary gesture that would blatantly serve the West’s interests, as they would then have control of China’s trading. This rather opportunist demand did not go unnoticed, and it was interpreted as a deliberately aggressive gesture. The powers’ ultimatum read to the court on the 17^th June seemed as blatant a provocation as any that war was increasingly likely if the Empress Dowager wanted to maintain her honour and resist the foreigners. To save face, the court had to respond:

The ultimatum was later rumoured to be a forgery but the government nonetheless believed it enough to take seriously. Regardless of whether or not it was forged, one can detect from other historians’ studies that there was considerable warrant for the Qing’s edict on the 21^st. Cohen, for example, has listed his six phases of the Boxer war, starting with Admiral Seymour’s expedition on the 10^th June. Since the war was not officially declared until ten days later, we can therefore assume that it was the foreign powers who made the first move and that the Qing court responded or resisted with a declaration of war.

Conversely, one could argue that the Qing court initiated war because they believed they could win. The ‘Hundred Days Reform’ had seen a strong emphasis placed on reforming China’s army; more sophisticated weapons, military examinations, the implementation of Western-style training and more funding available. Indeed, by the end of 1898, onlookers like the Rear Admiral Lord Charles Beresford noted that "well led, trained, paid, and equipped, (the individual Chinese) would make a ‘splendid’ soldier" 5. He also highlighted the numerous failings of the Chinese militia, but it is not absurd for the court to have assumed that by June 1900, these inefficiencies had been corrected. Also with the Boxers publicly pledging allegiance to the government, the Qing army could easily rise to over 300 000 capacity. This was not the case as it turned out and the military reforms had had little effect, but the Empress Dowager’s sources were often unreliable.

Nonetheless, there were obscurantists within the court who believed that the Boxers would help China successfully fight against the world. When first faced with the issue of the Boxer societies, the Qing were quick to consider drafting them into the militia; this also suggests that the Empress Dowager had been harbouring plans to eventually use military means to push out the foreigners. If this was the case and she was quietly becoming more confident in China’s strength, it explains why the Qing court seemed to adopt a stiffer stance towards the foreign powers, like not "annihilating" the Boxers when they started attacking Western missionaries. Those in the court or the Tsungli Yamen, who spoke against the Boxers and doubted their ability to help the court’s cause, did so at their own peril. Yuan Chang was one man who voiced his hesitation and was executed because it; interestingly the Empress Dowager retorted:

Hence one could say that it was the Boxers’ spirit above all that convinced the Empress Dowager and Prince Duan that if China remained united, she could overpower the hated foreigners. This echoes Sir Robert Hart’s comment:

There is evidence to support the view that the Empress Dowager and some members of the court believed they could win and this inspired them to declare war. When they were, falsely, told that they were doing well in battle with Seymour, they issued the edict declaring war. When news reached the court of the massive losses at Tientsin, the court arguably sought to regain peace by calling for a cease-fire on the siege of legations, sending in food supplies and pledging:

It was the arrival of Li Ping-Heng who deceived the court and again convinced them that the Boxers were doing well that renewed China’s offensive stance for the last time. They were unsurprisingly defeated, since fighting against eight better-equipped and trained armies. We can see therefore that the possibility of a Chinese victory, though based on inaccurate evidence, was enough to persuade the Qing to declare war on the 21^st June 1900.

There is a strong argument which presents the Qing court as victims of circumstances who, when forced to decide between the Boxers and the Westerners, simply backed the wrong horse. Several historians have referred to the court as "vacillating" between a policy of pacification or annihilation, less than a month before they decided to recruit the Boxers to fight for the Empire and base China’s war policy around them. It is rather ironic that the only concrete, public gesture the government ever made was the declaration of war, and even this was softened by its bizarrely unofficial announcement and by the fact that it was one of several edicts issued that day. It is important to note that the Empress Dowager never broadcasted a pro-Boxer policy, nor did she declare herself anti-foreigners. Although, it is true, the court was perfectly happy for the Boxers to besiege the Cathedral while Prince Duan attacked the legations harbouring Westerners; she was also happy for the South Eastern Viceroys to maintain peace and amiable contact with the foreign officials after war had been declared. On closer examination the key events in the build-up to and during the war were rarely in accordance with Qing court orders: the shooting of von Kettler, instrumental in bringing about the wrath of Germany, was randomly done by some young Boxers. The battle over the Dagu forts was started when a Chinese soldier, it is rumoured, accidentally fired the first shot hours before the powers ultimatum expired. Also the Boxers’ attacks on the missionaries, which many believe led to the situation where war was declared, were not at any point based on instructions to do so from the court. It was simply bad luck that actions carried out on the spot, by unofficial or unauthorised individuals should have such grave consequences.

It is not enough to blame China’s position in June 1900 on bad luck and miscommunication. The Sing court was in a precarious position because it was weak; the civil and international pressures that were facing the Empress Dowager were the result of her ineptitude in letting the crisis intensify. As Cohen says,

By the time the Boxers had become too numerous to control and the threat to the foreign institutions too great to ignore, there was very little that the court could do except attempt to save as much honour as possible, with the least serious repercussions. It was increasingly obvious that the repercussions of betraying the country’s populace were greater than those of losing the battle with the powers, hence the war declaration was the only thing the Empress Dowager could do.

William Doyle, a French Revolution historian, argued that the Directory actively sought war with Austria in 1792 because they hoped that an international war would solve their domestic problems; parallels can thus be drawn between 1792 France and 1900 China. The Qing court was weak and divided; because the Empress was preoccupied with her political survival, she failed to respond efficiently to a minor uprising staged by young peasants and consequently it grew out of control. Similarly the foreign powers had been pressuring the Qing court to submit them territory for years, and arguably because the Empress needed them to keep herself and her son in power, they had been accommodating. The foreign powers did act in an overtly aggressive manner, pursuing an agenda unrelated to the well being of missionaries or even ministers. It was extremely unlucky for the Chinese to be the victims of these "bullies" in their ‘Scramble for Concessions’, but the situation had arisen because the government was ineffective and all too often deluded.