Boxer Uprising – Henry Lawson

[Candid urban and landscape views of the aftermath in Beijing and Tianjin including the Emperor’s return to Beijing and several beheadings of prisoners, 1901-1902]

74 photographs, various sizes (3 1/8 x 4 1/4 in.; 78 x 112 mm to 8 x 6 in.; 203 x 152 mm), mounted on cards, most with manuscript captions; some soiling and minor discoloration, in an album, oblong 8vo (7 x 9 3/4 in.; 178 x 248 mm), three-quarter blind-tooled calf over green cloth; worn with joints cracked, inscribed on upper cover “Henry Lawson, to Joel Docking, Seattle, Oct[obe]r 22, 1903.”

See J. W. Esherick, The Origins of the Boxer Uprising (1987) and A. Austin, China's Millions: The China Inland Mission and Late Qing Society, 1832-1905 (2007)

A fascinating album of documentary views.

The “Boxers” were organizations of young men derived from White Lotus sects that arose in West Shandong province in the early 19^th Century. The region had few landlords or gentry, and suffered from banditry and economic decline. Youth of the region joined these sects devoted to heterodox (i.e. non-Confucian) religion, and martial arts, sometimes passing their time in gambling, drinking, extortion and petty crime. Often providing security for villages overlooked by the central authority, the  central government was ambivalent toward them, sometimes using them as ad hoc militia and at other times repressing them.

When the major northern ports were opened to western trade in 1861-1862, the indigenous cotton trade declined, while the region was visited by western missionaries who served as translators in all treaty negotiations (to protect their right to proselytize) and who supported the use of force to open China to trade (equating opening to trade with opening to Christ). Missionaries were protected by extra-territoriality provisions of treaties, and often entered legal disputes to support their converts and administer their own justice. Anti-missionary riots began in the Spring of 1891, the Boxer societies taking an active role with half-hearted support by the government. Finally, an eight-nation coalition defeated the Imperial army and Boxers to rescue beseiged foreigners in Tianjin and Beijing (July-August 1900). Foreign correspondents flooded the area in the aftermath, recording the destruction of buildings and the punishment of those held responsible.

The present album of photographs was assembled by Henry Lawson. Some of the first photographs show Dagald Lawson (d. 1930) a Scottish Presbyterian missionary and his colleague David Urquhart, both of the China Inland Mission, who worked at Yü-wü, Lu-ch’eng, and Shans-si. Dagald was married to Jeannie Lawson (d. 1933) who has some renown as the host of Gladys Aylward, in the story recounted in the film “Inn of the Sixth Happiness.” We presume that Henry Lawson was one of their children who, as Aylward reports, grew up and left China. The photos show destruction of buildings, the return of the Imperial Court to Beijing (January 1902), tourist destinations (the Forbidden City, the Great Wall), local customs (foot-binding, an opium den, travel in a wheel barrow), views of the German, French, English and Italian presence, and several snapshots of the execution of Boxers in grisly detail.

An inventory of the photographs is available on request.