#18: The Righteous and Harmonious Fists
Westerners called them the Boxers because members of the Righteous and Harmonious Fists practiced martial arts and rituals they believed offered supernatural protection. Emerging amid economic hardship, imperial encroachment, missionary expansion, and anti-Christian resentment, the movement attacked foreign interests and Chinese Christians before converging on Beijing in 1900. Qing authorities eventually supported them, triggering intervention by an eight-nation coalition. A loosely organized secretive movement had helped generate an international war and one of imperial China’s most humiliating crises.
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