- Hi. My name's Yohuru Williams. I'm a historian. And here's what you need to know in order to sound smart about the Boxer Rebellion. The Boxer Rebellion began in China in 1900 and was led by a group known as the Order of the Righteous and Harmonious Fists, who became known in the West as the Boxers because of their adherence to martial arts and physical exercise.

The Boxers were both anti-Christian and anti-foreign and targeted both Chinese Christians and foreign emissaries whom they believed were attempting to colonize and to take over China. Part of the appeal of the Boxer Rebellion came from a series of humiliations that the Qing dynasty had suffered dating back to the 1830s and 1840s. In a series of unfortunate wars with Western powers and with Japan, China was forced to cede territory and monies to foreign invaders.

This rankled the local population, particularly peasants like those from the Shandong province, who blamed some of the flooding, famine, and other natural disasters which befell China in this period on this Western influence. The Boxer Rebellion ended in China in 1900 after a multinational force invaded the capital and were able to liberate those being held hostage by the Boxers.

As a result of the violence, China was forced to pay a $330 million reparations bill to the Western powers. In addition, China was forbidden from importing firearms into the nation for two years. The Boxer Rebellion would prove to be the death knell for the Qing dynasty, the last great dynasty in China.

Young people in large numbers came out and joined what became known as the Red Guards. These largely terroristic organizations were used to publicly humiliate, assault, and in some cases, even murder political enemies of Mao and the Communist Party.