ABSTRACT
The Boxer uprising of 1898-1900, so called because of the martial arts practices of its participants, was a major antiforeign explosion and watershed event in Chinese history. It has often been portrayed in the West as a struggle between the forces of progress, civilization, and enlightenment, on the one hand, and barbarism, savagery, superstition, and xenophobia, on the other. In China, over the past century, it has been quite differently viewed, above all by those in the Marxist camp, who have shown a strong inclination to define the conflict as one between foreign imperialism and the Chinese people’s patriotic resistance to this force. In researching my book on the Boxer episode,1 mainly focusing on the spring and summer of 1900 when the struggle between the Boxers and their foreign and Chinese Christian adversaries reached peak intensity, I was struck by the degree to which, at the time, this struggle – as well as the circumstances surrounding it – was understood by both sides in profoundly religious terms. As a corollary to this, I also noted the general tendency of each party to the conflict to view itself as acting in behalf of a supernatural force that was authentic and good – God or the gods – and the other side as representing false gods that were, at bottom, either powerless or the very embodiment of evil.
