2019 Year 12 IB Extended Essays

Seymour’s expedition began somewhat successfully travelling from Tianjin to Beijing by rail. However, the expedition was bogged down by the Boxers. As the allied base at Tianjin was inland, a small allied naval force attacked the coastal forts at Dagu successfully opening a supply route to Tianjin, but this victory drew the ire of the Qing court which then went to war against the Alliance. The land expedition’s advance was halted by Qing and Boxer forces at the Battle of Langfang on June 18, causing Seymour to retreat to a hidden Qing arsenal. The expedition was then themselves besieged. During this short siege, a Chinese servant in service to the westerners broke through the siege lines and convinced an allied regiment in Tianjin to relive the siege. The first expedition evacuated the arsenal and regrouped at Tianjin. (Silbey D. J., 2012) Shortly after Seymour’s expedition had marched to Beijing, Boxers surrounded Tianjin. The allies held on to a thin supply line between the Tianjin Foreign Settlements to the Dagu forts. By July, the modern Qing army besieged the Settlements. The Allied force broke the siege and then assaulted Tianjin City on July 13. The assault resulted in a costly allied victory. The battle of Tianjin was the bloodiest battle of the conflict, and the allies were forced to wait for reinforcements. The Allied reinforcements merged with the original allied force to form the Second Expedition. This huge force marched directly to Beijing, while a separate Russian army successfully invaded Manchuria from the north. The Qing army attempted to halt the expedition but was defeated in battles at Yangcun and Beicang. Having suffered immense attrition from the fighting and heat, only around 20,000 men could be mustered for the main attack on Beijing on August 14. The assault on Beijing was more of a race than a battle; the allied nations attacked independently of one another and managed to destroy the Chinese defenses suffering few casualties. Cixi and some loyal retainers fled to Shanxi province towards the end of the battle. The flight to Shanxi province would later be mirrored by Chinese communist forces during the Long March of 1934-35. As the Boxers and Qing were unable to conventionally resist the foreign alliance via conventional means, they melted countryside to fight a small guerilla war. The countryside was home to the majority of the Boxer support base and thus the Boxers were better able to hide and ambush their enemies. Foreign forces fanned out into the countryside and used brutal methods to suppress Boxer activity. Once again, parallels can be drawn between the Boxers and Communists, as the Chinese communists replicated the peasant guerrilla war, and would see success. In his book ‘On Guerilla Warfare’, Mao Zedong himself references the Boxer Uprising as a source of inspiration for his own guerrilla campaigns during the Chinese Civil War. (Zedong, 1937) The humiliated Qing were forced to sign the Boxer Protocol. The Protocol was another Unequal Treaty, forcing the Qing to pay a massive indemnity, to destroy the Dagu forts and banned the importation of arms and ammunition into China. The Qing were also forced to allow foreign garrisons in certain cities and to reorganize parts of the government.