Sunday, August 12, 2018

The Boxers, China and the World. Editors: Robert Bickers & R.G. Tiedmann.


The Boxers, China and the World is composed of papers that were “prepared for a conference” of the same name “at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London University, on 22-24 June 2001” (Bickers & Tiedemann [eds.], p. ix). The goals are immediately set-out in the Introduction: “This book explores the causes of the Boxer Uprising…its particular…cruelties, and analyzes its impact on China, foreign imperialism in China, and on the foreign imagination.” It also “explores the impact of the events of 1900 on Chinese rural communities and on foreign empire building” (Bickers & Tiedemann [eds.], p. xi).

Among its goals relating to issues external to China, (i.e. the war’s effects on foreign imperialism, the foreign imagination and foreign empire building), the book covers these issues extensively and well. But there are difficulties in the book when it comes to examining the aforementioned goals that are internal to China, (namely the causes of the uprising, its cruelties and the impact of events on Chinese rural communities). That is because successful coverage of these aspects depends upon Chinese views of events, from past and present, which are conspicuously absent until the final chapter.

It is understandable that fact-based researchers would have an aversion to the propagandistic, state-approved views of the People’s Republic of China; especially given that scholarship which contrasts with official versions is censored there. In 2006, Zongshan University professor Yuan Weishi published an article in Bingdian (Freezing Point), arguing for “a rational understanding of the past” and claiming that “textbooks were stuck in the past. Hailing the Boxers as patriotic heroes, glossing over their violence and evading problems raised by their beliefs.” Freezing Point was “closed down for a period of ‘reorganization’” (Bickers & Tiedemann [eds.], p. xxiii).

While the absence of views from within contemporary China is explicable, the dearth views from Chinese historians living outside of China is perplexing. Of the ten papers in the book, only one is from a professor of Chinese descent. Even more perplexing is the fact that most of the primary sources for the first nine papers are foreigners’ experiences of the Boxer War. A couple of the presenters attempt to address the preponderance of foreign views. Robert Bickers writes that the Boxers “had little by way of opportunity to speak for themselves before their destruction” (Bickers & Tiedemann [eds.], p. xi). Lewis Bernstein, writing about the foreign occupation government in Tianjin, simply says “I have not yet discovered any Chinese account of its operations” (Bickers & Tiedemann [eds.], p. 141). But Paul A. Cohen, in the last chapter entitled “Humanizing the Boxers” contradicts the excuses of other historians. He explains “my efforts…draw heavily on…published notices by the Boxers themselves, the diaries and eyewitness chronicles…letters and journals of foreign participants and observers. I also make extensive use of Boxer oral history transcripts” (Bickers & Tiedemann [eds.], p. 182). Apparently, there are ways to obtain information on how Chinese people and Boxers viewed events in 1900. It requires extensive digging, but it is available.

Most of the conference’s articles attempt to re-view and redress omissions or inaccuracies in the historical record that originated in Europe’s colonial past. Brutality and looting by European and Japanese forces is examined. Resentment of Christian missionary activity is presented as a cause of the War. Sympathetic connections are made between Indian and Chinese anti-imperialists. There is a good deal in the book that is instructive.

The last paper the reader sees is Professor Cohen’s monograph “Humanizing the Boxers.” It is, quite literally, the only study that attempts to see events from the Boxers’ point-of-view. Using materials from Chinese observers, Boxers and compassionate foreigners, this author approaches universal human issues like anxiety around death. He takes issue with portrayals where death “stands as a metaphor for the cruelty of the Boxers or the brutality of the foreign relief forces…But its meaning as an expression of individual experience is largely lost” (Bickers & Tiedemann [eds.], p. 183). Cohen presents personal accounts like that of Liu Xizi, which describes young Boxers after a battle as “children in their early teens lying by the roadside, with wounds to their arms and legs, crying out for their fathers and mothers” (Bickers & Tiedemann [eds.], p. 193). This inquiry is also the only one that portrays the Red Lanterns; the female allies of the Boxers.

The Boxers, China and the World is valuable as a study and critique of how imperialist powers of the period viewed the Boxers and events in China. A re-examination by historians from former imperial powers is useful as a means of confronting racism or injustice within their own nationalist traditions, both then and now. That said, a more well-rounded view would have been obtained if additional researchers had attempted to understand how Chinese citizens of that period viewed the Boxer War and foreign activities. The study of history is, at least in part, an avenue to explore experiences, perspectives and ethics, of people who lived in the past.  Exploring the ancestors of a foreign, much maligned populace, could have allowed readers an opportunity to broaden personal outlook by seeing the world through another’s eyes.

Bickers, Robert & Tiedemann, R.G. (editors). The Boxers, China and the World. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2007.

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