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The Boxer Rebellion: The Dramatic Story of China's War on Foreigners that Shook the World in the Summer of 1900 |
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The Boxer Rebellion: The Dramatic Story of China's War on Foreigners that Shook the World in the Summer of 1900
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by Diana Preston
Sales Rank: 126711
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List Price: $16.00
$10.88
At Amazon
on 6-20-2008.
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Features
Cover Type: Paperback with 464 pages
Published by: Berkley Books July 10, 2001
Written in: English
ISBN 10 Number: 0425180840
ISBN 13 Number: 978-0425180846
Book Dimensions:
9 x 6 x 1.1 inches
Weighs: 1 pounds
Product Review
During the 19th century, rapacious colonial powers squeezed China mercilessly, seizing territory and extorting profits while missionaries sought souls. In the late 1890s, a virulently resentful peasant movement spread across northern China; foreigners nicknamed its adherents "Boxers" for the martial-arts exercises they practiced en masse. When the movement erupted into open violence in 1900, the imperial government supported attacks on foreigners that escalated into a siege of the foreign embassies in Peking. Diana Preston's The Boxer Rebellion is an account of the 55-day confrontation that alarmed the world. When Western and Japanese troops eventually routed the Boxers, soldiers and civilians looted the capital (to the benefit of Western museums) and extracted yet more concessions from China. The events of 1900 showed both sides at their colorful worst, and the author spares neither Chinese cruelty nor colonial pomposity and racism. Though this narrative history is told almost entirely from a Western viewpoint--of the 200 titles in the bibliography, not one is in Chinese--the many diaries and letters that Preston consulted ensure a lively portrayal of personalities and evocation of the times. She enjoys racy rumors, whether substantiated or not, and is so enamored of the charlatan Backhouse's salacious claims that he had an affair with the Dowager Empress that she details them twice. With little analysis but all the pace and immediacy of a popular novel, The Boxer Rebellion makes for absorbing reading. --John Stevenson
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
From Publishers Weekly
One hundred years ago, China, led by a shadowy and highly militant sect called the Boxers, rose up in revolt against all manner of foreign presence and influence, forever altering China and its relationship with the outside world. In this vivid and thorough account, Oxford-trained historian and journalist Preston (A First-Rate Tragedy: Robert Falcon Scott and the Race to the South Pole) looks at the Boxer Rebellion primarily from the perspective of the Western diplomats and missionaries who narrowly escaped massacre in Peking (as Beijing was then known), Tientsin and elsewhere in the summer of 1900. Drawing extensively on contemporaneous accounts by English and American defenders, Preston places readers inside Peking's barricaded diplomatic district. Detailing the beginning of the Boxer assault, she charts the reasons for the rebellionAthe xenophobia, superstition, abject poverty and legitimate outrage at foreign attempts at domination that drove the rebels and their sympathizers in the Manchu court. With equal immediacy and concreteness, she describes the rebellion's progress: the brutal conditions confronted by Europeans (and the Chinese converts who were barricaded with them) during the bombardment; the long-delayed arrival of Western reinforcements just in the nick of time. Preston puzzles over why the Chinese besiegers, who outnumbered the defenders by perhaps 500 to 1, did not instantly overwhelm their opponents. Evidently, she concludes, even as fanatical a group as the Boxers did not truly wish a wholesale slaughter; still, tens of thousands died in the Boxer Rebellion, most of them Chinese converts to Western religions. Bringing this ordeal back from historical obscurity, Preston tells a riveting story about ordinary people placed under extreme pressure by events they could neither understand nor control. ten pages photographs not seen by PW. (June)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
Reader Reviews
This review is from: The Boxer Rebellion: The Dramatic Story of China's War on Foreigners That Shook the World in the Summer of 1900. (Hardcover)
Let me say from the beginning that I enjoyed reading this book very much. The author wrote an exciting, informative, and easy to read read book on the Boxer Rebellion in China. I do not wish to take that away from the author or to underscore how much I enjoyed reading this book. Now to my major problem with this book. Let me make a similar comparrison. I recently read "Embracing Defeat" which looked at Japan right at the end of WWII. There was a chapter on all the poor Japanese soldiers in Korea and China who were so far away from home. The author conviently left out why those Japanese soldiers were there and what horrible crimes they committed. In this history of the Boxer Rebellion, the author makes a similiar mistake. Simply, this book might as well be Rudyard Kiplings history of the Boxer Rebellion. I am not saying that the Boxers didnt do some horrible things, but the bottom line is foreigners whether imperialist or missionaries..they simply did not belong in China. And the onese that were there were not doing the right thing. The Boxer Rebellion was China's attempt to kick out the imperialists. Can u blame them? Opium? Spheres of Influence? Unfair Treaties? Christianity? White Man's Burden? The Europeans did not belong in China. The Chinese were justified in trying to kick them out. The author sets up a picture of the poor Europeans and the uncivilized and barbaric Chinese. Again, I enjoyed reading the book but this book might as well have been written in 1905. Imperialists messed up China. Plain and simple. Not to defend the last Empress Ci Xi or the Qing Dynasty or the means used by the Boxers but heck can u blame them? So to summarize, I enjoyed reading this book. It made great use of primary sources and told a good story. However, this kind of history is unfair. The Boxer Rebellion was more than the "good Europeans" vs. the "bad" Chinese. Rudyard Kipling would be proud.
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The Boxer Rebellion: The Dramatic Story of China's War on Foreigners that Shook the World in the Summer of 1900
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