The Boxer Rebellion: The Dramatic Story of China's War on Foreigners that Shook the World in the Summer of 1900 [Paperback]

Diana Preston (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 10, 2001

Chinese peasants chafed against the foreign technologies and ideas that the imperialists introduced. Then a new movement-mystical, materialistic, and virulently anti-Christian-began to spread among them like wildfire. The foreigners laughed at the peasants' martial-arts routines and nicknamed them "the Boxers"-never imagining that the group, with the backing of China's empress dowager, would soon terrorize the world...This acclaimed account of the Boxer Rebellion, by an Oxford-trained historian, is an important new addition to every shelf of high-quality, highly accessible history.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com 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 an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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) examines 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. 10 pages photos not seen by PW. (June)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 464 pages
• Publisher: Berkley Books (July 10, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0425180840
• ISBN-13: 978-0425180846
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (59 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #73,716 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

40 of 46 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great book, a must for a history buff, June 25, 2000

By 

Mitch Reed (Washington DC, United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

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)

While not much is written about the Boxer Rebellion, Diana Preston, does a great job. I could not put this down, it reads like a novel. Preston vividly re counts the events leading up to the rebellion, as well as the conflict itself. The discription of the charaters in the same detailed light (the sexual habits of the players is also mentioned, but not over done)places a face on the conflict. It also descibes the awkward union of the world powers that sent troops to rescue the legations in Peking. What I noted the most is that in some aspects China has changed very little. The maps and pictures help with the story. I liked this book very much, and being an avid history reader I could not tell if this was a novel or a history book. If you are looking for a great read that covers this period (in which so few books are written) buy Preston's book.

27 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars More Like "How Westerners Coped During the Boxer Rebellion", July 16, 2005

By 

William D. Shingleton "Wishful Thinking Is No... (United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

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 (Paperback)

Whether you enjoy this book or not will depend almost entirely on what your expectations for the work are. If you are looking for a history of how the western missions in Beijing held out and were eventually relieved during the summer of 1900, this is the work for you. Diana Preston has mined a significant amount of the available literature on the days leading up to Boxer rebellion as well as many of the diaries and journals from inside the missions during the rebellion itself. She seamlessly weaves these disperate sources into a coherent and easily readable narrative of survival in extreme conditions.

However, 'Survival in Extreme Conditions' is not the title of this book, and at a fundamental level it does a poor job of explaining the causes of the Boxer Rebellion and the inner workings of the Imperial Court during the crisis. In Preston's book the main figures are acted upon instead of being actors, with the who, what, where, when, and why of the Chinese side left basically uncovered. This is largely a result of a lack of Chinese sources on the rebellion, though even the available sources are barely used in this narrative.

This is a shame, because The Boxer Rebellion starts with one of the best Prologues I have ever read in a popular history work. Preston excellently guides the reader through the main points in global history in 1900 as well as showing how those were impacting China. This context, which is so often missing from other works of the same genre, is useful but sadly unexploited for the remainder of the book, which focuses not on the Emperess and how she was making decisions but on the drama unfolding at the foreign consulates in Beijing.

This is an extremely readable work and Preston is clearly a good author. However, the Boxer rebellion was one of the most spectacular events of anti-Western violence of the last 125 years, and a better discussion of the causes and effects would be particularly useful in the modern context. If you are a non-China expert like myself who wants to know more about the rebellion itself, you will be disappointed by this book.

24 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars banner year for history, June 21, 2000

By A Customer

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)

What a fabulous year for lovers of well-written prose! Jacques Barzun's magnificent Dawn to Decadence. Diana Muir's surprising and wonderful Bullough's Pond and now Preston gives us the Boxer rebellion. If William Manchester would bring out the new volume of the Churchill biography I think that I could die a happy man. To get back on topic, do not read this book unless, of course, you enjoy good narrative history, well-researched and presented in a prose style that could put most novelists now living to shame. Speaking of which, when did we cease to recognize that well written history is a high literary art? This is both, good history and good writng - and a ripping good yarn.