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Title: Peking 1900: The Boxer Rebellion (Campaign, 85) by Peter Harrington ISBN: 1-84176-181-8 Publisher: Osprey Pub Co Pub. Date: June, 2001 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.67 (3 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Typical Excellent Overview
Comment: The question is not what is not in this book but what is. One must judge by what is intended not what might be expected of a thorough footnoted academic work or a popular history of great length. This entire series is aimed at the casual reader, the sort who reads Military History Quarterly, WWII Journal, Naval History, to name a few. In most cases, reading MHQ, my eye is caught, the narrative is compelling and I find myself reading about the Middle Ages or some border raiders in the Balkans, none of which I would make a trip to the library for or even make a web search.
These campaign series are most useful for their graphics and illustrations, many of which in this one are contemporary photos. Many have orders of battle listings and charts which are of most interest to war gamers. It is my opinion that this series is marketed to them and to the general reader who wants more detail than appears in the general histories covering an entire war. This serves that purpose admirably.
One could also read the volume on the Boxer Rebellion in the Men At Arms series. (see review.)
Rating: 2
Summary: I had higher expectations
Comment: The author has established a solid reputation by co-authoring several great books on the boxer rebellion. Thus I had purchased this volume with very high expectations as to its contents.
I was however disappointed by the text which was very choppy with some grammatical errors. I had the distinct feeling that the text was pre-written and then force-fitted into the Osprey format. If space was at a premium, then there was unnecessary duplication of information such as the order of battle for the forces, allied and Chinese in the text, repeated in a few tables.
The face-saving grace of this book is that there were a few nice illustrations with one particularly compelling bird's eye view of the besieged Legation compound.
In this series, an earlier Boxer rebellion book by Lynn Bodin is superior.
Rating: 5
Summary: A Solid Campaign Summary
Comment: In Peking 1900, Peter Harrington covers the outbreak of the Boxer Rebellion in China and the Allied campaigns in June-August 1900 to relieve the besieged foreign legations in the Chinese capital. Although this campaign, with the dramatic siege of the legations in Peking, has been covered before, Harrington provides a useful summary of the campaign. The author is currently the curator of the Anne S. K. Brown Military Collection at Brown University, and he has used his access to that resource to provide many hitherto unseen photographs and illustrations from the campaign.
In the background to the campaign, Harrington discusses the spread of anti-foreign attitudes in China, the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-5 and the emergence of the Boxers. Although this section is quite good, there is a subtle use of euphemisms to downplay foreign aggressions against China. For example, the author states that the First Opium War (1839-1842) "was the result of disagreements between Chinese officials and British merchants in the port of Canton particularly concerning the supply of opium from India." In fact, the Chinese were trying to stop the British from importing highly addictive opium into China, where it was already causing social problems. In modern terms, the Chinese were attempting to interdict the flow of narcotics into their country, and even by 19th Century standards of commerce, the Chinese had a right to determine what could be imported into their country. In reference to the Second Opium War in 1860, Harrington states that, "Peking was entered by Allied forces on 12 October 1860." That's putting it very mildly. In fact, the Anglo-French troops stormed and sacked the city. The use of euphemisms such as "disagreement" and "enter" seem akin to the attempts by modern Japanese historians to downplay and justify their own aggressions in China. Oddly, the Taiping Rebellion is not mentioned in this section, although it seriously weakened the Manchu administration of the country.
The main campaign narrative covers the First Relief Column, the storming of the Taku Forts, operations around Tientsin, the siege of the legations in Peking and the final relief effort. There are only two 3-D "Bird's Eye View" maps in this volume, and they cover the storming of the Taku Forts and the defense of the British legation. The later map is particularly good. Three illustrated battle scenes complement the text, in addition to many excellent photographs. A chronology, and detailed order of battle for both sides is provided. The section on opposing commanders is a bit too high-level, focusing only on the senior Chinese and Allied leaders, and the author might have provided a bit more detail on the junior officers such as John Jellicoe who later went on to major commands. David Beatty, of Jutland fame, was wounded in the campaign but is not mentioned here. Nor are details given on any American, Japanese, French or Russian commanders.
One point that the author mentions but glosses over is very significant for readers interested in trying to understand Chinese concepts of war-making. On 14 July 1900, the Chinese asked for a truce in Peking, despite the fact that the defenders in the legations were hard-pressed. Harrington notes that the Chinese virtually had the legations in their grasp. In fact, had the Chinese employed heavy artillery the siege would have been over very quickly, but the Chinese never made an all-out effort to storm the defenses. The reason may lie in the peculiar Chinese penchant for "teaching a lesson" to disrespectful foreigners, which does not see total victory as necessary. Merely besieging the embassies and inflicting losses may have been enough to chastise the 'foreign devils' in Chinese minds. Such conceptions of warfare are useful for Americans to keep in mind, given the current growing level of Sino-American animosities. The Peking Campaign provides a sober lesson that the Chinese mindset toward war is not the same as our own.
To his credit, the author also provides some information on operations around Peking after the relief of the legations and some of the anti-foreign violence elsewhere in China. However the author seems to miss the opportunity to point out the historical uniqueness of the Peking Campaign, as the only time that the British, Americans, Germans, Russians, Italians, French and Japanese have ever conducted joint military operations against a common foe. Only a xenophobic reaction like the Boxer Rebellion could ever have produced such unheard-of cooperation between the world's great powers.
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