the foreign authority which was exercised in the treaty ports, and the abuse and contempt with which the natives were there treated.[1]
The rulers of China understood full well the causes which had nerved their people to rise in their wrath and undertake the impossible task of the expulsion of the foreigners. In 1900, after the Boxer movement had been put down, Li Hung Chang, in giving the cause of the outbreak, stated that its chief impetus was to be found in the high-handed course of Germany, and it "was due to the deep-seated hatred of the Chinese people towards foreigners. China had been oppressed, trampled upon, coerced, cajoled, her territory taken, and her usages flouted." The empress dowager, in her famous proclamation issued when the Boxers were reaching their ascendancy, and just before the violent outburst of 1900, exclaimed: "The various powers cast upon us looks of tiger-like voracity, hustling each other in their endeavors to be the first to seize upon our inmost territory. They think that China, having neither money nor troops, would never venture to go to war with them. They fail to understand, however, at there are some things which this empire can never consent to, and that, if hard pressed, we have no alternative but to rely upon the justice of our cause, the knowledge of which in our breasts strengthens our
- ↑ U. S. For. Rel. 1898, pp. 182–91; 1900, p. 85; 1 Smith's China, etc. chap. viii.; The Break-Up of China, by Lord Charles Beresford, New York, 1899, chap. xxx.; Krausse's Chinese Crisis, 143, 147; China in Transformation, by A. R. Colquhoun, London, 1898, chap. xiv.; Essays on the Chinese Question, by Sir R. Hart, London, 1901, chap. v.; World Politics, by P. S. Reinsch, New York, 1900, pts. iii. and v.
