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In Our Time
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Listen to the latest editionThursday 9.00-9.45am, repeated 9.30pm.

Programme details
Thursday 19 March 2009
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Captured Chinese Boxer rebels with their feet shackled in wooden stocks
THE BOXER REBELLION

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In the long summer of 1900, Peking, the capital of China, was under heavy siege. One resident described the devastation:

‘The people in Peking were suffering; how the Boxers were firing on them from all sides and trying to burn them out; how each man was limited to a small cup of grain a day, while at the same time they were compelled to labour under a burning sun.’

Peking’s besiegers were no foreign army - they were Chinese. They were a group of rebels called the Boxers and this was the last great act of the Boxer Rebellion. The Boxers came out of the north; they claimed their fists were stronger than fire and they were invincible to bullets. But whatever their claims, they were also desperate and starving and they blamed foreigners for their plight.

The Boxers lost their battles but they may have won their war for the Boxer Rebellion changed China and more than a hundred years later the spirit of the Boxer Rebellion lives on.

Contributors

Frances Wood, Curator of Chinese Collections at the British Library

Rana Mitter, Professor of the History and Politics of Modern China at the University of Oxford

Gary Tiedemann, Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Christianity in China

Audience reactions to this edition
Boxer Rebellion
Have just read Melvyn's newsletter. Funnily enough, I was just reading about the Taiping revolution in Hobsbawm's Age of Capital (again). Hobsbawm says it 'has been largely ignored by Euro-centric historians', but Marx wrote in 1853 'Perhaps the next uprising of the people of Europe may depend more on what is now takingp lace in the celestial empire than on any other existing political cause.'So he wasn't all bad! I was fascinated by the Boxer rebellion programme and now want to read more. I was going to ask if you could give lists of follow-up reading in the newsletter each week, but then found the further reading bit on the web site. Never knew that was there.Jeff Horner

Paul Reeman - MB's Newsletter after 'The Boxer Reb
In the Newsletter following this programme MB comments on Prime Ministers (in the days of Empire)catching the bus home after 'work'.Immediately post WW2, in the days when the Empire was slowly being dissolved, the then PM, Clement Attlee, used to travel to Parliament by London Underground from his home in Stanmore after being driven to the station by his wife.It would be interesting to know more about when, and how quickly, this sort of practice died out and who brought it about. Was it the politicians themselves or pressure form the Police etc.?

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The In Our Time Companion, edited by Melvyn Bragg, features a personal selection of episodes from the series. Find out more about the book.

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