Paul H. Clements

“ The opening of the treaty ports was delayed, on the ground that they were "unsafe" for foreigners, and the same offensive tactics and thousand petty exactions were religiously adhered to by China as before the first international conflict. Only in the payment of the indemnity to England did China act with any degree of celerity, and then for the sole purpose of ridding certain Chinese territories of British troops, who were quartered upon the land until such payment was forthcoming. Government and people were united in the common cause of opposition to all demands of the foreign Powers. ”

“ The Opium war begins a new epoch in the relations of China with the Powers, a period which may roughly be estimated as extending from 1840 to 1895, marked on one side by the unreasoning hostility of China to everything foreign and on the other side by constant aggressions of Europe, these aggressions, however, still tempered by a belief in and respect for China's latent military power and the prestige naturally accorded to so vast an empire.
But it was not to be expected that, through the defeats of a single war, China would or even could have reversed the policy and habits of centuries. ”

“ With the exception of the Russian missions of 1689 and after, and the British in 1793 and 1816, these determined efforts of Europe, exerted primarily, so it seemed, not for the establishment of friendly relations with China but for selfish purposes of gain by fair means or foul, were those of "pirates rather than peaceably disposed men", whose methods of dealing with the Chinese, directly opposite to what they should have been, "went far to justify the Chinese Government in its policy of rigid seclusion from all associations with Europeans". ”

“ In order fully to understand the position of the European Powers in regard to the Far East at the time of the Boxer Rebellion, it will be necessary to sketch their territorial aggressions in China during the years immediately preceding the conflict. Of all immediate causes of this last upheaval of China against the Occident, these aggressions were the most important factor. Had they never occurred, it is doubtful whether there would have been a rebellion. To Europe's land-greed this sorry page of history is primarily due ”

“ The Chinese had not always been isolated from the rest of mankind. Before the Manchu conquest in the XVIIth century there had been quite an extensive though spasmodic commercial intercourse with the west and a slight acquaintance with western culture. The products of China had been interchanged with those of the Roman Empire; Chinese engineers had been employed on the construction of public works in Persia; Buddhism had been introduced from India; a Chinese army had penetrated as far west as the Caspian region ”

“ Also, the war was principally fought in a region foreign to the "Eighteen Provinces", the invading Japanese for the most part entering, not China proper, but the dependency of Manchuria, the ancestral home of the reigning dynasty, and which the latter alone in duty were bound to defend. Therefore the Chinese considered themselves removed from all responsibility, and persisted in viewing the conflict as an incident of the Manchu foreign policy of no intimate concern to any but the Manchus. ”

“ Surrounded by tribes in a savage or semi-civilized state, which were greatly inferior from every point of view, it is not surprising that the Chinese should have looked upon these as barbarians, fitly to be designated by the radical for dog. ”

“ This unexampled generosity enabled China to liquidate half the war indemnity to Japan. The next step of Russia was to "facilitate the execution of the loan", which was the ostensible purpose of founding the Russo-Chinese Bank with its thirty branches throughout Siberia and the Far East. [2] The bank proved of immense service to Russia as it was a desirable and necessary screen for demands on China, which demands, though seemingly obtained for this corporation, supposedly a private one, were in reality granted to the Imperial Russian Government through this convenient agency. ”

“ Furthermore, a vast expanse of desert and mountain and sea made intercourse with the advanced parts of the world extremely hazardous and uncertain, all the more so when the favorite land routes were cut off by the fall of Constantinople and the ascendancy of the Suljuk Turks in western Asia. ”