1 gen 1899 anni - "The Boxer Rebellion"

Descrizione:

In 1899 perhaps as many as 100,000 anti-Christian, anti-European and sometimes anti-Qing rebels rose up targeting any and all foreigners or foreign institutions, including Chinese Christians. Believing the rulers of China to be weak and loathing the increasing European influence over China, they besieged European embassies and government offices.

As European powers demanded action, the Chinese Empress-Dowager Cixi sided with the Boxers. An Eight-Nation Alliance of American, Austro-Hungarian, British, French, German, Italian, Japanese and Russian troops invaded China and managed to defeat the Chinese Imperial Empire and rescue their besieged diplomats.

Atrocities would be inflicted by both the Boxers who committed numerous mass rapes and massacres in their violent surge and the European Powers whose own retribution was brutal and consisted of their own rapes, torture and executions which served to further stir anti-European feelings.

While all armies likely engaged in atrocities, the worse accounts were directed at German, Japanese and Russian soldiers by American and British witnesses of atrocities.

This would all aid the "Yellow Peril" phenomena in which many Europeans began to fear the increasing power and perceived threat from Asian nations. Kaiser Wilhelm II who was one such believer in the Asian threat, called upon German soldiers to act like "The Hun" in showing no mercy for the Chinese enemy. This would lead to "Hun" becoming a nickname for German soldiers.

Even in their own time the brutality of the European response was much criticised and deeply controversial among European newspapers, thinkers and writers. Among the critics were Mark Twain, Leo Tolstoy and Vladimir Lenin. In China itself the legacy of the "Boxers" is controversial. While some see them as proto-nationalist patriots fighting inequality, others decry their brutality and "barbarism". Sun Yat-Sen, the national father of China, is one example of this complexity, at once praising their "fighting spirit" and criticising their brutality and "backwardness".

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