LYDIA
R.
NUSSBAUM
LYDIA R. NUSSBAUM
From Paternalism to Imperialism:
The U.S. and the Boxer Rebellion
In the second half of the nineteenth century, the United States
changed the focus of its foreign policy from landed expansion to
commercial expansion. This change was the result of an increasingly
efficient American industrial complex that began to produce more
goods than could be sold. To avoid the domestic discontent that accompanied this excess of goods and lack of circulating capital, the United
States looked for more foreign markets in which to sell its products.
The two main areas of interest were Latin America and China, yet the
attitude of the United States towards these two regions was markedly
different. Because of their proximity to Latin America and the Monroe
Doctrine, Americans considered themselves entitled to Latin American
markets and approached them in an imperialist manner. But with respect
to China, the United States distanced itself from the imperial foreign
powers and instead presented itself as a protective ally. It is because of
this unique relationship with China that the United States found itself
in a political quandary at the turn of the century. With the outbreak of
the Boxer Rebellion in 1900, the United States was forced to choose
between its role as a paternal protector and its role as a blossoming
imperial power. The Boxer Rebellion and the ensuing American intervention marked a turning point in United States-Chinese relations
whose repercussions would last well into the next century.
Prior to 1898, the United States did not see itself as a colonizing,
imperialist power. It prided itself on remaining aloof and uninvolved in
wars fought by other foreign nations to acquire new trading rights in
China. But ironically, the United States had no qualms about enjoying
the benefits of these wars with China.1 In 1844 the United States signed
the Treaty of Wangxia with China as fallout from the Opium Wars
fought between the Chinese and the British. The Treaty of Wangxia
gave the United States most-favored-nation status, which allowed the
United States the same trade rights with China as any other nation, as
well as extraterritorial rights to protect United States’ citizens and
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property in China.2 A little more than a decade later, when Great Britain
and France declared war on China in 1857, the United States again
avoided involvement but did not hesitate to help itself to a share of the
new trade opportunities, the “spoils won by the Europeans,” by signing
the Treaty of Tianjin in 1858.3 Without having to lift a finger, the United
States took full advantage of the exploitation of China by imperial
powers while still maintaining its reputation as an anti-imperialist nation.
For the rest of the nineteenth century, international interest in
China’s markets grew and foreign powers jostled to gain a competitive
edge there. The United States continued its role as China’s anti-colonial protector against European and Japanese colonization because
without a stable Chinese government, the United States’ most-favorednation status meant nothing. If areas of China fell under control of other
foreign powers, American traders would not have unlimited access to
ports. Instead they would be charged new and higher tariffs imposed by
the colonizing nation. This open trade relationship with China was
termed the “Open Door,” and the United States had good reason to fear
for its own safety. In 1897, Germany obtained control of the port of
Kiaochow, which handled lucrative trade from Manchuria. Fearing that
Germany had gained an advantage, other foreign powers like Japan,
Russia, France, and Great Britain pressed for their own individual
economic control over other key parts of China.4 Japan claimed Fukien,
Russia took Port Arthur in northern Manchuria, France occupied regions of Yunnan and Kwangsi at the border of China and Indochina,
and Great Britain snatched more lands around Hong Kong in the
Yangtze valley and opened a naval base on the Shantung peninsula.5
This imperial partitioning of China endangered U.S. access to all of
China by threatening to close the Open Door.
The United States refused to join the scramble for territory.
Instead Washington continued to play the role of China’s economic
ally and protector against colonization. In 1899, in response to the
looming threat other foreign powers posed to American trade agreements with China, Secretary of State John Hay wrote the first “Open
Door Note.” He declared, “the Government of the United States . . .
cannot conceal its apprehension that under existing conditions there
is a possibility, even a probability, of complications arising between
the treaty powers which may imperil the rights insured to the United
States under our treaties with China.”6 Hay stressed the importance of
maintaining the Open Door policy to ensure equal trade for all nations
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in the China market and expressed his “sincere desire that the interests
of [American] citizens may not be prejudiced through exclusive treatment by any of the controlling powers within their so-called ‘spheres
of interest.’”7 The Open Door Note was as much a message to the other
foreign powers as it was a message to China. The United States needed
to convince China that it was not like the other foreign nations, but
instead had friendly intentions and no desire to rob China of her
sovereign powers. Hay asserted that “no matter to what nationality [a
port] may belong . . . duties so leviable shall be collected by the Chinese
government.”8 Thus, although foreign nations could control Chinese
ports, the Open Door policy required that the ports’ customs receipts go
to the Chinese government rather than to an imperial power. This facet
of the first Open Door Note indicated the U.S. support of China’s
territorial and economic sovereignty. However reluctantly the other
powers received Hay’s pronouncement, they agreed upon the principle
of free trade and recognized Chinese control over its trade. It seemed
the only way to keep one nation from receiving special privileges that
could be used to exclude commercial rivals. Thus, Hay thought the
threat of a fractured China had dissipated with the publication of the
Open Door Note in 1899.
But Hay soon discovered that the China problem had not been
solved. In spite of the U.S. attempts to protect Chinese sovereignty
from growing foreign spheres of interest—and also safeguard American interests—China remained unstable. In October of 1899, following
a poor harvest in the provinces of Chihli and Shantung, a secret society
called “Boxers” rallied together “with the avowed purpose of driving
out foreigners and of extirpating Christians.”9 The Boxers practiced the
art of boxing and quarterstaff—a kind of martial arts using iron-tipped
poles. Some followers added their own occult practices and formed the
secret society of “The Fist of Righteous Harmony.” As the viceroy of
Chihli observed, these people believed that “spirits from on high [would]
descend and aid and protect their bodies, so that they [could] withstand
the fire of guns or cannon.”10 The two groups melded, and their antiforeign movement spread with great rapidity throughout China in a
violent reaction to the growing presence and subsequent power of
foreigners. The Boxers and their followers destroyed churches, burned
Christian converts, and attacked foreigners while sounding the “cry of
‘Down with Christianity.’”11 They even assassinated Baron von Ketteler,
the German foreign Minister to China. But the rebels were not just
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riotous mobs of common people: the movement received support from
all sectors of Chinese society, including the Empress Dowager and her
imperial counselors. Foreigners as well as some Chinese feared that
because of the great number of rebel sympathizers in positions of
power, the Chinese government would fail to suppress the anarchist
movement and that the chaos in China would spin out of control.12 As
one foreign bishop wrote the French minister, “Upon the east of us
pillage and incendiarism are imminent; we are hourly receiving the
most alarming news. Peking is surrounded on all sides; the ‘Boxers’ are
daily coming nearer the capital, delayed only by the destruction which
they are making of Christians.”13
Americans, too, fell victim to the Boxer’s anti-foreign attacks.
Many foreign missionaries in China were American and just as susceptible to the anti-Christian violence of the Boxer movement as were the
other foreigners in China. Therefore, despite U.S. efforts to stand apart
from the other foreign imperial powers as an anti-imperialist, paternal
ally, the Chinese people did not see a difference—Christians were
Christians no matter what nationality. It is also possible that prior to the
Boxer Rebellion, some Chinese doubted the good intentions of the
United States and believed they had imperial designs in spite of Hay’s
first Open Door Note. In the same year Hay produced the first Open
Door Note, the United States annexed all of the Philippine Islands with
a great deal of bloodshed; thus, it seems likely that many Chinese
would have had serious reservations concerning U.S. intentions in
China after witnessing its aggressive, imperial conduct. Although the
United States tried to portray itself as China’s ally against other foreign
nations, Americans were included as targets of the Boxers’ anti-foreign
attacks, proving that not all of China was convinced by Washington’s
protective role.
The Boxer Rebellion placed U.S. policymakers in an awkward
position because it forced them to decide if the United States was
a paternal protector or a blossoming imperial power. This decision
hinged upon whether or not the United States should send troops to put
down the rebellion in China, thereby restoring order and protecting
American citizens and economic interests. The United States had no
military presence in China because it had distanced itself from the other
imperial powers and operated as a friendly trading partner. Indeed,
deployment of troops raised serious questions. If the United States
chose not to send troops, then the anti-foreign rebellion would escalate,
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more Americans would die, and the future of China would become
even more uncertain. Clearly, the United States could not risk a chaotic
China. But opting for military force also had its consequences. First,
American interference in Chinese domestic affairs with an armed force
would disregard Chinese sovereignty and violate the supposed partnership between the two countries. Second, if the United States established
a military presence in China, other foreign nations would have an
excuse for sending in their own troops to protect their “spheres of interest,”
and China would be carved up between five colonial powers, shutting the
Open Door forever. Washington faced the dilemma of whether to preserve
its economic interests and the Open Door, or whether to maintain its image
as anti-imperialist protector of Chinese sovereignty.
But the American decision-making process involved factors other
than threats to U.S. economic interests and the endangerment of American citizens in China. The United States considered itself the model
Republic, an agent of liberty to the rest of the world.14 Just as Christian
missionaries believed it their duty to preach the word of God to “heathens,”
Americans took it upon themselves to encourage and spread their republican ideology across the globe. President William McKinley captured
this American mentality in his annual message to Congress in 1900:
American liberty is more firmly established than ever before, and that love for
it and the determination to preserve it are more universal . . . . Popular government has demonstrated in its one hundred and twenty-four years of trial here its
stability and security, and its efficiency as the best instrument of national
development and the best safeguard to human rights.15
Americans have always justified their foreign policy with this political
dogma of superiority and altruism, and the turn of the century was no
exception. Ironically, for all of the United States’ desire to spread
liberty and republican progress throughout the world, they hated revolutions! Since at least the French Revolution in 1789, Americans
showed an aversion to civil disorder and chaos, and feared the prospect
of social upheaval: a violent and radical lower class taking away
and redistributing private property formerly held by a wealthy class.
Expressing one of its central, underlying themes, the United States’
own Declaration of Independence equates freedom with the individual’s
right to own property. Thus, the confiscation of property and possessions that accompanies social upheaval was seen as a violation of the
human right to freedom.16
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The Boxer Rebellion threatened these tenets of American ideology, freedom, and the right to property. As part of its philanthropic
mission, the United States believed that by standing apart from the
other foreign powers and adopting an anti-imperialist role, it could
influence China to westernize. In the first Open Door Note, the United
States argued against colonialism and instead favored “administrative
reforms so urgently needed for strengthening the Imperial government
and maintaining the integrity of China in which the whole Western
world is alike concerned.”17 But the Boxer Rebellion sent the clear
message that many in the Chinese population had no interest in American tutelage. The Boxers endangered American influence, and consequently interfered with the U.S. mission to spread liberty throughout
the world. Also, Washington feared the Boxer uprising could become
another French Revolution. The Boxer Rebellion had all the right
ingredients: it involved a violent, radical faction that threatened individual freedom of an elite by destroying property. Moreover, in the
case of the Boxer Rebellion, that elite group was the foreigners, to
which the Americans belonged.
The situation reached a climax when the Boxers laid siege to the
foreign legations in Peking, trapping Americans, British, Chinese, and
others. It was this “condition . . . of virtual anarchy” in Peking that
forced the Americans’ hand—in the spring of 1900, President William
McKinley sent five thousand United States marines to put down the
Boxer Rebellion. Hay produced an explanatory second Open Door
Note, in which he firmly defended the United States’ reasons for using
military force in China.18 He stressed that the primary purpose of
sending in force was “rescuing the American officials, missionaries,
and other Americans who [were] in danger” and “to seek a solution
which may bring about permanent safety and peace to China . . . and
safeguard for the world the principle of equal and impartial trade with
all parts of the Chinese Empire.”19 In addition, the United States made
sure that other foreign powers who also sent troops to aid in suppressing the Boxers would remove them as soon as the danger ended to
ensure that “the treaty rights of all the Powers will be secured for the
future, the open door assured, [and] the interests and property of
foreign citizens conserved.”20
That decision to use military force to stop the Boxer Rebellion
had serious ramifications that reverberated throughout the twentieth
century. Hay’s and McKinley’s decision to send troops to China
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vitiated all of their previous efforts to maintain some semblance of
Chinese autonomy. The Open Door policy’s hands-off approach to
China had ended. Even more important, the U.S. failed to distinguish
itself from the other imperial powers itching to carve up China. Many
Chinese lost faith in the good intentions of Americans, and the explosion of anti-foreign sentiment manifested in the Boxer Rebellion only
continued to fester. That resentment increased when Americans joined
the other imperial powers in the drafting of the 1901 Boxer Protocol—
a humiliating punishment that demanded significant monetary compensation, the stationing of foreign troops in the capital, and the denial
of China’s economic autonomy.
In the years following the Boxer Rebellion, the United States
continued to press for free trade with China. But China now proved
much less willing to comply. The blatant racial discrimination of the
United States government against Chinese through the continued use of
Chinese Exclusion Acts only served to confirm China’s mistrust of the
United States. China made movements of open retaliation such as
boycotting American goods in 1905 in an attempt to assert itself
economically. But too many foreign powers had designs on China, and
China had neither the unity nor the strength to oppose them all. Japan
and Russia wrestled for control of Manchuria, and the United States
pressed Beijing for the rights to build railroads all over China. In 1911,
internal agitation developed into a revolution against a weakened
Imperial government that continued to tolerate foreign meddling. The
revolution only threw China into deeper chaos: the country was wracked
by uprisings and civil wars, which ultimately culminated in the Communist Revolution of 1949. In hindsight, had the United States chosen
not to interfere with the Boxer Rebellion, the history of the relationship
between Americans and Chinese may have run a different course. But
because of economic interests and its own political dogma, the United
States did intervene with military force. As a result, the United States
abandoned its role as China’s anti-colonial protector and instead took
its place among the ranks of the other imperial powers. Ultimately, this
decision marked the beginning of the redefinition of U.S.-Chinese
relations in the twentieth century.
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Works Cited
“The Boxer Protocol.” Peking. 7 Sept. 1901. <http://web.jjay.cuny.edu/
~jobrien/reference/ob26.html>.
“Ch’ing China: The Boxer Rebellion.” 1996. <http://www.wsu.edu:
8080/~dee/CHING/BOXER.HTM>.
Davids, Jules, ed. American Diplomatic and Public Papers: The United
States and China, vol. 5, doc. #17: letter from Bishop Favier to
French Minister. Wilmington: Scholarly Resources, Inc., 1981.
Hay, John. “The First Open Door Note, 1899.” Major Problems in
American Foreign Relations, Vol. I: To 1920, ed. Dennis Merrill
and Thomas G. Paterson. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 2000.
___. “The Second Open Door Note, 1900.” Major Problems in American Foreign Relations, Vol. I: To 1920, ed. Dennis Merrill and
Thomas G. Paterson. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 2000.
Hunt, Michael H. Ideology and U.S. Foreign Policy. New Haven: Yale
UP, 1987.
___. The Making of a Special Relationship: The United States and
China to 1914, ed. Dennis Merrill and Thomas G. Paterson.
Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 2000.
Isaacs, Harold. “The Tragedy of the Chinese Revolution.” 1938.
Chapter 1. <http://www.zhongguo.org/Isaacs/chapter1.htm>.
LaFeber, Walter. The American Age: U.S. Foreign Policy at Home and
Abroad, Vol. 1. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1994.
Notes
1
Walter LaFeber, The American Age: U.S. Foreign Policy at
Home and Abroad, Vol. 1. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1994. 103.
2
LaFeber 103.
3
LaFeber 103.
4
LaFeber 200.
5
Michael H. Hunt, The Making of a Special Relationship: The
United States and China to 1914, ed. Dennis Merrill and Thomas G.
Paterson. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co. 2000. 431.
6
John Hay, “The First Open Door Note, 1899,” Major Problems
in American Foreign Relations, Vol. I: To 1920, ed. Dennis Merrill and
Thomas G. Paterson. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 2000. 423.
7
Hay 423.
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Hay 424.
Jules Davids, ed., American Diplomatic and Public Papers:
The United States and China, vol. 5, doc. #9: letter from Conger to
Hay. Wilmington: Scholarly Resources, Inc., 1981. 32.
10
Jules Davids, ed., American Diplomatic and Public Papers:
The United States and China, vol. 5, doc. #12: Proclamation by the
viceroy of Chihli. Wilmington: Scholarly Resources, Inc., 1981. 34.
11
Jules Davids, ed., American Diplomatic and Public Papers:
The United States and China, vol. 5, doc. #59: Memorandum given by
the Chinese Minister. Wilmington: Scholarly Resources, Inc., 1981. 122.
12
Davids 122.
13
Jules Davids, ed., American Diplomatic and Public Papers:
The United States and China, vol. 5, doc. #17: letter from Bishop
Favier to French Minister. Wilmington: Scholarly Resources, Inc.,
1981. 43–44.
14
Michael H. Hunt, Ideology and U.S. Foreign Policy. New
Haven: Yale UP, 1987. 104.
15
Jules Davids, ed., American Diplomatic and Public Papers:
The United States and China, vol. 5, doc. #147: President McKinley’s
address to Congress. Wilmington: Scholarly Resources, Inc., 1981.
336.
16
Hunt, Ideology and U.S. Foreign Policy. 117.
17
Hay, “The First Open Door Note, 1899.” 423.
18
John Hay, “The Second Open Door Note, 1900.” Major
Problems in American Foreign Relations, Vol. I: To 1920, ed. Dennis
Merrill and Thomas G. Paterson. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 2000.
425.
19
Hay 426.
20
Jules Davids, ed., American Diplomatic and Public Papers:
The United States and China, vol. 5, doc. #100: Telegram from
Adee to Herbert H. D. Peirce, St. Petersburg. Wilmington: Scholarly
Resources, Inc., 1981. 190.
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