In 1900, the Western world was stunned by the violent success of the Boxer Uprising, a movement of Chinese villagers who attempted to rid China of all Western religious, cultural, and political influence. Prolific as Boxer scholarship already is, there is much still to be discovered about the experiences of Chinese Christians during this dramatic event. Historical accounts of the Uprising have focused primarily on the roughly 200 foreigners who were killed but have largely ignored the approximately 20,000 Chinese Christian converts who also died in the conflict. Their experiences of the rising tide of Boxerism in the last years of the nineteenth century, the dramatic Siege of Beijing in the summer of 1900, and the violent aftermath of the foreign occupation of China from 1900-1901 show that while suffering brutalization, exploitation and silencing, Chinese Christians were not merely passive victims, but rather active participants and combatants in a fight for their very lives.
