The Boxer Rebellion: The Dramatic Story of China's War on Foreigners That Shook the World in the Summer of 1900. - Hardcover

Preston, Diana

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0802713610 ISBN 13: 9780802713612

Publisher: Walker Books, 2000

Synopsis

In the final years of the 19th century, China was in grave danger of becoming a colony of the West. While various powers bickered over how to slice the pie, their very presence in China, like their new technologies and Christian missions, undermined the people's traditional ways. A strange, reactionary movement―mystical, nationalistic and virulently anti Christian―began to spread like wildfire among the Chinese peasants. The contemptuous foreigners, snickering at their martial-arts routines, nicknamed them "The Boxers." Few could imagine that the Boxers would receive backing from China's Empress Dowager, herself eager for a showdown with the foreigners, and would soon terrorize them and the world.
The Boxer Rebellion is a panoramic chronicle of the uprising and ensuing two-month siege of the 11 foreign ministries in Peking (now Beijing), and of the foreign community in Tientsin (now Tianjin) during the summer of 1900―an event whose repercussions have echoed throughout the intervening century. It left tens of thousands of Chinese dead, precipitated the end of dynastic rule in China, and has tainted China's relationship with the wider world to this day. It is also a richly human story.
Relying on the diaries, letters, and memoirs of the defenders, and on her own extensive research from both Chinese and western perspectives, Diana Preston portrays the dramatic human experience of the Boxer rising: in the diplomatic district of Peking, cut off from the outside world during the desperate weeks of the siege; behind the high, byzantine walls of Peking's Inner City, where decisions were made that forever changed Chinese society; among the allied relief forces struggling to lift the siege; in the aftermath when the great city was savagely looted and despoiled. Here is young Herbert Hoover, then a mining engineer, patrolling the barricades of Tientsin at night on bicycle; British admiral Sir Edward Seymour, whose aborted rescue mission became itself a survival story; Polly Condit Smith, the observant young Boston guest of American first secretary Herbert Squiers, who was besieged in Peking; the French Bishop Auguste Favier, whose successful defense of Peking's Peitang Cathedral was nothing short of a Christian miracle; and Tzu Hsi, the fabled Empress Dowager who had held power for nearly forty years, fighting to preserve her own throne and a dynastic way of life that had lasted for centuries.
Placing readers squarely in the middle of events as they unfolded, Diana Preston proves herself a master of narrative history, a writer who brings the past alive with style and freshness. Offering a view through the lens of the rapid changes in society and culture at the time, The Boxer Rebellion broadens our knowledge of the 20th century.

About this title

About the Author

Born and raised in London, Diana Preston studied Modern History at Oxford University, where she first became involved in journalism. After earning her degree, she became a freelance writer of feature and travel articles for national UK newspapers and magazines and has subsequently reviewed books for a number of publications, including The Wall Street Journal and The Los Angeles Times. She has also been a broadcaster for the BBC and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and has been featured in various television documentaries.

Reviews

One hundred years ago, China, led by a shadowy and highly militant sect called the Boxers, rose up in revolt against all manner of foreign presence and influence, forever altering China and its relationship with the outside world. In this vivid and thorough account, Oxford-trained historian and journalist Preston (A First-Rate Tragedy: Robert Falcon Scott and the Race to the South Pole) examines the Boxer Rebellion primarily from the perspective of the Western diplomats and missionaries who narrowly escaped massacre in Peking (as Beijing was then known), Tientsin and elsewhere in the summer of 1900. Drawing extensively on contemporaneous accounts by English and American defenders, Preston places readers inside Peking's barricaded diplomatic district. Detailing the beginning of the Boxer assault, she charts the reasons for the rebellionAthe xenophobia, superstition, abject poverty and legitimate outrage at foreign attempts at domination that drove the rebels and their sympathizers in the Manchu court. With equal immediacy and concreteness, she describes the rebellion's progress: the brutal conditions confronted by Europeans (and the Chinese converts who were barricaded with them) during the bombardment; the long-delayed arrival of Western reinforcements just in the nick of time. Preston puzzles over why the Chinese besiegers, who outnumbered the defenders by perhaps 500 to 1, did not instantly overwhelm their opponents. Evidently, she concludes, even as fanatical a group as the Boxers did not truly wish a wholesale slaughter; still, tens of thousands died in the Boxer Rebellion, most of them Chinese converts to Western religions. Bringing this ordeal back from historical obscurity, Preston tells a riveting story about ordinary people placed under extreme pressure by events they could neither understand nor control. 10 pages photos not seen by PW. (June)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A popular history of the Boxer Rebellion, which took place a century ago this year, brings its events to lifePreston (A First Rate Tragedy, 1998) draws upon the testimony of primary sources and eyewitnesses to recapitulate the Chinese uprising that caught the world off guard at the turn of the century. Long perceived by Westerners as a plum ripe for the picking, China in the 19th century was the object of much attention from foreigners and foreign powers alike—who introduced railroads, telegraphs, and Christian missionaries into the country. The nativist movement that arose in response was characterized by the practice of martial arts (the “Boxers”) and the employment of arcane rituals meant to make one invulnerable to bullets. The first signs of danger were the murders of Christian missionaries and Chinese converts in rural areas. The Empress Dowager Tzu Hsi backed the insurgents, and Westerners in Peking were rapidly cut off from outside aid. The siege of the European embassies by the Chinese army, the eventual relief of the siege, and the bloody aftermath of the rebellion are the central points of Preston’s narrative. Events became surreal at times: champagne was more plentiful than water inside the embassies, and often the besieged diplomats smoked cigars to drown out the stench of dead bodies just beyond their walls. Still, the social graces were preserved, and the ladies of the embassy eagerly traded recipes for mule meat. The relief expedition was a rare example of cooperation among the Western powers, but rivalries remained fierce and often led to stupid command decisions (which, fortunately for the Europeans, the poorly organized Chinese forces were rarely able to exploit): after Peking fell, the occupying forces probably caused more death and damage than the Boxers themselves. Preston excels at picking out the telling detail or quotation, although at times the larger picture seems a bit foggy. Still, there is plenty of fascinating information here.A colorful and well-presented treatment of a crucial turning point in history -- Copyright © 2000 Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Preston is unsuccessful in presenting a history of the Boxer Rebellion primarily because she is unable to separate fact from fiction in the memoirs she uses as primary documents. A journalist who has written books about such historical subjects as the race to the South Pole, Preston has reconstructed events through the recollections of Christian missionaries and others who suffered the attacks of the Boxers, a xenophobic spiritual group. She focuses on the Chinese leader, the Empress Dowager, who apparently sexually exploited many people (including foreigners) and did not stop the Boxers because she wanted to deflect attention from her inept government. Preston also details numerous acts of violence performed by the Boxers on Chinese and Western Christians. However, she does not provide the general reader with an understanding of the historical context of Chinese politics and Christianity found in, for example, Joanna Waley-Cohen's The Sextants of Beijing: Global Currents in Chinese History (LJ 2/15/99). By using memoirs as the basis for building facts, Preston creates an uneven work that is often too sensational to get the nuanced history across. Not recommended.DPeggy Spitzer Christoff, Oak Park, IL
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The Boxer Rebellion of 1900 continues to induce controversy amongst both historians and politicians with agendas. Some see it as a reactionary spasm by supporters of the "old" China with an antiforeign tinge. Others see it as an outbreak of nationalist-patriotic fervor with strong elements of social revolution. Preston, a journalist and Oxford-trained historian, considers all aspects and viewpoints of the rebellion while maintaining a fast-paced and exciting narrative. As a journalist, she skillfully captures the human interest, folly, irony, and tragedy of this historic upheaval while adhering to sound standards of scholarship. She effectively conveys the views of contemporaries on both sides of the struggle via first-person accounts, and she smoothly integrates the personal stories of individuals with the cataclysmic events engulfing them. This is an outstanding popular history that also passes muster as first-rate historical research. Jay Freeman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Walker Books
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0802713610
• ISBN 13: 9780802713612
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 352