A demagogic, partisan, revisionist take on the Eight-Nation Alliance's invasion of China in 1900.
The book begins with descriptions of the Boxer militia and the Boxer Rebellion in 1900. The author goes on to posit that the Eight-Nation Alliance was a multinational humanitarian relief force whose sole mission was to relieve foreign legations (and innocent Chinese civilians) under siege. In other words, a humanitarian emergency response had been misconstrued as invasion.
For the first quarter of the book, we read about the rampage and destruction of the Boxer rebellion. Omitted from the narrative though was the cause of the uprising and that of the surge of nationalist sentiments among the Boxers that ultimately led to the brutal massacre and purging of foreigners, missionaries, and Chinese Christians. As a reader, I want to know WHY? Why did the Boxers have such venomous hate for innocent foreigners and Christianity that they savagely hunt down all men, women, and children? Alas, you won’t find any answers in this book. Things just happen; out of the blue.
No historical events stands alone. They are all interconnected and connected they are multifacetedly: politically, economically, culturally, ideologically, psychologically ….. But in this book, the Boxer militia and its rebellion were presented as though they were the geneses of all things to come.
Some of the things you will not learn from the book: the Manchu government’s corruption, the Empress Dowager’s treacherous dealings, the Opium Wars, the Treaty of Nanking, the Taiping Rebellion where more than 20 million died, etc. All these and their aftermath brought about a China that was divvied up by foreign nations who, in the mid- 19th to early 20th century, had immense economic and political interests in her. Foreigners living in China were granted indemnity and extraterritoriality while local Chinese led lives that of colonial slaves. All, or some of these, might very well be at the root of the anti-foreigner sentiment. I believe the book can benefit from discussing and explaining to readers why the author thinks the aforementioned events are irrelevant to the Boxer Rebellion.
Also omitted were the looting, pillaging, raping, and killing of innocent civilians during the weeks that the alliance occupied Peking. But no, the author decides to turn a blind eye to that part of history as well.
By blatantly omitting connections between cause and consequence and damningly neglecting facts unfavorable to his argument, I believe the author has veered too far from the holistic approach to historical presentation and that he has failed his readers completely. This piece is unconvincing, short of good scholarship, and therefore invalid.
One star for the preposterous, but nonetheless, entertaining spin.