Editing Boxer Rebellion (section)

== Analysis of the Boxers ==
[[File:Boxer Prisoners Captured By 6th US Cavalry, Tientsin, China (1901) Underwood & Co (RESTORED) (4072872709).jpg|thumb|right|Boxers captured by the US [[6th Cavalry Regiment]] near Tianjin in 1901]]
From the beginning, views differed as to whether the Boxers were better seen as anti-imperialist, patriotic and [[proto-nationalist]], or as backward, irrational, and futile opponents of what was inevitable change. The historian [[Joseph W. Esherick]] comments that "confusion about the Boxer Uprising is not simply a matter of popular misconceptions" since "there is no major incident in China's modern history on which the range of professional interpretation is as great".{{sfnp|Esherick|1987|p=xiv}}

The Boxers drew condemnation from those who wanted to modernise China according to a Western model of civilisation. [[Sun Yat-sen]], considered the founding father of modern China, at the time worked to overthrow the Qing but believed that government spread rumours that "caused confusion among the populace" and stirred up the Boxer Movement. He delivered "scathing criticism" of the Boxers' "anti-foreignism and obscurantism". Sun praised the Boxers for their "spirit of resistance" but called them "bandits". Students studying in Japan were ambivalent. Some stated that while the uprising originated from the ignorant and stubborn people, their beliefs were brave and righteous and could be transformed into a force for independence.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Han |first=Xiaorong |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=oxTe1YYZa7MC&pg=PA20 |title=Chinese discourses on the peasant, 1900–1949 |publisher=State University of New York Press |year=2005 |isbn=0-7914-6319-2 |pages=20–21}}</ref> After the fall of the Qing dynasty in 1911, nationalistic Chinese became more sympathetic to the Boxers. In 1918, Sun praised their fighting spirit and said that the Boxers were courageous and fearless in fighting to the death against the Alliance armies, specifically the [[Battle of Yangcun]].<ref>Sun Yat-sen, A Letter to the Governor of Hong Kong", quoted in Li Weichao, "Modern Chinese Nationalism and the Boxer Movement",  {{Cite book |last=Kerr |first=Douglas |author-link=Douglas Kerr |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=I0kvN9LDHP0C&pg=PA151 |title=Critical Zone 3: A Forum of Chinese and Western Knowledge |publisher=Hong Kong University Press |year=2009 |isbn=978-962-209-857-2 |pages=149, 151}}</ref> Chinese liberals such as [[Hu Shih]], who called on China to modernise, still condemned the Boxers for their irrationality and barbarity.<ref>顾则徐：清末民初思想领袖评价义和团总览</ref> The leader of the [[New Culture Movement]], [[Chen Duxiu]], forgave the "barbarism of the Boxer&nbsp;... given the crime foreigners committed in China", and contended that it was those "subservient to the foreigners" that truly "deserved our resentment".{{sfnp|Han|2005|p=59}}

In other countries, views of the Boxers were complex and contentious. Mark Twain said that "the Boxer is a patriot. He loves his country better than he does the countries of other people. I wish him success."<ref>{{Cite book |last=Twain |first=Mark |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=dhWMWs_7J3UC&pg=PA116 |title=Mark Twain Speeches |publisher=BiblioBazaar |year=2007 |isbn=978-1-4346-7879-9 |page=116}}</ref> The Russian writer [[Leo Tolstoy]] also praised the Boxers and accused Nicholas II of Russia and Wilhelm II of Germany of being chiefly responsible for the lootings, rapes, murders, and "Christian brutality" of the Russian and Western troops.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Chamberlin |first=William Henry |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=k1_iAAAAMAAJ&q=he+praised+the+Chinese+for+their+heroic+patience.+When+he+learned+about+the+%22orgy+of+murder,+raping,+and+looting%22+committed+by+the+Western+powers+in+quelling+the+Boxer+rebellion,+he+raged+against+the+brutality+of+the+Christians |title=The Russian review, Volume 19 |publisher=Blackwell |year=1960 |page=115}}</ref> The Russian revolutionary [[Vladimir Lenin]] mocked the Russian government's claim that it was protecting Christian civilisation: "Poor Imperial Government! So Christianly unselfish, and yet so unjustly maligned! Several years ago it unselfishly seized Port Arthur, and now it is unselfishly seizing Manchuria; it has unselfishly flooded the frontier provinces of China with hordes of contractors, engineers, and officers, who, by their conduct, have roused to indignation even the Chinese, known for their docility."<ref>V. I.  Lenin, "The War in China", ''Iskra'', No. 1 (December 1900), in ''Lenin Collected Works'' (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1964), Volume 4, pp.&nbsp;372–377, online [http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1900/dec/china.htm Marxists Internet Archive].</ref> The Russian newspaper ''Amurskii Krai'' criticised the killing of innocent civilians and charged that restraint would have been more becoming of a "civilized Christian nation", asking: "What shall we tell civilized people? We shall have to say to them: 'Do not consider us as brothers anymore. We are mean and terrible people; we have killed those who hid at our place, who sought our protection.{{'"}}<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Lensen |first1=George Alexander |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ehhSAQAAIAAJ&q=midst+confidently+blemish+The+Russo-Chinese+War:+Chinese |title=The Russo-Chinese War |last2=Chʻen |first2=Fang-chih |year=1982 |page=103}}</ref> Lenin saw the Boxers as an avant-garde Proletarian force fighting against imperialism.<ref>{{Cite web |first=Vladimir |last=Lenin |author-link=Vladimir Lenin |script-title=ru:В. И. Ленин. О боевом соглашении для восстания |url=https://www.marxists.org/russkij/lenin/works/9-21.htm |via=marxists.org |language=ru}}</ref>

[[File:Chinese soldiers 1899 1901.jpg|thumb|left|Qing forces of Chinese soldiers in 1899–1901<br />''Left'': two infantrymen of the [[New Army|New Imperial Army]]. ''Front'': drum major of the regular army. Seated on the trunk: field artilleryman. ''Right'': Boxers]]
Some American churchmen spoke out in support of the Boxers. In 1912, the evangelist [[George F. Pentecost]] said that the Boxer uprising was a:

{{cquote|"patriotic movement to expel the 'foreign devils' – just that – the foreign devils". "Suppose", he said, "the great nations of Europe were to put their fleets together, came over here, seize Portland, move on down to Boston, then New York, then Philadelphia, and so on down the Atlantic Coast and around the Gulf of Galveston? Suppose they took possession of these port cities, drove our people into the hinterland, built great warehouses and factories, brought in a body of dissolute agents, and calmly notified our people that henceforward they would manage the commerce of the country? Would we not have a Boxer movement to drive those foreign European Christian devils out of our country?"<ref>{{Cite news |date=11 February 1912 |title=America Not A Christian Nation, Says Dr. Pentecost |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1912/02/11/archives/america-not-a-christian-nation-says-dr-pentecost.html |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180613210822/https://www.nytimes.com/1912/02/11/archives/america-not-a-christian-nation-says-dr-pentecost.html |archive-date=13 June 2018 |access-date=27 July 2018 |work=The New York Times}}</ref>
}}

The Indian Bengali [[Rabindranath Tagore]] attacked the European colonialists.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Bickers |first=Robert A. |author-link=Robert Bickers |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=jxgZT6XJUIoC&pg=PA149 |title=The Boxers, China, and the World |publisher=Rowman & Littlefield |year=2007 |isbn=978-0-7425-5395-8 |page=149}}</ref> A number of Indian soldiers in the [[British Indian Army]] sympathised with the cause of the Boxers, and in 1994 the Indian military returned a bell looted by British soldiers in the Temple of Heaven to China.<ref>{{Cite news |last=Krishnan |first=Ananth |date=7 July 2011 |title=The forgotten history of Indian troops in China |url=http://www.thehindu.com/features/friday-review/history-and-culture/the-forgotten-history-of-indian-troops-in-china/article2208018.ece |work=The Hindu |location=Beijing}}</ref>

The events also left a longer impact. Historian [[Robert Bickers]] noted that the Boxer Rebellion served as an equivalent to the [[Indian Rebellion of 1857]] for the British government, and agitated the [[Yellow Peril]] among the British public. He adds that later events like the [[Northern Expedition]] during the 1920s, and even the activities of the [[Red Guards]] during the 1960s, were perceived as standing in the shadow of the Boxers.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Bickers |first=Robert |author-link=Robert Bickers |title=Britain in China: Community, Culture, and Colonialism, 1900–1949 |publisher=Manchester University Press |year=1999 |isbn=0-7190-4697-1 |page=34}}</ref>

History textbooks in Taiwan and Hong Kong often present the Boxer as irrational, but the central government textbooks in [[mainland China]] have described the Boxer movement as an anti-imperialist, patriotic peasant movement that failed by the lack of leadership from the modern working class—and the international army as an invading force. In recent decades, however, large-scale projects of village interviews and explorations of archival sources have led historians in China to take a more nuanced view. Some non-Chinese scholars, such as Joseph Esherick, have seen the movement as anti-imperialist, but others hold that the concept "nationalistic" is anachronistic because the Chinese nation had not been formed, and the Boxers were more concerned with regional issues. Paul Cohen's recent study includes a survey of "the Boxers as myth", which shows how their memory was used in changing ways in 20th-century China from the New Culture Movement to the [[Cultural Revolution]].{{sfnp|Cohen|1997|loc="Part Three: The Boxers as Myth", pp.&nbsp;211–288}}

In recent years, the Boxer question has been debated in the People's Republic of China. In 1998, the critical scholar Wang Yi argued that the Boxers had features in common with the extremism of the [[Cultural Revolution]]. Both events had the external goal of "liquidating all harmful pests" and the domestic goal of "eliminating bad elements of all descriptions" and that the relation was rooted in "cultural obscurantism". Wang explained to his readers the changes in attitudes towards the Boxers from the condemnation of the [[May Fourth Movement]] to the approval expressed by [[Mao Zedong]] during the Cultural Revolution.<ref>Wang Yi, "The Cultural Origins of the Boxer Movement's Obscurantism and Its Influence on the Cultural Revolution", in [[Douglas Kerr]], ed., ''Critical Zone Three''. (Hong Kong University Press), 155.</ref> In 2006, [[Yuan Weishi]], a professor of philosophy at [[Zhongshan University]] in Guangzhou, wrote that the Boxers by their "criminal actions brought unspeakable suffering to the nation and its people! These are all facts that everybody knows, and it is a national shame that the Chinese people cannot forget."<ref>{{Cite news |title=History Textbooks in China |url=http://www.zonaeuropa.com/20060126_1.htm |access-date=23 October 2008 |publisher=Eastsouthwestnorth}}</ref> Yuan charged that history textbooks had been lacking in neutrality by presenting the Boxer Uprising as a "magnificent feat of patriotism" and not the view that most Boxer rebels were violent.<ref>{{Cite news |last=Pan |first=Philip P. |date=25 January 2006 |title=Leading Publication Shut Down in China |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/24/AR2006012401003.html |access-date=19 October 2008 |publisher=Washington Post Foreign Service}}</ref> In response, some labelled Yuan Weishi a "traitor" ([[Hanjian]]).<ref>{{Cite web |date=8 March 2006 |script-title=zh:网友评论：评中山大学袁时伟的汉奸言论和混蛋逻辑_三农之外_关注现实_中国三农问题研究中心 |url=http://www.snzg.com.cn/readnews.asp?newsid=1082 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060308103607/http://www.snzg.com.cn/readnews.asp?newsid=1082 |archive-date=8 March 2006 |access-date=24 July 2017 |language=zh}}</ref>