Story of the Chinese Crisis – the Boxer Uprising of 1899-1901

This book is a compilation of eye-witness material put together quickly in the wake of the Boxer Uprising of 1899-1901 for the benefit of supporters in the West. This public domain title was kindly provided for digitisation by Redcliffe College.

Stanley P. Smith [1861-1931], China From Within, or the Story of the Chinese Crisis, 2nd edn. London: Marshall Brothers, 1901. Hbk. pp.252. [Click to visit the download page for this title]

Contents

• Preface

1. Introduction
2. The Emperor Kuang-Hsü and the Reform Movement
3. The Reactionaries and Their Policy
4. Imflammatory Edicts
5. From the Second Coup D’État to Anarchy in Peking
6. The Grand Council in the Palace
7. The Power of Darkness
8. The Shan-Si Massacres
9. The Siege of Peking
10. The Punishment of Peking
11. The Causes of the Uprising
12. Religion in China
13. China’s Need of True Religion
14. Lady Missionaries in the Interrior of China
15. Conclusion

Preface

In the closing words of this book we have preferred to call it a compilation. Certainly, by far the greater part of ·the first ten chapters has merely been compiled from different sources; the tenth chapter, indeed, being wholly the work of another. This is so for two reasons. Firstly, in the nature of the case, the events spoken of could be most truthfully and graphically told in the language of eye-witnesses. Secondly, the book was required in haste. A little over a month has been occupied in its compilation, ·and that time has been constantly broken into by journeyings and public duties.

Our deepest debt of thanks is due to the North China Herald, which is the weekly edition of the North China Daily News. This paper is justly held to be the best newspaper in the Far East. Among its correspondents are the most able and best-informed missionaries in all parts of China, besides other foreigners in the treaty ports ; and in addition to this, it numbers among its native contributors some of the highest m the land, both of the officials and gentry. It is, perhaps, not too much to say that if its prescient warnings about the rise and progress of this late anti-foreign movement had been laid to heart earlier it might have been avoided, or certainly mitigated in its intensity. No one who wishes to be well posted up in matters Chinese can afford to be without the paper. We are also under great obligation to Dr. Morrison for the long extracts made from his accurate account of “The Siege of Peking.” The compilation seeks to address two classes of people. Firstly, to the general public we have striven to give such an account of the late anti-foreign movement, as to its inception, culmination, and causes, as shall give them real information on these points. And secondly, we are addressing that large body of people who believe in the Lord’s Prayer, and therefore the vital connection that exists between prayer and the coming of the kingdom of God on earth, that they may the more intelligently enter into the great needs of the Chinese Empire, foremost among which are a sovereign animated by Christian sentiment, and a liberal, enlightened, and progressive government.

Pages v-vi.