The Boxer Rebellion: Do the Boxers Deserve a Bad Reputation?

The boxers shouldn’t get a bad reputation throughout the course of history. The Boxer rebellion started in Shandong, where the eight-country alliance had been letting missionaries into China and built building like churches all around China. The missionaries were also responsible for bringing business to their country by spreading their goods to China along with Christianity “The American missionaries became really front people for American exporters and American businessmen.”(Fei Ch’i-hao) The Righteous and Harmonious Fists or the world widely known name “Boxers” was a group of Chinese that believes “their magical rituals could make them invulnerable to the weapons of foreign powers.” (Szczepanski) After the drought “boxers turned violent towards foreigners and Christians” (Szczepanski) and blamed them for the nature disaster. Most of the record about Boxers were written by foreigners instead of the Boxers themselves, so the Boxers had no chance to speak up for themselves in text. The Boxers got their name from the eight-country alliance because of the way they fight: using mainly their fists this means they didn’t have weapons, which might mean that they had lived in poverty and wasn’t well educated. The foreigner’s missionaries were seen as strange people trying to threat China by the boxers. This is understandable because their lack of learning and the period of time boxer rebellion took place: it’s right after the Opium Wars, wars where China was humiliated by the loss of land and were forced to sign the unfair treaties, so the majority of Chinese thinks that the “devil” foreigners made China pay money and tried to get all the goods out of China. As the number of foreigners increased in Shandong, the boxers were even more certain to see Christians as a threat to china’s culture and traditions. As rumors spread and their ignorance led them into believing that the Christians brought the drought with them by displeasing the god. To protect China and to show anti-imperialist sentiment, the Boxers decided to hunt down both Chinese and foreign Christians and diplomats. There’s no particular bias in the Boxers’ move; both Chinese and foreigners were treated the same. The government of Shandong finally got tired of the Boxers they decided to kick them out and pushed them north toward Beijing. Beijing is where the foreign legation was mainly built in which increased the level of violence of the Boxer. The decision of the Shandong’s government led to a further chaos. After the Boxers locked the railways and telegraph lines around the foreign legation quarter where the Christians were inside, got the support from Empress CiXi, and had a huge preponderance as in the number of people, some of the Boxers still rejects to attack. The reason for this is: the previous times China tried to do so they ended up regretting. This proves that the Boxers did these terrible things because the eight-country alliance had done worser things to them. Therefore, the boxers shouldn’t get a bad reputation because they are only trying to protect themselves.