The Boxers as a historical inquiry

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The Boxers as a historical inquiry

• Who tells fact/truth
• Historians or fiction writers?
• Historians may not provide balanced explanations
  using foreknowledge of outcomes of a historical
  event.
• Historians are endowed with wide-angle vision
  and have ability to construct a more
  comprehensive story of the past
• Historians, like non-historians, will however
  mythologize history for different reasons and
  different purposes.

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• Fiction writers, although they are generally seen
  as myth makers, may act as fact-seeking
  historians and provide at least some individuals
  experienced past.

• Three Keys used to deal with the issue
• Event
• Experience
• Myth
• Each possesses its legitimacy in its sphere

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The BoxersA Narrative History

• Questions the Boxer movement symbolized
• Chinese superstitiousness and backwardness
• Rise of nationalism and antiforeignism
• patriotism and anti-imperialism
• An uprising? A rebellion? A fiasco? A
  catastrophe?
• How was the movement formed?

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Formation of the Boxers

• Different martial arts groups
• Church cases
• Dynamic of sprit possession
• Drought
• Killing of Brooks, von Ketteler, many Christians
  and Chinese-Christians
• Foreign invasions
• Qings mobilization of the Boxers
• War with Allies expeditionary forces
• Massacre lf the Boxers and innocent citizens
• The Boxer Protocol (1901)

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The Boxers and the Martial Arts

• Question The Myth of the Boxers
• The true meaning of the word boxers
• Big Swords (Dadao hui)
• The Plum Flower Boxers (Meihua quan)
• The Red Boxing School (Hong quan)
• The Spirit Boxers (Shen quan)

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• The Boxers united in Righteousness (Yihe quan)
• The Red Lantern (Hongdeng zhao)
• The Eight Trigrams (Bagua quan)
• The Militia United in Righteousness (Yihe tuan)

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Direct Causes of the Movement

• The Experienced Past--Flood and drought
• Prolonged drought
• Farmers Natural disaster suggested heavens
  reaction to official immorality and misconduct
• Widespread and protracted drought caused famine
  farmers were out of work and dedicated their
  times to practicing martial arts/boxing
• Missionaries accounts show that hungry people
  killed missionaries and Christian, including
  Chinese Christians
• The experienced past were depicted more in
  fiction than in history

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Boxer Motives

• Anti-imperialism?
• Antiforeignism?
• Anxiety over Drought?

Boxers were executed by Allies Soldiers
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• Anxiety over drought has been ignored.
• Weather pattern in late Qing (see chart below)
  indicates potential drought due to high
  temperature and dry weather

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Boxers were executed by Allies Soldiers
Boxers head was hung and displayed
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Yiheyuan before its destruction by Allies armies
Russian Soldiers to execute boxers
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Woodcut promoting devil-quelling
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Yiheyuan before its destruction by Allies armies
Russian Soldiers to execute boxers
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Religious Experience of the Boxers

• The spirit possessions of the Boxers
• Spirit possession, a ritual of popular religion
  predated the Boxers, was seen as a way to enhance
  physical prowess and attain the body
  invulnerability to bullets
• The much stressed notion of invulnerability
  effected by spirit possessions spurred Boxer
  possession into a mass phenomenon in the last
  years of the nineteenth century

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Possessing gods

• Deified historical figures in the Romance of the
  Three Kingdoms
• Guandi
• Zhang fei
• Zhao Yun
• Major characters in novels
• Sun Wukong in Journey to the West
• Jiang Ziya in Enfeoffment of the Gods

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• Boxer (spirit) possession spread rapidly
• Shamanism was more widespread in North China
• Young people in the North were susceptible to the
  spirits and the possession ritual (?)

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Boxer magic and Women

• The failure of Boxer magic was attributed to
  foreign magic which they saw as associated with
  female body or pollution
• The boxers called for female deities to help
  resist foreign magic
• They also limited womens activities because they
  posed danger to the effective operation of their
  magic

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Mercenaries hired by the Qing to quell the Boxers
in 1900
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Women Boxers?

• The Red Lanterns were regarded as the first
  organized womens military force in Chinese
  history
• How much weight should be placed on the Red
  Lanterns remain a moot point
• Was magical power attributed to them because of
  their presexual and prepubescent purity or
  non-pollution? (they were 11-12 to 16-17)
• Or because the were perceived to have been
  empowered by female deities such as the Holy
  Mother of the Golden Sword (Jindao shengmu) and
  the Venerable Mother of the Pear Mountain (Lishan
  laomu)?

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Experiencers and Rumors

• The variety of rumors
• Wish
• Dread
• Danger, uncertainty, and the proliferation of
  rumors
• Generic rumors anti-foreign and anti-Christian
  lore
• The well-poisoning scare

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Violence and Death

• Metaphor for the cruelty of the Boxers or the
  brutality of the foreign relief forces
• Death resulted from combat and many forms of
  violent acts find expressions in
• Boxer pogroms against Chinese Christians
• Foreigners butchered women and children without
  mercy
• Government soldiers fired their guns at the
  retreating and fleeing Boxers, who were
  frightened when their comrades were shot to death
  by foreign guns

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• Mythologization of the Boxers follows three
  patterns
• Everyday mythologization
• Autobiographical mythologization
• Literary mythologization
• In poetry, drama, fiction, art
• All can be positive and negative

A restaurant in Beijing in 1900
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• The Boxers as Myth
• alternate praise and revilement of the Boxers in
  modern China indicates that many myths have been
  formed around the Boxers

Allies armyItalian soldiers in 1900
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Characteristics of Myth

• Chinese mythologization and demythologization of
  the Boxers focus on the following themes
• The Boxers invulnerability
• The Boxers indiscriminating xenophobia as a
  barbaric stance
• The Boxers barbaric revolutions
• The Boxers superstitions and irrationalism as
  endemic in Chinese
• The Boxers symbolize a prime trait of Chinese
  culture in general

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• The Boxers represent nationalism,
  anti-foreignism, and anti-imperialism
• The Boxers represent a movement of national
  liberation directed against imperialism and
  should be accorded the highest honor
• The Boxers represent anti-imperialist patriotism
  and Boxerism the spirit of patriotic resistance
  to unjust foreign aggression and oppression
• The Red Lanterns symbolizes patriotism and
  female emancipation

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• Western mythologization of the Boxers
• The Boxers is an emblem of barbarism, cruelty,
  irrational hatred of foreigners, and superstition
• Boxerism characterized Chinese nationalism,
  which is barbarous, antiforeign, hideous, and
  amount to mob action