It is first important to point-out that Christian
missionaries did not invent violence in the region of Northern China, where the
Boxer War originated. That area had experienced physical conflict for many
years prior to the expansion of Christian cultural imperialism. Professor
Henrietta Harrison sets the stage by discussing inter-village politics
concerning water distribution: “The Jin River Flowed from a spring as the base
of the hills west of Taiyuan County town and irrigated approximately thirty
villages…These villages depended on the water to grow profitable cash crops and
for industries such as paper-making and the manufacture of alum.” Irrigation
was “regulated by a series of hatches controlled by village hatch keepers…The
prosperity of any individual was often directly dependent on the position of
his village in the irrigation hierarchy. Fights, the stealing of water, the
breaking of dykes, and lawsuits between villages were common” (Bickers &
Tiedemann [eds.], p. 8). But in spite of these conditions, violent methods had
been limited to the above tactics. It was only with the introduction of
Catholic and Protestant missionaries into the local politics, that war and mass
slaughter resulted.
Missionaries pursued an opportunistic strategy that
exploited and exacerbated the existing inter-village conflicts. After the
Second Opium War of 1860, and the First Sino-Japanese War of 1895, the Imperial
Government of China was dominated by foreign powers. Missionaries, primarily
from France, Germany and Great Britain, used this new political leverage to gain
converts. “Here, their effective intervention in what essentially were ongoing
struggles for scarce resources were of crucial importance and brought
remarkable results…foreign priests demonstrated their power by winning disputes
on behalf of converts and potential converts…Thus ‘conversion’ became a part of
the repertoire of collective—and to some extent individual—rural survival
strategies for a significant minority in a violently competitive environment...For
example, the French Jesuits had gained the reputation for being very powerful
as a consequence of their successful settlement of the Big Sword (Dadaohui)
affair of 1896…local officials had to offer apologies, pay indemnities, and
promise to protect the church…As Rosario Renaud has noted, ‘No power—that of
the Emperor excepted—has ever achieved anything like it in Xuzhou’” (Bickers
& Tiedemann [eds.], p. 21). As a result, Chinese communities that had
converted to Christianity gained dominion in resources and legal disputes over
those who did not convert. This created resentments, that would increase the
number of recruits against Christians during the Boxer War and result in more
casualties on both sides.
Northern China was an ecologically fragile area prone to
severe droughts and severe flooding. These were perpetual and unavoidable. It
was at a juncture between natural disaster and resentment of Christian missionaries
that the Boxers made their appearance. “Facing first floods and then drought,
these men had placed their hopes for salvation in…martial arts and spirit
possession practices that had emerged in northwest Shandong province between
1898 and 1899. As they understood it, the alien presences in the land and their
Chinese compatriots who had turned their backs on their identity by converting
to Christianity had knocked the world out of kilter. To restore order and to
bring on the rains, the land needed to be purged. In many instances, existing
local tensions and conflicts between Christian and non-Christian communities
and villages—over land, over water, over participation in community
life—further fed the flames. Attacks on Christians spiraled into attacks on
missionaries and other foreigners” (Bickers & Tiedemann [eds.], p. xiii).
Early in the struggle, “armed response” to Boxer attacks
“was usually led by foreign missionaries” who “had significant advantages over
their non-Christian rivals. Their extensive higher-level networks enabled them
to share information and acquire superior technology” in defensive
fortification and weaponry (Bickers & Tiedemann [eds.], p. 33). This
foreign leadership and technology resulted in an amount of casualties that
could never have been reached with the more primitive, local weapons. But even
this situation of unequal resources was dwarfed by the later military
intervention of seven European powers plus Japan. In the end, “perhaps a total
of up to 100,000 or more people died in the conflict.” https://www.britannica.com/event/Boxer-Rebellion
The role of Christian missionaries in cynically exploiting
an existing conflict to expand their influence, arming the convert populace,
and causing what was once localized minor violence to escalate into a widespread
war against Christian intrusion, is clear. History is rife with
examples of that signature Christian hypocrisy where clergy, (following a savior
who eschewed material gain and counseled people to love their enemies), are
instead pursuing power and causing war. It is a sad confluence of belief and
power. One can observe it when any religion that thinks of itself as possessing
absolute truth, leaves the private realm of personal worship, and enters the
political public sphere.
Bickers, Robert & Tiedemann, R.G. (editors). The
Boxers, China and the World. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers,
Inc., 2007.
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