The Human Cost
125,000
disputed broad estimate
The 125,000 display allocation is highly disputed. Chinese Christian deaths, Boxer and Qing losses, foreign punitive killings, civilian massacre, and Russian operations in Manchuria are incompletely and politically recorded.
Each dot below represents 1,000 human lives. Scroll to watch the scale unfold.
Working allocation: 25,000 soldiers killed in combat, from wounds, or from disease. Each = 1,000 lives.
100,000 civilians killed — from violence, famine, disease, and displacement. Wars are not fought only by soldiers.
incl. 40,000 civilians
incl. 30,000 civilians
incl. 20,000 civilians
incl. 3,000 civilians
incl. 2,000 civilians
incl. 500 civilians
How Boxer Rebellion's dead compare to other conflicts and events.
450 dead
The 450-million-tael indemnity was deliberately set at roughly one tael for every subject of the Qing Empire, as a calculated national humiliation.
20,000 dead
Russia's occupation of Manchuria included the notorious Blagoveshchensk massacre, in which thousands of Chinese civilians were driven into or drowned in the Amur River.
30,000 dead
Estimates of Chinese Christians killed by the Boxers range from about 20,000 (mostly Catholic converts) upward; some 250 foreign missionaries and their families also died.