At the end of 1899, the Boxers were, if troublesome, very much the local revolt of a local society. It was little more than the Qing had dealt with before, dealt with, in fact, on a regular basis.

Even as late as the middle of May 1900, Charles Jameson could laugh at the ideas of Boxers marching on Beijing as “Chinese fairy tales.” Within two weeks of his laughter, however, the Boxers did exactly that.

And that is the great difference: in the spring of 1900 the Boxer movement exploded across northern China. It became something the Chinese had not seen since the Taipings, forty years before.

Even the Taipings had had a leader and leadership and structure. The Boxers had nothing similar; what local leaders there were were soon superseded or made irrelevant by the spread.

The reasons for that were both straightforward and mysterious.

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