Peking 1900: The Boxer Rebellion

If you are looking for a decent introduction to the Boxer Rebellion in only 96 pages (i.e., can be read in about an hour to an hour and a half) this is the book for you. It gives a succint (but not in-depth) history of the actual rebellion (political as well as military), its historical context and a discussion of the main "players" with their motivations. Cannot be beat for a 96 page review.

As with most Osprey titles, this book was well written, with a great amount of information on a almost forgotten event in international history. If anything, I would say that the illustrations in this book are not as good as the majority of the Campaign Series books. This is counteracted by good use of photography and maps. Overall, this is another strong addition to the Campaign Series.

The question is not what is not in this book but what is. One must judge by what is intended not what might be expected of a thorough footnoted academic work or a popular history of great length. This entire series is aimed at the casual reader, the sort who reads Military History Quarterly, WWII Journal, Naval History, to name a few. In most cases, reading MHQ, my eye is caught, the narrative is compelling and I find myself reading about the Middle Ages or some border raiders in the Balkans, none of which I would make a trip to the library for or even make a web search.These campaign series are most useful for their graphics and illustrations, many of which in this one are contemporary photos. Many have orders of battle listings and charts which are of most interest to war gamers. It is my opinion that this series is marketed to them and to the general reader who wants more detail than appears in the general histories covering an entire war. This serves that purpose admirably. One could also read the volume on the Boxer Rebellion in the Men At Arms series. (see review.)

In Peking 1900, Peter Harrington covers the outbreak of the Boxer Rebellion in China and the Allied campaigns in June-August 1900 to relieve the besieged foreign legations in the Chinese capital. Although this campaign, with the dramatic siege of the legations in Peking, has been covered before, Harrington provides a useful summary of the campaign. The author is currently the curator of the Anne S. K. Brown Military Collection at Brown University, and he has used his access to that resource to provide many hitherto unseen photographs and illustrations from the campaign. In the background to the campaign, Harrington discusses the spread of anti-foreign attitudes in China, the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-5 and the emergence of the Boxers. Although this section is quite good, there is a subtle use of euphemisms to downplay foreign aggressions against China. For example, the author states that the First Opium War (1839-1842) "was the result of disagreements between Chinese officials and British merchants in the port of Canton particularly concerning the supply of opium from India." In fact, the Chinese were trying to stop the British from importing highly addictive opium into China, where it was already causing social problems. In modern terms, the Chinese were attempting to interdict the flow of narcotics into their country, and even by 19th Century standards of commerce, the Chinese had a right to determine what could be imported into their country. In reference to the Second Opium War in 1860, Harrington states that, "Peking was entered by Allied forces on 12 October 1860." That's putting it very mildly. In fact, the Anglo-French troops stormed and sacked the city. The use of euphemisms such as "disagreement" and "enter" seem akin to the attempts by modern Japanese historians to downplay and justify their own aggressions in China. Oddly, the Taiping Rebellion is not mentioned in this section, although it seriously weakened the Manchu administration of the country. The main campaign narrative covers the First Relief Column, the storming of the Taku Forts, operations around Tientsin, the siege of the legations in Peking and the final relief effort. There are only two 3-D "Bird's Eye View" maps in this volume, and they cover the storming of the Taku Forts and the defense of the British legation. The later map is particularly good. Three illustrated battle scenes complement the text, in addition to many excellent photographs. A chronology, and detailed order of battle for both sides is provided. The section on opposing commanders is a bit too high-level, focusing only on the senior Chinese and Allied leaders, and the author might have provided a bit more detail on the junior officers such as John Jellicoe who later went on to major commands. David Beatty, of Jutland fame, was wounded in the campaign but is not mentioned here. Nor are details given on any American, Japanese, French or Russian commanders. One point that the author