Boxer Rebellion

The Boxer Rebellion began as an anti-foreign and anti-Christian movement in northern China at the end of the nineteenth century. It led to attacks on missionaries, Chinese Christians and foreign legations, followed by intervention by an international alliance. The Qing court’s involvement and defeat deepened China’s crisis.

It mattered because it revealed the pressures of imperialism, religious conflict and dynastic weakness. The rebellion is a powerful setting for fiction about missionaries, converts, diplomats, soldiers, court officials and families facing violence from multiple sides. It also belongs to the final act of imperial China before revolution.

Imperial China supports fiction by Pearl S. Buck, Anchee Min, Lisa See, Robert van Gulik and writers using court, village, merchant and dynastic settings. Detective series, family sagas and court novels can all draw on emperors, mandarins, concubines, scholars, rebels and foreign traders. These pages should connect readers to novels about dynastic change, imperial examinations, palace life, opium, rebellion and the fall of the Qing.