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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