The Boxers, China, and the World

Edited by Robert Bickers and R. G. Tiedemann, this multidisciplinary collection reconsiders the Boxer movement and the international war of 1900. Its essays move between village politics, religious violence, Chinese officials, missionaries, foreign armies and the press, showing how local conflicts became a global crisis.

The volume pays close attention to the brutality of both Boxer attacks and the multinational intervention that followed. It also examines how participants and observers interpreted the uprising through competing ideas of civilisation, religion, race and national honour. By connecting Chinese regional histories with imperial and international perspectives, the book explains why the Boxer crisis acquired such a powerful political memory.