The Myth of the “Better” American: US Military Conduct in the Boxer Rebellion

The climax of the Boxer Rebellion in the summer of 1900 was one of the world’s first widely-reported conflicts. New technologies including photography and the telegraph meant that readers around the globe could keep up to date with the latest news. Audiences were shocked by what they received. Not only did they read sensational reports of atrocities committed against Western missionaries and their converts, they were also greatly disturbed by the behavior of the allied armies. As European, American, and Japanese forces marched across northern China, they left a trail of pillaging and destruction. Following the capture of Peking (Beijing), the victorious allies launched punitive expeditions into the countryside to root out remaining Boxers and punish the local population.

One notion that permeates contemporary accounts and even modern publications is the notion that American troops, though guilty of some crimes, generally behaved better than their peers. While these claims could reflect a cultural or national bias by the mainly Anglo-American historians and authors of popular narratives, there is evidence that American officers made a concerted effort to reduce the harm to Chinese civilians. It is possible that US experiences in military law from the Civil War and wanting to show restraint in front of other powers motivated them to curb abuses. However, the concurrent Philippine-American War is largely remembered for the brutal treatment of the local population by some of the very same troops.

This research attempts to answer three questions about American military conduct in the Boxer Rebellion. First, did the U.S. troops follow their own rules of war at the time, namely General Order 100, also known as the Lieber Code, and the 1899 Hague Conventions? The Lieber Code was written by a German-born law professor during the Civil War to set standards for conduct during war. One of the first formal rules of war, the Lieber Code was the basis for U.S. military regulations for decades. Second, did American troops actually conduct themselves in a notably better way than their allied peers? Third, if so, what caused this? Was it institutional discipline or the work of a handful of leaders from President McKinley on down who made clear rules, set the example, and punished violators?

Using maps, contemporary photographs, and official reports pulled from military and civilian archives, I will illustrate that several key U.S. leaders, drawing on experiences from the Civil War and with broad authority from Washington, attempted to rein in a relatively ill-disciplined force. However, while much effort was exerted to avoid the retribution inflicted by European and Japanese troops, American conduct was poor from a modern viewpoint and even broke several tenets of their own rules of war. As with many American conflicts, the U.S. troops in the Boxer Rebellion committed crimes often associated with invading armies which have been sanitized in popular memory.