First off, let me thank the proprietors of this fine sea vessel for welcoming me aboard. Eric’s insistence that my turn at the tiller can only lead the ship straight onto the rocks of post-Cliopatria decline is heartwarming. And with that, I will drop the nautical metaphor before I really do go aground.
Though I’ve been something of a regular presence already, let me introduce myself further. I’m a military historian focusing on the 19th and 20th centuries, and the mass industrial warfare of the first half of the 20th century. I’ve taken a particular interest in World War I, and imperial insurgencies and counterinsurgencies. I’m currently working on a project on the Boxer Uprising of 1899-1900 in China (warning: wikipedia link) and the western intervention that destroyed it.
Military history as a specialty has evolved substantially over the last two generations. The traditional school (“drums and trumpets” as it is known) gained a rival and complement in the 1970s with the New Military History, which brought the insights of social history to warfare. Succeeding historians have started to integrate later methodological innovations, including the linguistic turn and cultural studies. A good recent analysis of the field is here (subscription required, sorry). If there is a guiding force behind my work, it is the attempt to tease out how societies and cultures create their militaries and their wars.* But I don’t think that there should be a divide between the traditional and cutting edge forms of military history. Strategy, operations, and tactics are just as important to understanding the history of war as are language, race, class, gender, and culture.
Which brings me back to my current project and my initial string of posts here at Edge. The outbreak in 1900 was one of the first media crises. By this, I mean it was one of the first to be reported by the newspapers almost immediately, as it developed. In that way, it resembles the modern world of CNN and the Internet rather more than we might think. I’m reading the newspaper coverage for the project anyway, and I thought it might be interesting to do it in chronological order and write about it as I read it: insert myself back into the flow of the crisis, as it were. I’ve chosen to use the New York Times for this as they have (kindly enough) opened their archives back to 1851. So, over the next few months, I’ll be trundling through the Boxer Rebellion*** day by day and trying to treat it as if it were an ongoing moment, details murky and end unknown. I have no idea how this will turn out, but I hope it will be both useful and interesting.
Update: Brett Holman’s work liveblogging the Sudeten Crisis is the inspiration and model for this.
*For example, should we be surprised that the one of the most industrialized and technologically advanced countries in the world is not particularly good at counterinsurgency, the least technological of strategies?**
**A strategy that was developed in the first place in its various forms (Spain, Mao, Gandhi, Ho Chi Minh) to prevent conquest or domination by superior military powers?
***There are arguments about its name. The traditional name has been Boxer Rebellion. Historians of Asia prefer Boxer Uprising, as the consensus has been that this was not a rebellion against the Qing Dynasty but an uprising in support of it against the foreigners. At the moment, I don’t really have a dog in the fight, though I’m coming to the sense that the Boxers were supporting the Chinese Dowager Empress in the sense of pushing her to live up to her responsibilities. They probably had–to steal a idea–bumper stickers announcing how disappointed they were in her.
The Edge of the American West 
29 comments
January 8, 2009 at 8:42 pm
grackle
That they had bumpers to put stickers on is a revelation to me.
January 8, 2009 at 8:45 pm
silbey
I may have been exercising artistic license.
January 8, 2009 at 9:03 pm
grackle
Oh, and welcome aboard!
January 8, 2009 at 9:09 pm
ekogan
For example, should we be surprised that the one of the most industrialized and technologically advanced country in the world is not particularly good at counterinsurgency, the least technological of strategies?
Didn’t the US win a counterinsurgency war in the Philippines?
What happened to that expertise?
January 8, 2009 at 10:07 pm
teofilo
I approve heartily of this experiment in real-time history.
January 8, 2009 at 10:16 pm
ari
Too modest, teo. “I approve heartily of this experiment in real-time history.”
January 8, 2009 at 10:59 pm
teofilo
Modesty: my one flaw.
January 8, 2009 at 11:18 pm
Jonathan Dresner
I did enjoy Holman’s liveblogging the Sudenten crisis; this should be even more fun, since I know something about it!
I’ve used Paul Cohen’s History in Three Keys: the Boxers as Event, Experience and Myth to great effect in my China classes, but he comments only very obliquely on the Western press coverage.
January 8, 2009 at 11:56 pm
Michael Turner
Liveblogging history — doesn’t that go back at least as far as Defoe’s Journal of the Plague Year?
January 9, 2009 at 3:48 am
kid bitzer
by a curious coincidence, i was just looking at the osprey volume (do i hear boos & hisses?) by david harrington, “peking 1900”.
i’m pretty gobsmacked at how unselfconsciously imperialistic its tone is. i’m sure d.h. is a lovely bloke, but the whole thing reads like “our men soon had the chinks on the run”, to quote an account that he quotes (61).
it also notes (93) that one of the few remaining memorials to the events can be seen at oberlin college, noted hot-bed of militaristic adventurism.
which is all to say: i’m looking forward to the series! go silbey!
January 9, 2009 at 3:50 am
CharleyCarp
I look forward to your series with great interest. I mostly know the Boxer Thing from the writings of my mom’s grandfather, who participated as an American soldier. And the Charlton Heston movie.
January 9, 2009 at 3:54 am
CharleyCarp
(To follow up on KB’s: based on the language, the account quoted could’ve been from my ggfather, a Williams grad who dropped teaching to sign up for the Sp-Am War — and then stayed on. I’ve put one of his memoirs online, but editing/publishing his diary is a bigger project than I have time to pursue).
January 9, 2009 at 4:43 am
silbey
Didn’t the US win a counterinsurgency war in the Philippines?
That’s a fascinating question and in the next project (after the Boxers) is going to look at that, at least glancingly. Short answer: the Army was, in many ways, still a pre-industrial organization in 1899-1900 (contrast that with the Navy), with expertise in counterinsurgency that it would lose almost immediately after the Philippines (Root reforms). That’s way over-simplified, but it’s a start.
I approve heartily of this experiment in real-time history.
Your work is much more impressive than I am going to manage.
did enjoy Holman’s liveblogging the Sudenten crisis;
Holman’s Sudeten stuff is the inspiration. Thanks for reminding me.
since I know something about it
You can point out where I make any horrendous errors. I’m not a Chinese specialist, so any comments would be welcome.
i’m pretty gobsmacked at how unselfconsciously imperialistic its tone is.
Yeah, much of the military history of empire is still pretty pro-imperial. Lots of “lovely little wars” in the 19th century, then the Germans and Gandhi spoiled everything.
go silbey!
Thanks!
January 9, 2009 at 7:43 am
PorJ
The outbreak in 1900 was one of the first media crises. By this, I mean it was one of the first to be reported by the newspapers almost immediately, as it developed. In that way, it resembles the modern world of CNN and the Internet rather more than we might think.
Don’t forget Marconi & the Boer War. Wireless was just emerging around 1899-1901, and Marconi exploited the press to promote his new technology (at the expense of others). He promised faster war reports from South Africa for both the Government and the press, I believe, but I think he (sort of) failed. He was worried the British government/military would take over/improve his invention (which he originally tried to sell to the British Post Office, but they rejected). So, borrowing a page from Alfred Mahan – whose work about the intertwining of technology and military prowess was well-known at the time – Marconi tried to sell wireless to the British public as an essential tool in modern imperialism. Again: all this is from memory, and I can’t take the time to find the cite right now, but the world was becoming McLuhan’s global village – not just Peking to New York, but the Transvaal to London.
January 9, 2009 at 7:48 am
Rubashov
I’d be curious how the press distinguishes between Chinese and Japanese. If I recall correctly, Japan actually committed more soldiers than any other country in the “Western Intervention.” How did Japanese fit into the racial divide? Did anyone foreshadow the eventual Japanese invasion of China in the 1930s? Or how US and Japanese interests in China would lead to war? Did they just ignore the Japanese contingent?
I’m not sure how useful this might be, but I also wonder what you might find comparing press coverage of the Boxer Uprising with press coverage of the Indian Wars in the late 1800s? Both could be seen as “putting down uppity lesser races,” but I don’t know how the press treated them.
Sounds interesting, though.
January 9, 2009 at 8:10 am
silbey
Don’t forget Marconi & the Boer War
That’s why I said that the Boxers were “one of the first media crises.”
I’d be curious how the press distinguishes between Chinese and Japanese
The British (for one) rather liked the Japanese: “Plucky,” they kept saying. I’ll be interested to see how the Times does.
January 9, 2009 at 8:56 am
TF Smith
Silbey –
Sounds fascinating; the links between the US military effort in the Philippines and China should be interesting to explore – IIRC, most of the US forces committed in China came directly from the Phillippine garrison, and the officers and men presumably took their experiences and tactics from the PI into China, in the same way the army that went into the PI took theirs from the Plains wars.
Another point worth exploring is that China was the first real experience the US military had had since the Revolution of operating as part of a coalition…and since the coalition included the Weltmarschall’s expedition, the interactions would have had echoes all the way down to 1918.
Going farther afield, the China operations had the interesting fall-out of – among other impacts – of actually bringing Sino-American elites into a closer relationship; additional resources for the American missionary movement, the Boxer scholarships for Chinese nationals to attend college in the US (Tsien comes to mind), and the multi-year garrisons/deployment in a foreign country for the military (the Yangtze Patrol and the Tientsin garrison, for example).
I’m sure you know about this collection at this fine university on the other end of the Edge:
http://library.csun.edu/OldChinaHands/index.html
Although the NYT is undoubtedly a great source, you might want to see what the Hearst papers had to say as a contrast, given the California connection.
One thing I would question is whether the China operations were truly “one of the first media crises” … along with the South African war’s outbreak, I’d say the Maine incident, Gordon at Khartoum, the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian war, Fort Sumter, and (arguably) the Crimean outbreak would all qualify as predating China. There’s a reason William Howard Russell gets the credit he receives…you’ve read Philip Knightley, I’m sure.
Looking forward to it – Good luck.
January 9, 2009 at 9:03 am
ajay
If you haven’t read Peter Fleming’s “The Siege at Peking” yet, you might enjoy it… Even though it’s postwar (1959) it still represents the Japanese as thoroughly good chaps – efficient, courageous etc. if a little high-handed. It saves most of its criticism for the Germans (puffed-up Junkers) and the French (comically incompetent). He also describes the Boxers’ destruction of the unparalleled Han Lin library (they burned it in an attempt to spread the fire to the Legations) as the sort of thing that would have attracted universal condemnation if done by an occupying army – “history affords no similar example of cultural felo de se”.
Fleming, in (I think) “News from Tartary”, written after a trip through Manchukuo before the war, is generally approving of the Japanese intervention on the grounds that it brought order and peace – he’s also impressed and slightly unnerved by watching the Japanese army training for infantry warfare.
I look forward to your posts with keen anticipation. The Boxer Rising is a fascinating and neglected period.
Btw it certainly wasn’t a rebellion – Fleming quotes the Boxers’ slogan as being “Support the Dynasty! Exterminate the foreigners!”
January 9, 2009 at 9:35 am
silbey
One thing I would question is whether the China operations were truly “one of the first media crises” … along with the South African war’s outbreak, I’d say the Maine incident, Gordon at Khartoum, the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian war, Fort Sumter, and (arguably) the Crimean outbreak would all qualify as predating China. There’s a reason William Howard Russell gets the credit he receives…you’ve read Philip Knightley, I’m sure.
A couple of those are concurrent with the Boxers, and for the rest, I’m not sure how immediate the reporting was. The sense I’m trying to get it as is the sense of it today, where there is reporting on events that are hours rather than days old.
Btw it certainly wasn’t a rebellion – Fleming quotes the Boxers’ slogan as being “Support the Dynasty! Exterminate the foreigners!”
I wouldn’t be so sure about it not being a rebellion. I know what the slogan was, but there’s a lot of evidence that many of the Boxers saw this as *reminding* the Qing what their true responsibilities were: “holding their feet to the fire” can burn just as badly.
And, in so far as the Boxers broke a lot of the traditional bonds of governance in NE China, they were certainly rebelling in form, if not spirit.
January 9, 2009 at 10:04 am
Jonathan Dresner
Fleming quotes the Boxers’ slogan as being “Support the Dynasty! Exterminate the foreigners!”
That was one of their slogans, yeah, but it wasn’t uniform, nor used during the entire uprising. There were several stages, and the Qing dynasty itself vacillated violently on how to deal with the Boxers.
January 9, 2009 at 10:07 am
ajay
OK, fair point – I suppose I was thinking of a rebellion as something that aims to overthrow the government, but as you point out that ain’t necessarily so…
January 9, 2009 at 10:12 am
silbey
OK
No, but yours is an important point. It’s interesting that despite the radicalism of the form (peasant revolt) the Boxers were (as much as they were a unified body, which is not much) fairly reactionary.
“The Boxer Reaction”?
It sounds like it should star Matt Damon.
January 9, 2009 at 10:14 am
TF Smith
Knightley is well worth reading on “modern” media practices and how they adapted to the speed of communication in the 19th Century; worth remembering is that the oceanic cable system was initially laid in the 1850s (although the transatlantic leg broke, restoring the lag to Anglo-American communications until after the Civil War.)
But as far as immediacy goes, there was same day/next day coverage of news in the North throughout the Civil War and onward; and the British and Continental press followed the F-P war hour by hour…
“Extry, Extry, read all about it!” is not a cliche; in an era where the standard publication model for newspapers was multiple and/or special editions through the course of the day, there really were newboys hawking “extras” on the streets of almost every Western city throughout the second half of the 19th Century.
Knightley does an excellent overview of war correspondence. Mitchell Stephens’ A History of News is a standard.
January 9, 2009 at 10:19 am
JPool
I was thinking of Boxer Insurgency, but then worried that, while highlighting the connection to certain other (ongoing) conflicts with occupying forces, that term might involve complicated value judgments about the legitimacy of forces. And then I remember that I’m out of my depth and shut up.
January 9, 2009 at 10:25 am
silbey
there was same day/next day coverage of news in the North throughout the Civil War and onward; and the British and Continental press followed the F-P war hour by hour…
Neither were global in the same sense as the Uprising. Both were reported quickly in the areas concerned with them (Northern U.S. and Europe) and much slower elsewhere. The Uprising, by contrast, was reported globally almost instantly.
Note that I’m not arguing that it was unique or the first in this regard. That’s why I specifically said that it was “one of the first.” If you are arguing against the idea that the Boxer Rebellion was the first media crisis then you are having an argument with a position I don’t hold.
January 9, 2009 at 12:06 pm
TF Smith
Okay, you’re qualifying it as “global” and I can see that (and the Spanish-American and South African wars are roughly contemporaneous); but that is a little different in how you initally described it, as in:
“The outbreak in 1900 was one of the first media crises. By this, I mean it was one of the first to be reported by the newspapers almost immediately, as it developed.”
In any event, good luck – sounds interesting.
January 9, 2009 at 12:37 pm
CharleyCarp
I’ll plug here an article published in 99 or 00 by my mom’s other grandfather about maintaining telegraph communications in the Philippines with combat units. (He was directly involved in that — I suppose happy to be worrying about wires, rather than signal flags [he’d gotten a medal using the latter on the walls of Manila earlier on]). It’s in an engineering magazine, I think, maybe associated with the U of Iowa. But not online. I’ll fish up a copy from his stuff at the LOC if you want it.
January 9, 2009 at 12:38 pm
CharleyCarp
1899 or 1900.
January 9, 2009 at 3:24 pm
silbey
Charleycarp–
Send me whatever you have. I’d love to see it.
Email is lastname@lastname.net
Insert correct last name, win a prize.