Customer Reviews

The Boxer Rebellion: The Dramatic Story of China's War on Foreigners That Shook the World in the Summer of 1900.

5 star:		(21)
4 star:		(14)
3 star:		(14)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

I would have to agree to some of the previous comments made about some this book. It is definitively a well-written account of the Boxer Rebellion but as seen through the eyes of the Western participants only. You will not find many Chinese accounts of the siege and fighting undertaken by the Boxers in this story.

Having said that I still found this book a delight to read once it got into the actual siege and relief operations. I found the first few chapters a bit slow but after that the narrative just flowed along with some great stories and accounts from the people who experienced this upheaval.

The story was well written and presented and it was easy to stay up into the early morning reading the book. The author supplied a number of maps to assist the reader in following the action and movements of the forces involved. She also supplied a great number of (small) black & white photographs taken at the time.

Some of the stories were excellent and I found some of the personal accounts truly amazing and very interesting. This is a book that may not suit the historian looking for a detailed account of the fighting but I am sure that most people who enjoy history will find this book a treat.

The story of Bishop Auguste Favier and his flock of Christians holding out at Peitang with a small detachment of Italian and French soldiers was great. The stories of what happened to a number of Missionaries and their families in the countryside were told in context to the situation as a whole.

Even though the book presents mainly the Western version of events I found that the author present her story in a fair and impartial manner. What happened to the Chinese Christians was not forgotten in the story but the book does concentrate on the Westerners. The chapter dealing with what happened after the siege was lifted was very illuminating and some facets of the interaction between the different foreign powers were very absorbing. I enjoyed a number of the quotes provided by the author and one that I found amusing was:

"I sent my servant (Chinese) on a message. He was robbed by a Russian, buggered by a Frenchman, killed by a German. In my dismay, I made complaint to a British officer. He looked at me, put his eye-glass into his eye, and said, `Was he really? What a bore! '".

This is a good yarn, an enjoyable history and a decent story, well worth the effort to sit down and read.

I'm not sure what Diana Preston does for a living. I don't think she's a historian for two reasons: first, her writing is much livelier than most historians' (good), and second, she seems less careful with her sources than many historians (bad). The result is a fairly breezy account of the Boxer Rebellion as seen through the eyes of the Westerners living in China at the time, with special focus on those trapped in the siege.

Most of the sources are first-hand accounts by Westerners caught up in the fighting, and as you might expect, the book relies heavily on anecdotes as a result. This is fun to read, but left me hungry for more background and information on the Boxers. Sometimes it felt as if complex groups of actors were being shoehorned into single monolithic categories, e.g. "The Boxers," "The Imperial Court," or "Britain."

These minor flaws detract from the book if you're interested in an academic analysis of the rebellion. However, as a good history book to curl up with, this can't be beat.

This book was well written but it covers only the westerner's side of the story. High marks for details of individuals'experiences in the legations. This is a good eye witness account book. However the narrative can get a bit tedious as there were too many bits and pieces that failed to make up the whole story. It does not tell you much about the motivations of either sides involved other than putting simply to greed and egos. The chinese was basically reduced to the status you normally see of natives in a black and white Tazan movie. This book is only one third of a complete story. The other two thirds being from the point of the chinese, both christians and otherwise,as well as an indepth analysis of how the events arose and ended. For research purposes, this book has very little to offer. It's a good read, which unfortunately makes it sadder because of what it could have been.

Diane Preston has written a fantastic historical account of an incident that receives little attention but, had far reaching implications in the development of further conflicts of the 20th century. The sequential development of events is smooth and takes the reader from one scene to another, as the reader watches the entire event unfold and climax to it's final desperate moments. The diary excerpts of those who lived in the legations under siege, and in the missions and outlying areas adds to the excitement of the text. Diane's vivid descriptions of the atrocities committed will surprise many readers, as will the heart rending accounts of those who witnessed them. From a historical point of view, Diane Preston has done her homework.

This book should please the casual readers, those who liked the film with Charlton Heston and Ava Gardner and want to know more about the historical episode it was based on (but not too much). Several books have already been written in that fashion on the same subject in the past. It is not of any interest to those other readers looking for who the boxers were, who commanded them and where they fit in the long history of peasant uprisings in old -and not so old - China. In the book, so little is said about them that they seem to have landed in Peking from another planet. So many times, reading it feels like being a foreign settler looking at what's happening outside the legation compound through a hole in the wall... Very long, too anecdotal and a bit boring.

This book is interesting and easy to read. It seems to give a good detailed view of what it was like for some of the westerners involved in the Boxer Rebellion.

And that is also it's fault and why I only gave it four stars.

Even though the author tries to give some historical background and makes attempts at being even handed she falls short.

After reading the book I still do not feel I have a good grasp of what it was all about, nor do I know anything about how it was perceived or what the reactions were among the Chinese.

It seems to be a westerners view of what happened with a subtle bias against the Chinese, and unspoken support for armed invasion resulting in a multitude of deaths, atrocities, and crimes against history in order to rescue a few hundred westerners. As another reviewer said this book could have been written in 1905.

With the usual disclaimer of not knowing enough to judge the scholarship of the work I think it is worth reading considering the short amount of time it takes to finish.

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.