What if the Boxers were actually right?

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

Wouldn't it be some crazy shit if the Boxers (from the 1900 Boxer Rebellion in China) were actually right? Like, if their stupid magic rituals actually made them invincible, and their Red Lanterns actually went flying around in the air like witches firebombing European cities?

 

[NOT Sword Fighter Super]

Boxer-briefs are where it's at, bro.

 

[Irwin M. Felcher]

If there isn't at least one manga about that, I'd be real surprised.

 

[Hatoful Dandy]

Atrocitus laughs at their Red Lanterns and has his cat puke on them in response to their Coronavirus.

 

[mindlessobserver]

Boxer-briefs are where it's at, bro.

Literally just wearing pants under your pants. Real men go commando

 

[Lemmingwise]

Ha ha stupid gweilo, who needs boxers when we have wu flu.

 

[The 3rd Hooligan]

I dunno. If they truly were invincible wouldnt they rule us by now?

 

[millais]

The Boxers were initially right about the Manchu dynasty being a blight on the Chinese civilization. It's too bad that the Dowager Empress co-opted their movement and they decided to go along with it.

Also the Boxers could have easily overrun the Foreign Legations in Peking had they not been subordinated to the Qing military commanders, who kept receiving contradictory and countermanding orders from the Dowager Empress on whether or not to press the attack. On one day, the Qing commanders would hit the Foreign barricades with heavy bombardment or repeated close infantry assault, then the next day they would declare a truce and pass sorely needed food and medical supplies to the Foreign Legation guards.

If the Boxers had been permitted to run riot and overwhelm the Foreign Legations and massacre the various foreign diplomatic corps and guards, it would have triggered a full scale war between the Eight Nations and China.

Almost all of the Chinese armies and provincial governments either outright declared neutrality in the Boxer Rebellion or unofficially sat it out on the sidelines with zero effective participation. They saw that the Dowager Empress was vacillating and indecisive in her support for the Rebellion, so they knew that it was just a matter of time before the Eight Nations' relief expedition lifted the siege in Peking. Even if she had decisively put the full weight of the Qing national government behind the Rebellion, a lot of the more autonomous and disobedient provincial governors and army commanders would have refused to participate because they knew that by sitting out, they could avoid the wrathful retribution of the Eight Nations after the Rebellion was crushed.

But if the Foreign Legations in Peking were gruesomely slaughtered down to every last man, woman, and child, the Eight Nations would have been in such a state of outrage and furor that it wouldn't have mattered if any independent-minded provincial governors or generals had declared neutrality. The entire country of China would have received the full wrath of the Eight Nations, and all the provincial armies and governments would have been dragged into the resulting war.

And that would have been a nasty, difficult war that might have got the better of the Eight Nations.

 

[Remove Goat]

Meh, I'm a mesh man myself.

 

[Bassomatic]

The Boxers were initially right about the Manchu dynasty being a blight on the Chinese civilization. It's too bad that the Dowager Empress co-opted their movement and they decided to go along with it.

Also the Boxers could have easily overrun the Foreign Legations in Peking had they not been subordinated to the Qing military commanders, who kept receiving contradictory and countermanding orders from the Dowager Empress on whether or not to press the attack. On one day, the Qing commanders would hit the Foreign barricades with heavy bombardment or repeated close infantry assault, then the next day they would declare a truce and pass sorely needed food and medical supplies to the Foreign Legation guards.

If the Boxers had been permitted to run riot and overwhelm the Foreign Legations and massacre the various foreign diplomatic corps and guards, it would have triggered a full scale war between the Eight Nations and China.

Almost all of the Chinese armies and provincial governments either outright declared neutrality in the Boxer Rebellion or unofficially sat it out on the sidelines with zero effective participation. They saw that the Dowager Empress was vacillating and indecisive in her support for the Rebellion, so they knew that it was just a matter of time before the Eight Nations' relief expedition lifted the siege in Peking. Even if she had decisively put the full weight of the Qing national government behind the Rebellion, a lot of the more autonomous and disobedient provincial governors and army commanders would have refused to participate because they knew that by sitting out, they could avoid the wrathful retribution of the Eight Nations after the Rebellion was crushed.

But if the Foreign Legations in Peking were gruesomely slaughtered down to every last man, woman, and child, the Eight Nations would have been in such a state of outrage and furor that it wouldn't have mattered if any independent-minded provincial governors or generals had declared neutrality. The entire country of China would have received the full wrath of the Eight Nations, and all the provincial armies and governments would have been dragged into the resulting war.

And that would have been a nasty, difficult war that might have got the better of the Eight Nations.

You made my day of turning one of the most baffling and shit posty threads in DT into something cool. I really like the boxer period it's complex and you even can understand it but you still have no clue what the fuck was going on. It's a mismash of what feels like 3 different time periods thru 10 or so nations over all.

It's such a blender of humanity.

 

[Chaptersevenbankruptcy]

This is the weirdest urban fantasy writing prompt I've ever been given.

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

The Boxers were initially right about the Manchu dynasty being a blight on the Chinese civilization. It's too bad that the Dowager Empress co-opted their movement and they decided to go along with it.

Also the Boxers could have easily overrun the Foreign Legations in Peking had they not been subordinated to the Qing military commanders, who kept receiving contradictory and countermanding orders from the Dowager Empress on whether or not to press the attack. On one day, the Qing commanders would hit the Foreign barricades with heavy bombardment or repeated close infantry assault, then the next day they would declare a truce and pass sorely needed food and medical supplies to the Foreign Legation guards.

If the Boxers had been permitted to run riot and overwhelm the Foreign Legations and massacre the various foreign diplomatic corps and guards, it would have triggered a full scale war between the Eight Nations and China.

Almost all of the Chinese armies and provincial governments either outright declared neutrality in the Boxer Rebellion or unofficially sat it out on the sidelines with zero effective participation. They saw that the Dowager Empress was vacillating and indecisive in her support for the Rebellion, so they knew that it was just a matter of time before the Eight Nations' relief expedition lifted the siege in Peking. Even if she had decisively put the full weight of the Qing national government behind the Rebellion, a lot of the more autonomous and disobedient provincial governors and army commanders would have refused to participate because they knew that by sitting out, they could avoid the wrathful retribution of the Eight Nations after the Rebellion was crushed.

But if the Foreign Legations in Peking were gruesomely slaughtered down to every last man, woman, and child, the Eight Nations would have been in such a state of outrage and furor that it wouldn't have mattered if any independent-minded provincial governors or generals had declared neutrality. The entire country of China would have received the full wrath of the Eight Nations, and all the provincial armies and governments would have been dragged into the resulting war.

And that would have been a nasty, difficult war that might have got the better of the Eight Nations.

Bruh, reading your posts always makes me feel like a lazy moron.

 

[millais]

You made my day of turning one of the most baffling and shit posty threads in DT into something cool. I really like the boxer period it's complex and you even can understand it but you still have no clue what the fuck was going on. It's a mismash of what feels like 3 different time periods thru 10 or so nations over all.

It's such a blender of humanity.

There's a lot of moving parts in the equation, but it mostly boils down to Manchu palace intrigue and factionalism on the Chinese side and "Great Game" military sabre-rattling / diplomatic dick waving on the Eight Nations side, who were squabbling amongst themselves almost as much as they were fighting the Chinese.

The Boxers ended up just being pawns of the Dowager Empress's faction of the Qing government, but they started out as a much more subversive and revolutionary movement, like the Taiping Rebellion or the Yellow Turban Rebellion. Every so often in Chinese history when the central government is starting to fall apart, someone will start up a virally popular religious cult based on the same kind of tried-and-true millenialist, end-of-the-world theology that snowballs into a massive, armed and existential threat for the central government.

But it was definitely an "end of an era" kind of moment for all involved. The crushing of the rebellion in Peking led to one of the last great sackings of a major world city in the classical style, complete with immense hauls of priceless treasures which filled the haversacks of even the lowliest enlisted man, and much raping and pillaging all around. And it was one of the last great lopsided colonial campaigns for most of the participating powers, in which they got to match their bolt-action, magazine-fed, smokeless powder rifles and machine guns against smoothbore matchlocks and spears. And for sure it was the last time the great powers were all cooperating on the same side before the whirlwind of the First World War. On the Chinese side, the debacle of the Rebellion weakened much of the institutional influence and political legitimacy of the Manchu imperial government, and the unspoken "mutiny" of the Chinese generals and governors who declared neutrality and kept their highly modernized and Western-trained/equipped armies out of the fighting was basically the beginning of the Warlord Era for modern China.

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

There's a lot of moving parts in the equation, but it mostly boils down to Manchu palace intrigue and factionalism on the Chinese side and "Great Game" military sabre-rattling / diplomatic dick waving on the Eight Nations side, who were squabbling amongst themselves almost as much as they were fighting the Chinese.

The Boxers ended up just being pawns of the Dowager Empress's faction of the Qing government, but they started out as a much more subversive and revolutionary movement, like the Taiping Rebellion or the Yellow Turban Rebellion. Every so often in Chinese history when the central government is starting to fall apart, someone will start up a virally popular religious cult based on the same kind of tried-and-true millenialist, end-of-the-world theology that snowballs into a massive, armed and existential threat for the central government.

But it was definitely an "end of an era" kind of moment for all involved. The crushing of the rebellion in Peking led to one of the last great sackings of a major world city in the classical style, complete with immense hauls of priceless treasures which filled the haversacks of even the lowliest enlisted man, and much raping and pillaging all around. And it was one of the last great lopsided colonial campaigns for most of the participating powers, in which they got to match their bolt-action, magazine-fed, smokeless powder rifles and machine guns against smoothbore matchlocks and spears. And for sure it was the last time the great powers were all cooperating on the same side before the whirlwind of the First World War. On the Chinese side, the debacle of the Rebellion weakened much of the institutional influence and political legitimacy of the Manchu imperial government, and the unspoken "mutiny" of the Chinese generals and governors who declared neutrality and kept their highly modernized and Western-trained/equipped armies out of the fighting was basically the beginning of the Warlord Era for modern China.

So what's your theory on why the chink is so batshit insane?

 

[millais]

So what's your theory on why the chink is so batshit insane?

In those civilizations with a multi-millenia long, unbroken line of continuity like China, it seems like their history often falls into a cyclical pattern. In fact that was the classical model of interpreting history since the times of the earliest Greek scholars until the Whig theory of history took hold after the Enlightenment (ie history is a linear progression trending ever upwards and better towards some far future utopia).

In the Chinese civilization, the repeated spontaneous eruption of millenialist cults is most likely a response to widespread disillusionment and dissatisfaction with the status quo and the central government that is attempting to maintain the status quo. For sure a lot of the cult adherents were true believers in whatever wacky theology was being peddled, but many other followers just saw a opportunity to join a movement that was having a tangible effect on drastically changing the power structure of their daily lives. For instance, many women joined the Taiping because in Taiping-ruled territory, they were granting women more legal/property rights than they got in traditional Chinese society. Many of the famine-stricken northern Chinese peasantry joined the Boxers because they promised to expel the Manchu dynasty that was taxing them to starvation and because they promised to expel the Westerners whose railroads and trading concessions were dumping mass produced foreign goods into the local markets and screwing up the ability of their local cottage industries to compete.

The nature of the state and society in China proper has never been that great about offering the people a kind of safety-valve for them to vent their frustrations with the state without resorting to armed insurrection or rebellion, and these religious cults are a convenient catalyzing "seed crystal" for such insurrection. Unlike in the Western liberal democracies where the people can be pacified by the illusory choice of elections and subsequent regime change, in China proper it has always been the tacit understanding that it's an autocratic system. Even the CCP of today has just traded the autocracy of the old emperors for the "dictatorship of the proletariat" (ie the autocracy of the Party leader), as they like to call it.

Although they have tamer optics and are less viscerally violent than the Yellow Turbans or the Taiping or the Boxers, the Falun Gong cultists of modern China are ideologically no less subversive than their historical antecedents in their commitment to overturning the Chinese central government and the status quo it enforces. If you look at the Falun Gong propaganda campaign in China and abroad, it's all about challenging the legitimacy of the Chinese central government and trying to bring it down as part of their grand plan to bring about their cultish vision of a heaven-on-earth utopia in China, which necessarily involves cataclysmic upheaval and turmoil in the process.

It's no wonder the CCP is doing everything it can to crush the Falun Gong cultists and the underground "house Christians". Any one of those multifarious sects or cults could be the spark for the next big millenialist religious insurrection.

 

[an kamel]

those were the chads