WI: Foreign Quarter in Beijing Overrun during Boxer Rebellion?

What if the Foreign Quarter in Beijing was overrun by the Chinese in the beginning days of the siege? How would the Chinese treat the captured foreigners? How about the Chinese Christians?
 
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Good odds that all of the folks in the foreign quarter; Chinese, foreigners, diplomats, women, children, will be slaughtered. The reaction of the foreign powers will be ugly to say the least. Choice bits of China will be taken over by the foreigners, and the USA who did their best to slow this down will not be listened to, if they still make the case for Chinese independence. After all, a fair number of Americans will be chopped up by the "righteous fists". Naturally China as a whole can't be occupied even by several powers acting together but it can lose concessions that are for all intents and purposes "colonies". Its rivers will be completely controlled by foreign gunboats, and the indemnities that would be imposed would be huge.
 
There was a timeline about this, where the southern viceroys declared independence from the Qing with British support.
 
If the Boxers overran the forign quarter and say, maasacered a sizeable chunk of the population, especially if their were westerners killed, then I would expect the response of the Eight Nation Alliance to be severe. China is to big and populous to be directly occupied but I expect it would lose all sort of political autonomy in the terms that would be dictated to it by the Allies.
 

TinyTartar

Banned
There would be a general massacre of anyone there.

Remember, the Boxers were basically reactionary, racist, nativist assholes. They would not show restraint.

The reaction would be quite severe. Ci Xi would be held directly responsible and probably would have been executed if captured, and more chunks of China will be taken. There will be no restraint shown by the Western powers in the aftermath, and the business models used, which generally were about capitalizing on the Chinese market, would drastically change to one of outright exploitation of labor in the concession territories.
 
Good odds that all of the folks in the foreign quarter; Chinese, foreigners, diplomats, women, children, will be slaughtered. The reaction of the foreign powers will be ugly to say the least. Choice bits of China will be taken over by the foreigners, and the USA who did their best to slow this down will not be listened to, if they still make the case for Chinese independence. After all, a fair number of Americans will be chopped up by the "righteous fists". Naturally China as a whole can't be occupied even by several powers acting together but it can lose concessions that are for all intents and purposes "colonies". Its rivers will be completely controlled by foreign gunboats, and the indemnities that would be imposed would be huge.



I've always thought the relief forces did think the place had fallen and -everyone- killed.
 
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Asami

Banned
There would be a general massacre of anyone there.

Remember, the Boxers were basically reactionary, racist, nativist assholes. They would not show restraint.

The reaction would be quite severe. Ci Xi would be held directly responsible and probably would have been executed if captured, and more chunks of China will be taken. There will be no restraint shown by the Western powers in the aftermath, and the business models used, which generally were about capitalizing on the Chinese market, would drastically change to one of outright exploitation of labor in the concession territories.

Europe and Japan would probably carve up large annexations, without any pretense of "sphere of influence".
 
American opinion would go from somewhat disinterested to apocalyptically furious overnight. I could see where (quite honestly) the key Euro powers (Great Britain, Germany, Russia) would team up with the US and, shall we say, pacify as much of China as feasible. And it won't be pretty.

One suspects that China might be recovering from the reprisals of the Boxer atrocities by the late 20th century at the earliest.
 
To assume that China could not recover ...

That level of retaliation we're talking about here ... to assume that China could not recover ... :confused:

Should keep in mind that China is a nation that has suffered the worst of the Mongol expansionism and in the twentieth century to the invasion and attempted conquest made by the Japanese Empire simultaneously to civil war not to mention the politics of ''The Great Leap Forward'' from Mao or the effects of the 'Cultural Revolution'...

It's underestimating the great capacity that has historically China to fully recover.


Because their actions can't be more terrible than the above and the Westerners and Japanese retaliation probably terrible as it sounds, restrict themselves to implementing all actual or perceived suspected of being members of the boxers in the imperial city to occupy ... but I doubt that any occupied territory, come to be treated in a way that is worse than suffering a conquered territory or a city taken by assault and subject to looting by the soldiers, along history, or who approaches as Chinese civilians suffered offensive and subsequent military occupation of the Japanese Imperial Army during the 30s and parallel to the second WW. :( :mad:

An unexplored issue is that if the European powers decided to make permanent its presence in China, to require the surrender of large areas, contiguous or not to the territory of its concessions; now transformed into de facto colonies if they are not converted these territorial concessions, de jure colonies.

*These hypothetical Colonies should be administered, which meant, according to the Power in question a larger or smaller number of European civil servants with their families, and of course would have to establish a more or less important garrisons numerically with the logical and logistical effort to tensions protect them from the threat of internal rebellion and external by rival powers, with troops sent from the respective metropolis and / or perhaps partly recruited and trained in the colonies as would probably be the case of Great Britain.

The Problem is that many of these troops and naval units should be permanently stationed in China, and would have to be diverted from the forces available in Europe,increasing and bringing into occupied territory in China, the usual tensions and frictions in the Europe of the years before the First World War ... which perhaps originates, if the war is not affected by butterflies,by a colonial conflict in Chinese territory.

It is clear that the previous analysis only partially applied, for reasons other than US, Japan and Russia, which it has the advantage of being able to incorporate at least some of the hypothetical Chinese territories obtained, in applying the policy rule used to incorporate the various regions of Central Asia in the Tsarist empire.


The Empire of Japan had in this situation, the advantages of their geographical proximity and abundance of human resources at the disposal of its armed forces with little or no waiver to implement the necessary measures after conquering and 'pacify' the Chinese territories obtained ... all the Japanese Empire has made that the rest of the Powers have been allowed them to keep.


Finally the United States, is participating nations, the most reluctant and perhaps only in order to have internal political problems, whether it should increase the size and deployment of its armed forces in more or less permanently and / or see a situation come to possess colonies to European style.

The US had been in this scenario, the nation with 'the more altruistic motives' to intervene .. at least in comparison to other powers and the only nation with groups of commercial Religious strong enough internal pressure and, OTL and with which the US government should have when defining and implementing its policy on China, 'when the guns fell silent' and must decide whether demand territorial concessions to China in retaliation for the slaughter conducted by the Boxers.
 
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