РефератыИностранный языкReRebellion In China Around 1900 Essay Research

Rebellion In China Around 1900 Essay Research

Rebellion In China Around 1900 Essay, Research Paper


Around 1900, after many


years of succumbing to the superior military of the West, the


Chinese stood up for their country. China was a weak,


backwards, country, exploited by the West. They felt that


they could counter the foreign domination, but reforms were


useless because they needed the West to help with the


reforms. But something sparked their confidence, and they


believed themselves to be able to conquer any foreign


power. This spark was the Society of Harmonious Fists,


commonly known as "Boxers." Combined with unhappy


people, and new weapons technology, the Chinese rebelled


against the foreign powers. The first reason of this


confidence was the Boxer Society, which formed in North


China after the Sino-Japanese war, but wasn’t well known


until 1898 in Shantung. This organization was actually a cult,


following strange and absurd practices of defense. It had no


central leaders, and the practices varied in different


locations. Their goal was to rid China of the foreign menace.


The boxers were different from most other rebels of their


time. They would conduct public physical exercises that


were supposed to make a magical shield to protect one


against foreign bullets and shells. These looked similar to a


boxers training exercises so the westerners nicknamed the


members of the Society of Harmonious Fists "Boxers."


Rather then using foreign weapons, they relied on magical


spirits and swords, knives, staves, and polearms to drive the


foreign devils from their precious home country. The


membership of this group consisted of mostly the criminals,


poor, and illiterate of China who wore a simple uniform


consisting of a red armband, sash, or waistcloth. These


people truly believed that magic would prote

ct them, and


help remove the foreigners from China. That gave them


enough confidence to try to destroy the foreigners.


Missionaries were killed, railroads were destroyed, and


churches were burned all in the name of independence from


foreign rule. Another key aspect in the rebellions against the


west was a series of natural disasters that swept China


during the last decade of the nineteenth century. Famine


struck, droughts prevented the planting of crops, and to top


it all, the Yellow river flooded, causing the destruction of


1,500 villages and 2,500 square miles of countryside. These


disaster lead to unhappiness of the people. In order to keep


them from turning on the government, the Dowager


Empress, Tsu Hsi, encouraged the peasants to rebel against


the foreigners. Some of these angry people joined the


Boxers, and others rebelled alone, but they had the Empress


behind them, giving them encouragement, and making them


feel ready to take on the demons from the West. The third


reason that the Chinese felt ready to face the West, was a


new weapons technology. This was the machine gun, which


had both physical and symbolic power. It could physically


kill many more people then a regular rifle, because of its


ability to spray bullets and fire more then one round per


pulling of the trigger. Symbolically, it represented a method


which the west had used to subdue the Chinese, and now


the Chinese were going to use it against the west. This


inspired confidence and made the people ready to fight,


knowing that they could fight machine gun with machine gun.


The Chinese were tired of being looked down at by the


west. The people were unhappy, armed, or bullet proof, and


the Queen encouraged them to fight the west. With all this


support how could one not feel ready to fight the West?

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