The Boxers, China, and the World

In 1900, China chose to take on imperialism by fighting a war with the world on the parched north China plain. This multi-disciplinary volume explores the causes behind what is now known as the Boxer war, examining its particular cruelties and its impact on China, foreign imperialism in China, and on the foreign imagination. The Boxers have often been represented as a force from China's past, resisting an enforced modernity. Here, expert contributors argue that this rebellion was instead a wholly modern resistance to globalizing power, representing new trends in modern China and in international relations. This volume will appeal to readers interested in modern Chinese, East Asian, and European history as well as the history of imperialism, colonialism, warfare, missionary work, and Christianity.

ISBN 0742553949   Pages 260 ISBN13 9780742553941 (What's this?)   Volumes 1 Publisher Rowman & Littlefield   Weight (grammes) 517 Imprint Rowman & Littlefield   Published in Lanham, MD Format Hardback   Height (mm) 239 Publication date 28 Aug 2007   Width (mm) 162 Library of Congress 2007002569   Spine width (mm) 24 DEWEY 951.035   Academic level General DEWEY edition DC22

1		Village politics and national politics : the Boxer movement in Central Shanxi by Henrietta Harrison		1
2		The church militant : armed conflicts between Christians and Boxers in North China by R. G. Tiedemann		17
3		(A) Subaltern('s) Boxers : an Indian soldier's account of China and the world in 1900-1901 by Anand A. Yang		43
4		Reporting the Taiyuan Massacre : culture and politics in the China War of 1900 by Roger R. Thompson		65
5		Looting and its discontents : moral discourse and the plunder of Beijing, 1900-1901 by James L. Hevia		93
6		Scandals of empire : the looting of North China and the Japanese public sphere by Ben Middleton		115
7		After the fall : Tianjin under foreign occupation, 1900-1902 by Lewis Bernstein		133
8		The Boxer uprising and India : globalizing myths by C. A. Bayly		147
9		The Boxer uprising and British foreign policy : the end of isolation by T. G. Otte		157
10		Humanizing the Boxers by Paul A. Cohen		179

This book sheds fascinating new light on many hitherto-ignored aspects of the Chinese anti-Christian insurgents known as the Boxers. Equally important, though, especially in our own troubled times, is the attention that contributors pay to the actions of foreign participants in the Boxer crisis, including the consortium of foreign troops marching under eight different flags that lifted the siege of Beijing and then quickly squandered its claim to the moral high ground by looting Chinese national treasures and carrying out brutal campaigns of reprisal. The Boxers, China, and the World is a highly original work of scholarship that provides readers with a fittingly international and surprisingly topical lens through which to view the traumatic events of 1900.--Wasserstrom, Jeffrey N.

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