![]() ![]() The Emperor was placed under house arrest, but remained a symbol of change and a potential threat to the rule of the Empress dowager (Xiang, 2003: 129-133). However, they met with determined resistance from the conservative court faction around the Empress dowager Cixi, who staged a coup d’état, had some of the reformers arrested, and forced the rest into exile. The so-called Hundred Days’ Reform of 1898 was a second factor behind the war whereby a handful of high officials and literati persuaded the young emperor to take the lead in a bold attempt to modernize China. For some years, Chinese and Western observers alike assumed that the partition of China into spheres of interest of the imperialistic nations was imminent. Moreover, in the late 1890s a number of foreign powers each seized at least one bridgehead along the coast to facilitate the economic penetration of the hinterland. Most notable were the principle of exterritoriality, which exempted foreigners from Chinese law, and the imposition of artificially low import tariffs that allowed Western products to compete favorably on the Chinese market. and Japan, had wrested a number of legal and economic privileges from the Qing court at Peking. Although China was never formally colonized, the Western powers, including the U.S. the forcible integration of China into the imperialist world order. The first was the Western informal empire in China, i.e. ![]() However, four structural factors also underlie the outbreak and course of the war. The war was not planned by either side, but resulted from the mismanagement of the Boxer crisis by both the Chinese government and the Allied powers. In its early phase, this was an inter-state war, while in its later stages, it came closer to the “punitive expeditions” that were a typical feature of 19th and 20th century colonialism (Walter, 2006). ![]() Eight states (Austria-Hungary, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Japan, Russia, and the United States) were engaged in this war and representatives of another three governments (Belgium, the Netherlands, and Spain) participated in the subsequent peace negotiations. The movement’s eventual support by the Chinese Imperial Court prompted international military intervention. The Boxers were a popular religious, social, and (at least indirectly) anti-imperialist group that came to threaten the presence of Westerners in China. The terms “Boxer Uprising” and “Boxer War” refer to two different, but closely interconnected upsurges of collective violence that shook Northern China in the period between 18. ![]()
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