Boxer Rebellion: The Dramatic Story of China's War on Foreigners that Shook the World in the Summer of 1900 [Paperback]

This acclaimed account of the Boxer Rebellion, by an Oxford-trained historian, is “an outstanding popular history that also passes muster as first-rate historical research (Booklist).

In the last years of the nineteenth century, the Western powers were bickering over how to slice up the pie of China, while the presence they had already established there was undermining the Chinese people’s traditional ways. Then a new movement—mystical, militaristic, and virulently anti-Christian—began to spread like wildfire among the Chinese peasants. The contemptuous foreigners nicknamed them “the Boxers”—a snickering reference to their martial-arts routines—never imagining that the group, with the backing of China’s Empress Dowager, would soon terrorize the world....


“With meticulous research and passionate style, Diana Preston re-creates the tragedy that consumed China a century ago.” —Iris Chang, author of The Rape of NankingThe Boxer RebellionPrologue

I. The Poison in the Well:
China on the Eve of the Boxer Rebellion

1. A Thousand Deaths
2. Boxers and Devils
3. The Approaching Hour
4. Rats in a Trap
5. Sha! Sha!

II. Death and Destruction to the Foreigner!
20 June—21 July 1900

6. A Failed Rescue
7. City of Mud and Fire
8. Behind the Tartar Wall
9. The Drifting Horror
10. The Darkest Night

III. War and Watermelons: 21 July—14 August 1900

11. A Truce and a Triumph
12. The Half-Armistice
13. Horsemeat and Hope
14. In through the Slul³B