Document 1: Sue Gronewold, “The Opium War and Foreign Encroachment,” Asia for Educators, 2009.
Two things happened in the eighteenth century that made it difficult for England to balance its trade with the East. First, the British became a nation of tea drinkers and the demand for Chinese tea rose astronomically. It is estimated that the average London worker spent five percent of his or her total household budget on tea. Second, northern Chinese merchants began to ship Chinese cotton from the interior to the south to compete with the Indian cotton that Britain had used to help pay for its tea consumption habits. To prevent a trade imbalance, the British tried to sell more of their own products to China, but there was not much demand for heavy woolen fabrics in a country accustomed to either cotton padding or silk. The only solution was to increase the amount of Indian goods to pay for these Chinese luxuries, and increasingly in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the item provided to China was Bengal opium.
With greater opium supplies had naturally come an increase in demand and usage throughout the country, in spite of repeated prohibitions by the Chinese government and officials. The British did all they could to increase the trade: They bribed officials, helped the Chinese work out elaborate smuggling schemes to get the opium into China's interior, and distributed free samples of the drug to innocent victims. The cost to China was enormous. The drug weakened a large percentage of the population (some estimate that 10 percent of the population regularly used opium by the late nineteenth century), and silver began to flow out of the country to pay for the opium. Many of the economic problems China faced later were either directly or indirectly traced to the opium trade.
The government debated whether to legalize the drug through a government monopoly like that on salt, hoping to barter Chinese goods in return for opium. But since the Chinese were fully aware of the harms of addiction, in 1838 the emperor decided to send one of his most able officials, Lin Tse-hsu, to Canton (Guangzhou) to do whatever necessary to end the traffic forever. Lin was able to put his first two proposals into effect easily. Addicts were rounded up, forcibly treated, and taken off the habit, and domestic drug dealers were harshly punished. His third objective— to confiscate foreign stores and force foreign merchants to sign pledges of good conduct, agreeing never to trade in opium and to be punished by Chinese law if ever found in violation— eventually brought war.
Opinion in England was divided: Some British did indeed feel morally uneasy about the trade, but they were overruled by those who wanted to increase England's China trade and teach the arrogant Chinese a good lesson. Western military weapons, including percussion lock muskets, heavy artillery, and paddlewheel gunboats, were far superior to China's. Britain's troops had recently been toughened in the Napoleonic wars, and Britain could muster garrisons, warships, and provisions from its nearby colonies in Southeast Asia and India. The result was a disaster for the Chinese. By the summer of 1842 British ships were victorious and were even preparing to shell the old capital, Nanking (Nanjing), in central China. The emperor therefore had no choice but to accept the British demands and sign a peace agreement. This agreement, the first of the "unequal treaties," opened China to the West and marked the beginning of Western exploitation of the nation.
Document 2: Walter Lefeber, “American Missionaries in China,” Public Broadcasting System, 2006.
US officials thought that American missionaries were very important for American interests, not just for missionary interest, but overall American interest in China. And the reason was that, for example, once American missionaries were able to get into interior provinces of China, in opened these provinces up to American business people, and consequently American diplomatic officials on the scene nicely call the American missionaries the pioneers for American trade and business, because once they opened up an area, then the other Americans could come along behind and sell goods. The American missionaries did something else. They essentially exemplified an American lifestyle. They used American products. They were people who believed that American products were the best products. And so along with their faith, they brought in American industrial goods and farm products. And, as a result the American missionaries became really front people for American exporters and American businessmen. The Chinese did not miss this. When the Chinese looked at American missionaries, or other foreign missionaries, they essentially saw them not just as people who were crusading with a faith, but who were trying to sell goods and to Westernize their particular society. And ,a s a consequences it is not, I think surprising that the Chinese revolutionaries, particularly the Boxers, were target the missionaries because they saw in the missionaries not only Christians, which they had doubts about, but also they saw in the missionaries the whole cutting edge for an American lifestyle and an American product that they believes was essential undermining the Chinese village, the Chinese traditions, and the Chinese control over their own territory.
Document 3: “Rebels: The Boxer Rebellion,” Khan Academy
The beginning of the Boxer Rebellion can be traced to the 1899 killing of two priests by two Boxer members visiting a German missionary in Juye County, China. In response, Kaiser Wilhelm II, the German leader at the time, dispatched German troops to the scene of the crime, which further angered the rebels. The ongoing presence of foreign military to intimidate and attempt to control the local population ignited a spark of rebellion. By late October they occupied a Catholic church that had once been a temple to the Jade emperor and continued on their path of violence. “Support the Qing, destroy the foreigners” became their slogan as they continued to resist foreign military control.
Feng Jinyu and Li Mingde were interviewed in 1966 about their activities with the Boxers in their youth. They recall:
Girls who joined the Boxers were called “Shining Red Lanterns” as they dressed all in red, held a little red lantern in one hand and in the other a red fan. All of them were unmarried girls about eigh- teen or nineteen years old. In every village there were girls who joined the Shining Red Lanterns but they did not want others to see their rituals so they would practice only at night when it was dark. There was a song then that went:
Learn to be a Boxer, Study Red Lantern.
Kill all the foreign devils and make churches burn.
As the Chinese aversion and anger to foreigners escalated, their safety became increasingly precarious as the Boxers’ armed struggle continued. One British newspaper gave the following account:
Peking, May 20 [1900.] From all parts of the surrounding coun- try news is constantly arriving of fresh atrocities committed by the “Boxers.” On the 20th inst., at Shan-lai-ying, sixty miles from Peking three Christian families were murdered, only two persons escaping. . . .
Besides this, much of the rolling stock was burned or otherwise damaged by the rioters, and some large godowns [warehouses] full of valuable merchandise were burned after their contents had been looted. The total amount of the damage is roughly estimated at half a million taels [a weight measurement in China.] Among the rolling stock destroyed was the Imperial Palace car, which alone cost 1,700 taels. . . .
I am informed that the attack on the place was made by villagers living in the neighborhood, led by some of the “Boxers.” This gives the affair an even more serious complexion, as it shows that the movement is more widespread than had been imagined.
Initially Qing troops suppressed the Boxers, but in January 1900 the dynasty ordered that the Boxers should not be considered bandits. When the Boxer Rebellion reached Beijing’s (Peking’s) foreign legations (embassies) in the spring of 1900, more violence was unleashed against foreigners.
They burned Christian churches, killed Chinese Christians, and violently intimidated any Chinese official who attempted to suppress their revolt. The violence continued to escalate into what is known today as the “siege of the legations,” or the occupation of foreign embassies. The empress dowager implored all foreigners to leave the city immediately, and when many remained barricaded out of fear for their lives, she declared war on all foreigners and allied herself with the Boxers. In response, the Eight-Nation Alliance (Austria-Hungary, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States) sent their own military forces to end the siege. The Boxers were overwhelmed. Fearing for her safety, the empress fled to Xi’an, a safe location at the time, with her high-ranking Qing officials and remained there until a final peace agreement, the Boxer Protocol, was signed in 1901.
The empress dowager and the Qing court had suffered another humiliating defeat. For the past 60 years, Western powers had slowly eroded Chinese sovereignty and undermined Qing legitimacy and power. By the turn of the twentieth century new leaders of resistance movements, such as the Boxers, introduced the possibility for their nation to be strong once again.