Boxer Rebellion · War Crimes & Atrocities
Atrocity was central to the Boxer Rebellion on every side. The Boxers massacred tens of thousands of Chinese Christian converts and hundreds of foreign missionaries across North China. The foreign powers answered with the sack of Peking, indiscriminate punitive expeditions, and — in Russian-occupied Manchuria — the mass killing and drowning of Chinese civilians. The war was, at its heart, a campaign of communal and racial slaughter as much as a conflict of armies.
30,000+
deaths
Victims: Chinese Christian converts and foreign missionaries(Estimates of Chinese Christians killed range from roughly 20,000 to over 30,000, the great majority Catholic converts; some 250 foreign missionaries and their family members also died, most notoriously in the Taiyuan massacre in Shanxi.)
5,000+
deaths
Victims: Chinese civilians of the Amur border region(Thousands of Chinese residents — estimates run from about 3,000 to over 5,000 — were killed or drowned; almost the entire Chinese population of the area was expelled or destroyed.)
30,000+
deaths
Victims: Chinese civilians of Peking and the North China countryside(No reliable total exists; the looting, executions, rapes, and dozens of punitive expeditions across the countryside killed many thousands of Chinese, combatants and civilians alike.)