The Land of the Boxers; or, China under the Allies

by Gordon Casserly

In the outbreak of 1900 the Boxers and the Pekinese showed themselves almost as hostile to the Cantonese trading or residing in the north as they were to Europeans. They considered that the southern city’s long intercourse with the white man must have rendered its inhabitants favourable to foreigners; though, indeed, this is very far from the truth.

So the Chinaman can have no patriotism. To any but the most enlightened—or the mandarins from more sordid motives—it is a matter of comparative indifference who rules the Empire. Provided that he is allowed to live in peace, that taxes do not weigh upon him too heavily or his religion be not interfered with, the peasant cares not who reigns in Pekin. Justice he does not ask for; he is too unused to it. All that he demands is that he be not too utterly ground down by oppression. Patient and long‐suffering, he revolts only against the grossest injustice. Not until maddened by famine or unable to wring a bare living from the ground does he rise to protest against the unjust officials, whose exactions have kept him poor. If he once realised the fairness of European rule, he would live content under any banner, happy in being allowed to exist in undisturbed possession of the fruit of his toil. The Chinamen in our possessions in the East are satisfied and happy under the mild law of England. Large numbers of them make their home there, content to live and die under a foreign government, and ask only that their corpses may be conveyed back to China to be interred in its sacred soil.

The average Celestial in his own land feels no pride or interest in the glory of his country. In its government he has no voice. Of its history, its achievements in the past, he is ignorant. He is content with it because it is the only one he knows and so must be the best. Of other lands beyond its confines he has dimly heard. But their inhabitants are mere barbarians. Those of them who have intruded themselves into his country are uncivilised according to his standard. They worship false gods; their manners are laughable. All they do is at variance with his customs, and so must be wrong. They cannot read his books and know nothing of the maxims of Confucius. So they must be illiterate as well as irreligious. Yet these strange beings are content with themselves, and scorn his ways! This proves their ignorance and their conceit. How can they boast, he asks, of the superiority of their own countries when they cannot stay there and, in face of contempt and hostility, seek to force their way into his? And as their coming means interference with customs hallowed by age and the uprooting of his dearest prejudices, he resents it. They strive to introduce innovations which he can very well do without. What sufficed for his father and his father’s father is good enough for him. The barbarians come only to disturb. They wish to defile the graves of his worshipped ancestors by constructing railways over the soil in which their bones rest. The shrieks of the chained devils in their engines disturb the Feng Shui, the tutelary deities of his fields, and hence follow drought and famine. And that these accursed, unneeded iron highways may be constructed, he is forced to sell the land which has been in the possession of his family for generations. The price for it passes through the hands of the mandarins and officials, and so but little reaches him. Has he not heard that to secure the safety of their bridges little children are kidnapped and buried under their foundations? Out upon the accursed intruders! China has flourished through countless ages without their aid, and wants them not.

And so, in a measure, hatred of foreigners supplies the place of patriotism. It binds all classes together. The ruling clique dread them for the reforms they seek to introduce; for these would overthrow the frail structure of oligarchical government in Pekin and hurl the privileged class from power. The mandarins tremble at their interference with the widespread corruption and unjust taxation on which the officials now batten. The educated hate them for their triumphs over China in the past, their continual territorial aggression, and their constant menace to the integrity of China. The fanatical hatred of the white man exhibited by the lower classes is the result of the blindest ignorance. It is stirred into mad rage by the exhortations of the priests, who naturally resent with true clerical bigotry the introduction of other creeds. The zealous but too often misdirected efforts of the missionaries, who tactlessly trample on his dearest beliefs, rouse the Chinaman to excesses against the strangers who seem to have intruded themselves upon him only to insult all that he holds most sacred. Every misfortune, whether it be drought and subsequent famine or devastating floods, storm or pestilence, is ascribed to the anger of the gods, irritated at the presence of the unbelievers. If the crops fail or small‐pox desolates a village, the eyes of the frenzied peasants turn to the nearest mission house where live the accursed strangers whose false teachings have aroused the anger of the immortals. Urged on by the priests and mandarins, they fall upon it and slay its inmates. But retribution comes swiftly. Their own Government are forced by dread of foreign interference to punish the misguided wretches who have, as they consider, wreaked only a just revenge. The officials are degraded. Heads fall and houses are razed to the ground. The Imperial troops quarter themselves on the luckless villagers who pay dearly in blood and silver for the harm they have wrought in their madness. And a sullen hatred of the white man spreads through all classes and bears bitter fruit in subsequent graver outbreaks.

Can we justly blame them? Would we act differently in their place? What if the cases were reversed? Suppose England to be a weak and backward country and China wealthy and powerful, with a great navy and a large army. Her merchants are enterprising and seek to push their trade into other countries, even against the wish of the inhabitants. Chinese vessels force their way up the Thames and sell the cargoes they carry to our merchants in defiance of the laws we have passed against the importation of foreign commodities. Refusing to leave, they are fired upon. Chinese missionaries make their way into England and preach ancestor‐worship and the tenets of Buddha in the East End of London. The scum of Whitechapel mob them—as the Salvation Army has often been mobbed. A missionary or two is killed. The Chinese Government seeks revenge. A strong fleet is sent to bombard the towns along the South Coast. Bristol is seized. A demand is made that the Isle of Wight should be ceded in reparation for the insult to the Dragon flag. We are forced to surrender it. A Chinese town grows up on it; and the merchants in it insist that their goods should have the preference over home‐made articles. The Chinese Government demands that tea from the Celestial Kingdom should be admitted duty free and a tax put upon Indian growths. A criminal or an anarchist, fleeing from justice, takes refuge on a small Chinese ship, which is boarded and the fugitive seized. We are only an ignorant people, and do not understand the Law of Nations. We are soon instructed. Again China sends a fleet; a force is landed and Liverpool captured. To redeem it we must pay a large ransom. To obtain peace we are obliged to grant the Chinese settlements in Liverpool, Bristol, and Southampton. This inspires other Asiatic Powers—Corea, Kamschatka, and Siam, which we will imagine to be as progressive and powerful as our supposititious China—to demand equal privileges and an occasional slice of territory. Kent, Hampshire, and Norfolk pass into their hands.

Buddhist and Taoist missionaries now flood the land. The common people regard them with fear and hatred. The clergy of the Church of England preach against them. The ignorant peasantry and the lowest classes in the towns at last rise and expel them. A few of them are killed in the process. The flame spreads. The settlements of the hated intruders are everywhere assailed. The Asiatic Embassies in London are attacked by the mob. Our Government, secretly sympathising with the popular feeling, are powerless to defend them. Even if they wished to do so, the soldiers would refuse to fire on the rioters.

Then the Allied nations of Eastern Asia band together; a great army invades our unhappy country. A dire revenge is taken for the outrages on the missionaries and the attacks on the Embassies. Middlesex is laid waste with fire and sword; neither age nor sex is spared. The brutal Kamschatkans slay the children and violate the women. London is captured and looted. The flags of China, Corea, Kamschatka, and Siam fly from the roofs of Buckingham Palace; Marlborough House shelters the invaders; Windsor Castle is occupied by a garrison of the Allied troops. Flying columns march through the land, pillaging and burning as they go; the South of England is occupied by the enemy. Before the Allied nations evacuate the devastated land a crushing war indemnity is laid upon us.

Would we love the yellow strangers then? True, we are backward and unprogressive. They are civilised and enlightened; and even against our will our country must be advanced. Still, I fear that we should be ungrateful enough to resent their kind efforts to improve us and persist in regarding them as unwelcome intruders.

All this that I have imagined as befalling England has happened to China. For similar causes Canton was bombarded and captured. The treaty ports were forced to welcome foreign trade. Hong Kong, Tonkin, Kiau‐chau, Port Arthur, all have been torn from China. Fire and sword have laid waste the province of Chi‐li. Death to the men and disgrace to the women have been unsparingly dealt. Can we wonder that the Chinese do not love the foreigner?