Kuomintang
The Kuomintang of China is a major political party in the Republic of China on Taiwan, based in Taipei, founded in 1911, is an opposition political party in the Legislative Yuan. The predecessor of the Kuomintang, the Revolutionary Alliance, was one of the major advocates of the overthrow of the Qing Dynasty and the subsequent declaration of independence in 1911 that resulted in the establishment of the Republic of China; the KMT was founded by Song Jiaoren and Sun Yat-sen shortly after the Xinhai Revolution of 1911. Sun was the provisional President, but he ceded the presidency to Yuan Shikai. Led by Chiang Kai-shek, the KMT formed the National Revolutionary Army and succeeded in its Northern Expedition to unify much of mainland China in 1928, ending the chaos of the Warlord Era, it was the ruling party in mainland China until 1949, when it lost the Chinese Civil War to the rival Communist Party of China. The KMT fled to Taiwan; this government retained China's UN seat until 1971. Taiwan ceased to be a single-party state in 1986, political reforms beginning in the 1990s loosened the KMT's grip on power.
The KMT remains one of Taiwan's main political parties, with Ma Ying-jeou, elected in 2008 and re-elected in 2012, being the seventh KMT member to hold the office of the presidency. However, in the 2016 general and presidential election the Democratic Progressive Party gained control of both the Legislative Yuan and the presidency, Tsai Ing-wen being elected President; the party's guiding ideology is the Three Principles of the People, advocated by Sun Yat-sen. The KMT is a member of the International Democrat Union. Together with the People First Party and New Party, the KMT forms what is known as the Taiwanese Pan-Blue Coalition, which supports eventual unification with the mainland. However, the KMT has been forced to moderate its stance by advocating the political and legal status quo of modern Taiwan, as political realities make the reunification of China unlikely; the KMT holds to a "One China Principle": it considers that there is only one China, but that the Republic of China rather than the People's Republic of China is its legitimate government under the 1992 Consensus.
In order to ease tensions with the PRC, the KMT has since 2008 endorsed the "Three Noes" policy as defined by Ma Ying-jeou: no unification, no independence and no use of force. The KMT traces its ideological and organizational roots to the work of Sun Yat-sen, a proponent of Chinese nationalism and democracy, who founded Revive China Society at the capital of the Republic of Hawaii, Honolulu, on 24 November 1894. In 1905, Sun joined forces with other anti-monarchist societies in Tokyo, Empire of Japan to form the Tongmenghui on 20 August 1905, a group committed to the overthrow of the Qing Dynasty and the establishment of a republic style government; the group planned and supported the Xinhai Revolution of 1911 and the founding of the Republic of China on 1 January 1912. However, Sun did not have military power and ceded the provisional presidency of the republic to Yuan Shikai, who arranged for the abdication of Puyi, the last Emperor, on 12 February. On 25 August 1912, the Nationalist Party was established at the Huguang Guild Hall in Peking, where Tongmenghui and five smaller pro-revolution parties merged to contest the first national elections.
Sun was chosen as the party chairman with Huang Xing as his deputy. The most influential member of the party was the third ranking Song Jiaoren, who mobilized mass support from gentry and merchants for the Nationalists to advocate a constitutional parliamentary democracy; the party sought to check the power of Yuan. The Nationalists won an overwhelming majority of the first National Assembly election in December 1912. However, Yuan soon began to ignore the parliament in making presidential decisions. Song Jiaoren was assassinated in Shanghai in 1913. Members of the Nationalists led by Sun Yat-sen suspected that Yuan was behind the plot and thus staged the Second Revolution in July 1913, a poorly planned and ill-supported armed rising to overthrow Yuan, failed. Yuan, claiming subversiveness and betrayal, expelled adherents of the KMT from the parliament. Yuan dissolved the Nationalists in November and dismissed the parliament early in 1914. Yuan Shikai proclaimed himself emperor in December 1915.
While exiled in Japan in 1914, Sun established the Chinese Revolutionary Party on 8 July 1914, but many of his old revolutionary comrades, including Huang Xing, Wang Jingwei, Hu Hanmin and Chen Jiongming, refused to join him or support his efforts in inciting armed uprising against Yuan. In order to join the Revolutionary Party, members had to take an oath of personal loyalty to Sun, which many old revolutionaries regarded as undemocratic and contrary to the spirit of the revolution; as a result, he became sidelined within the Republican movement during this period. Sun returned to China in 1917 to establish a military junta at Canton, in order to oppose the Beiyang government, but was soon forced out of office and exiled to Shanghai. There, with renewed support, he resurrected the KMT on 10 October 1919, under the name Kuomintang of China and established its headquarters in Canton in 1920. In 1923, the KMT and its Canton government accepted aid from the Soviet Union after being denied recognition by the western powers.
Soviet advisers - the most prominent of whom was Mikhail Borodin, an agent of the Comintern – arrived in China in 1923 to aid in the reorgan
Standard Chinese
Standard Chinese known as Modern Standard Mandarin, Standard Mandarin, Modern Standard Mandarin Chinese, or Mandarin, is a standard variety of Chinese, the sole official language of China, the de facto official language of Taiwan and one of the four official languages of Singapore. Its pronunciation is based on the Beijing dialect, its vocabulary on the Mandarin dialects, its grammar is based on written vernacular Chinese. Like other varieties of Chinese, Standard Chinese is a tonal language with topic-prominent organization and subject–verb–object word order, it has more initial consonants but final consonants and tones than southern varieties. Standard Chinese is an analytic language, though with many compound words. There are two standardised forms of the language, namely Putonghua in Mainland China and Guoyu in Taiwan. Aside from a number of differences in pronunciation and vocabulary, Putonghua is written using simplified Chinese characters, Guoyu is written using traditional Chinese characters.
Many characters are identical between the two systems. In Chinese, the standard variety is known as: 普通话 in the People's Republic of China, as well as Hong Kong and Macau. Standard Chinese is commonly referred to by generic names for "Chinese", notably 中文. In total, there have been known over 20 various names for the language; the term Guoyu had been used by non-Han rulers of China to refer to their languages, but in 1909 the Qing education ministry applied it to Mandarin, a lingua franca based on northern Chinese varieties, proclaiming it as the new "national language". The name Putonghua has a long, albeit unofficial, history, it was used as early as 1906 in writings by Zhu Wenxiong to differentiate a modern, standard Chinese from classical Chinese and other varieties of Chinese. For some linguists of the early 20th century, the Putonghua, or "common tongue/speech", was conceptually different from the Guoyu, or "national language"; the former was a national prestige variety. Based on common understandings of the time, the two were, in fact, different.
Guoyu was understood as formal vernacular Chinese, close to classical Chinese. By contrast, Putonghua was called "the common speech of the modern man", the spoken language adopted as a national lingua franca by conventional usage; the use of the term Putonghua by left-leaning intellectuals such as Qu Qiubai and Lu Xun influenced the People's Republic of China government to adopt that term to describe Mandarin in 1956. Prior to this, the government used both terms interchangeably. In Taiwan, Guoyu continues to be the official term for Standard Chinese; the term Guoyu however, is less used in the PRC, because declaring a Beijing dialect-based standard to be the national language would be deemed unfair to speakers of other varieties and to the ethnic minorities. The term Putonghua, on the contrary, implies nothing more than the notion of a lingua franca. During the government of a pro-Taiwan independence coalition, Taiwan officials promoted a different reading of Guoyu as all of the "national languages", meaning Hokkien and Formosan as well as Standard Chinese.
Huayu, or "language of the Chinese nation" simply meant "Chinese language", was used in overseas communities to contrast Chinese with foreign languages. Over time, the desire to standardise the variety of Chinese spoken in these communities led to the adoption of the name "Huayu" to refer to Mandarin; this name avoids choosing a side between the alternative names of Putonghua and Guoyu, which came to have political significance after their usages diverged along political lines between the PRC and the ROC. It incorporates the notion that Mandarin is not the national or common language of the areas in which overseas Chinese live. Hanyu, or "language of the Han people", is another umbrella term used for Chinese. However, it has confusingly two different meanings: Standard Chinese; this term, as well as Hànzú, is a modern concept. A related concept is Hànzì; the term "Mandarin" is a translation of Guānhuà, which referred to the lingua franca of the late Chinese empire. The Chinese term is obsolete as a name for the standard language, but is used by linguists to refer to the major group of Mandarin dialects spoken natively across most of northern and southwestern China.
In English, "Mandarin" may refer to the standard language, the dialect group as a whole, or to historic forms such as the late Imperial lingua franca. The name "Modern Standard Mandarin" is sometimes used by linguists who wish to distinguish the current state of the shared language from other northern and historic dialects; the Chinese have different languages in different provinces, to such an extent
Missionary
A missionary is a member of a religious group sent into an area to proselytize or perform ministries of service, such as education, social justice, health care, economic development. The word "mission" originates from 1598 when the Jesuits sent members abroad, derived from the Latin missionem, meaning "act of sending" or mittere, meaning "to send"; the word was used in light of its biblical usage. The term is most used for Christian missions, but can be used for any creed or ideology. A Christian missionary can be defined as "one, to witness across cultures"; the Lausanne Congress of 1974, defined the term, related to Christian mission as, "to form a viable indigenous church-planting movement". Missionaries can be found in many countries around the world. In the Bible, Jesus is recorded as instructing the apostles to make disciples of all nations; this verse is referred to by Christian missionaries as the Great Commission and inspires missionary work. The Christian Church expanded throughout the Roman Empire in New Testament times and is said by tradition to have reached further, to Persia and to India.
During the Middle Ages, the Christian monasteries and missionaries such as Saint Patrick, Adalbert of Prague propagated learning and religion beyond the European boundaries of the old Roman Empire. In 596, Pope Gregory the Great sent the Gregorian Mission into England. In their turn, Christians from Ireland and from Britain became prominent in converting the inhabitants of central Europe. During the Age of Discovery, the Catholic Church established a number of missions in the Americas and in other Western colonies through the Augustinians and Dominicans to spread Christianity in the New World and to convert the Native Americans and other indigenous people. About the same time, missionaries such as Francis Xavier as well as other Jesuits, Augustinians and Dominicans reached Asia and the Far East, the Portuguese sent missions into Africa. Emblematic in many respects is Matteo Ricci's Jesuit mission to China from 1582, peaceful and non-violent; these missionary movements should be distinguished from others, such as the Baltic Crusades of the 12th and 13th centuries, which were arguably compromised in their motivation by designs of military conquest.
Much contemporary Catholic missionary work has undergone profound change since the Second Vatican Council of 1962-1965, with an increased push for indigenization and inculturation, along with social justice issues as a constitutive part of preaching the Gospel. As the Catholic Church organizes itself along territorial lines and had the human and material resources, religious orders, some specializing in it, undertook most missionary work in the era after the collapse of the Roman Empire in the West. Over time, the Holy See established a normalized Church structure in the mission areas starting with special jurisdictions known as apostolic prefectures and apostolic vicariates. At a stage of development these foundations are raised to regular diocesan status with a local bishops appointed. On a global front, these processes were accelerated in the 1960s, in part accompanying political decolonization. In some regions, they are still in course. Just as the Bishop of Rome had jurisdiction in territories considered to be in the Eastern sphere, so the missionary efforts of the two 9th-century saints Cyril and Methodius were conducted in relation to the West rather than the East, though the field of activity was central Europe.
The Eastern Orthodox Church, under the Orthodox Church of Constantinople undertook vigorous missionary work under the Roman Empire and its successor the Byzantine Empire. This had lasting effects and in some sense is at the origin of the present relations of Constantinople with some sixteen Orthodox national churches including the Romanian Orthodox Church, the Georgian Orthodox and Apostolic Church, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, the Bulgarian Orthodox Church; the Byzantines expanded their missionary work in Ukraine after the mass baptism in Kiev in 988. The Serbian Orthodox Church had its origins in the conversion by Byzantine missionaries of the Serb tribes when they arrived in the Balkans in the 7th century. Orthodox missionaries worked among the Estonians from the 10th to the 12th centuries, founding the Estonian Orthodox Church. Under the Russian Empire of the 19th century, missionaries such as Nicholas Ilminsky moved into the subject lands and propagated Orthodoxy, including through Belarus, Moldova, Estonia and China.
The Russian St. Nicholas of Japan took Eastern Orthodoxy to Japan in the 19th century; the Russian Orthodox Church sent missionaries to Alaska beginning in the 18th century, including Saint Herman of Alaska, to minister to the Native Americans. The Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia continued missionary work outside Russia after the 1917 Russian Revolution, resulting in the establishment of many new dioceses in the diaspora, from which numerous converts have been made in Eastern Europe, North America, Oceania. Early Protestant missionaries included John Eliot and contemporary ministers
First Opium War
The First Opium War known as the Opium War or the Anglo-Chinese War, was a series of military engagements fought between the United Kingdom and the Qing dynasty of China over diplomatic relations and the administration of justice in China. In the 17th and 18th centuries, the demand for Chinese goods in Europe created a trade imbalance between Qing Imperial China and Great Britain. European silver flowed into China through the Canton System, which confined incoming foreign trade to the southern port city of Canton. To counter this imbalance, the British East India Company began to grow opium in India and smuggle them into China illegally; the influx of narcotics reversed the Chinese trade surplus, drained the economy of silver, increased the numbers of opium addicts inside the country, outcomes that worried Chinese officials. In 1839, the Daoguang Emperor, rejecting proposals to legalize and tax opium, appointed viceroy Lin Zexu to go to Canton to halt the opium trade completely. Lin wrote to Queen Victoria an open letter in an appeal to her moral responsibility to stop the opium trade.
When he failed to get a response, he attempted to get foreign companies to forfeit their opium stores in exchange for tea, but this failed too. Lin resorted to using force in the western merchants' enclave, he confiscated all supplies and ordered a blockade of foreign ships to get them to surrender their opium supply. Lin confiscated 20,283 chests of opium; the British government responded by dispatching a military force to China and in the ensuing conflict, the Royal Navy used its naval and gunnery power to inflict a series of decisive defeats on the Chinese Empire, a tactic referred to as gunboat diplomacy. In 1842, the Qing dynasty was forced to sign the Treaty of Nanking—the first of what the Chinese called the unequal treaties—which granted an indemnity and extraterritoriality to Britain, opened five treaty ports to foreign merchants, ceded Hong Kong Island to the British Empire; the failure of the treaty to satisfy British goals of improved trade and diplomatic relations led to the Second Opium War, the perceived weakness of the Qing dynasty resulted in social unrest within China, namely the Taiping Rebellion, which the Qing dynasty fought against the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom.
In China, the war is considered the beginning of modern Chinese history. Direct maritime trade between Europe and China began in 1557 when the Portuguese leased an outpost from the Ming dynasty at Macau. Other European nations soon followed the Portuguese lead, inserting themselves into the existing Asian maritime trade network to compete with Arab, Chinese and Japanese merchants in intra-regional commerce. After the Spanish conquest of the Philippines the exchange of goods between China and Europe accelerated dramatically. From 1565 on, the Manila Galleons brought silver into the Asian trade network from mines in South America. China was a primary destination for the precious metal, as the imperial government mandated that Chinese goods could only be exported in exchange for silver bullion. British ships began to appear sporadically around the coasts of China from 1635 on. Without establishing formal relations through the Chinese tributary system, by which most Asian nations were able to negotiate with China, British merchants were only allowed to trade at the ports of Zhoushan and Guangzhou.
Official British trade was conducted through the auspices of the British East India Company, which held a royal charter for trade with the Far East. The East India Company came to dominate Sino-European trade from its position in India and due to the strength of the Royal Navy. Trade benefited. Taiwan came under Qing control in 1683 and rhetoric regarding the tributary status of Europeans was muted. Guangzhou became the port of preference for incoming foreign trade. Ships did try to call at other ports, but these locations could not match the benefits of Canton's geographic position at the mouth of the Pearl River, nor did they have the city's long experience in balancing the demands of Beijing with those of Chinese and foreign merchants. From 1700 onward Canton was the center of maritime trade with China, this market process was formulated by Qing authorities into the "Canton System". From the system's inception in 1757, trading in China was lucrative for European and Chinese merchants alike as goods such as tea and silk were valued enough in Europe to justify the expenses of traveling to Asia.
The system was regulated by the Qing government. Foreign traders were only permitted to do business through a body of Chinese merchants known as the Cohong and were forbidden to learn Chinese. Foreigners could only live in one of the Thirteen Factories and were not allowed to enter or trade in any other part of China. Only low level government officials could be dealt with, the imperial court could not be lobbied for any reason excepting official diplomatic missions; the Imperial laws that upheld the system were collectively known as the Prevention Barbarian Ordinances. The Cohong were powerful in the Old China Trade, as they were tasked with appraising the value of foreign products, purchasing or rebuffing said imports, charged with selling Chinese exports at an appropriate price; the Cohong was made up of between 6 to 20 merchant families. Most of the merchant houses these families ruled had been established by low-ranking mandarins, but
Second Sino-Japanese War
The Second Sino-Japanese War was a military conflict fought between the Republic of China and the Empire of Japan from July 7, 1937, to September 2, 1945. It began with the Marco Polo Bridge Incident in 1937 in which a dispute between Japanese and Chinese troops escalated into a battle; some sources in the modern People's Republic of China date the beginning of the war to the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931. China fought Japan with aid from the United States. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, the war merged with other conflicts of World War II as a major sector known as the China Burma India Theater; some scholars consider the start of the full-scale Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937 to have been the beginning of World War II. The Second Sino-Japanese War was the largest Asian war in the 20th century, it accounted for the majority of civilian and military casualties in the Pacific War, with between 10 and 25 million Chinese civilians and over 4 million Chinese and Japanese military personnel dying from war-related violence and other causes.
The war was the result of a decades-long Japanese imperialist policy to expand its influence politically and militarily in order to secure access to raw material reserves and labor. The period after World War I brought about increasing stress on the Japanese polity. Leftists sought universal suffrage and greater rights for workers. Increasing textile production from Chinese mills was adversely affecting Japanese production; the Great Depression brought about a large slowdown in exports. All of this contributed to militant nationalism, culminating in the rise to power of a militarist fascist faction; this faction was led at its height by the Hideki Tojo cabinet of the Imperial Rule Assistance Association under edict from Emperor Hirohito. In 1931, the Mukden Incident helped spark the Japanese invasion of Manchuria; the Chinese were defeated and Japan created a new puppet state, Manchukuo. This view has been adopted by the PRC government. From 1931 to 1937, China and Japan continued to skirmish in small, localized engagements, so-called "incidents".
The Japanese scored major victories, capturing both Shanghai and the Chinese capital of Nanjing in 1937. After failing to stop the Japanese in the Battle of Wuhan, the Chinese central government was relocated to Chongqing in the Chinese interior. By 1939, after Chinese victories in Changsha and Guangxi, with Japan's lines of communications stretched deep into the Chinese interior, the war reached a stalemate; the Japanese were unable to defeat the Chinese communist forces in Shaanxi, which waged a campaign of sabotage and guerrilla warfare against the invaders. While Japan ruled the large cities, they lacked sufficient manpower to control China's vast countryside. During this time, Chinese communist forces launched a counter offensive in Central China while Chinese nationalist forces launched a large scale winter offensive. On December 7, 1941, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, the following day the United States declared war on Japan; the United States began to aid China by airlifting material over the Himalayas after the Allied defeat in Burma that closed the Burma Road.
In 1944 Japan launched Operation Ichi-Go, that conquered Henan and Changsha. However, this failed to bring about the surrender of Chinese forces. In 1945, the Chinese Expeditionary Force resumed its advance in Burma and completed the Ledo Road linking India to China. At the same time, China launched large counteroffensives in South China and retook West Hunan and Guangxi. Despite continuing to occupy part of China's territory, Japan surrendered on September 2, 1945, to Allied forces following the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the Soviet invasion of Japanese-held Manchuria; the remaining Japanese occupation forces formally surrendered on September 9, 1945, with the following International Military Tribunal for the Far East convened on April 29, 1946. At the outcome of the Cairo Conference of November 22–26, 1943, the Allies of World War II decided to restrain and punish the aggression of Japan by restoring all the territories that Japan annexed from China, including Manchuria, Taiwan/Formosa, the Pescadores, to China, to expel Japan from the Korean Peninsula.
China was recognized as one of the Big Four of the Allies during the war and became one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council. In China, the war is most known as the "War of Resistance against Japan", shortened to the "Resistance against Japan" or the "War of Resistance", it was called the "Eight Years' War of Resistance", but in 2017 the Chinese Ministry of Education issued a directive stating that textbooks were to refer to the war as the "Fourteen Years' War of Resistance", reflecting a focus on the broader conflict with Japan going back to 1931. It is referred to as part of the "Global Anti-Fascist War", how World War II is perceived by the Communist Party of China and the PRC government. In Japan, the name "Japan–China War" is most used because of its perceived objectivity; when the invasion of China proper began in earnest in July 1937 near Beijing, the government of Japan used "The North China Incident", with the outbreak of the Battle of Shanghai the following month, it was changed to "The China Incident"
Eight-Nation Alliance
The Eight-Nation Alliance was a multi-national military coalition set up in response to the Boxer Rebellion in China. The eight nations were Japan, Britain, the United States, Germany and Austria-Hungary. In the summer of 1900, when the international legations in Beijing were besieged by Boxer rebels supported by the Qing government, the coalition dispatched their armed forces, in the name of humanitarian intervention, to defend their respective nations' citizens, as well as a number of Chinese Christians who had taken shelter in the legations; the incident ended with the signing of the Boxer Protocol. The Boxers, a peasant movement, had attacked and killed foreign missionaries and Chinese Christians across northern China in 1899 and 1900; the Qing government and Imperial Army supported the Boxers and under the Manchu general Ronglu, besieged foreign diplomats and civilians taking refuge in the Legation Quarter in Peking. After failing in its initial attempt to relieve the Legation Quarter, in August 1900 the Allied force marched to Peking from Tianjin, defeated the Qing Imperial Army's Wuwei Corps in several engagements, brought an end to the Boxer Rebellion and the siege.
The members of the Alliance occupied Peking and proceeded to loot and pillage the capital. The forces consisted of 45,000 troops, from various countries. At the end of the campaign, the Qing Imperial government signed the Boxer Protocol of 1901; the diplomatic compound in Peking was under siege by the Wuwei Rear Division of the Chinese army and some Boxers, for 55 days, from 20 June to 14 August 1900. A total of 473 foreign civilians, 409 soldiers from eight countries, about 3,000 Chinese Christians took refuge in the Legation Quarter. Under the command of the British minister to China, Claude Maxwell MacDonald, the legation staff and security personnel defended the compound with small arms and one old muzzle-loaded cannon discovered and unearthed by Chinese Christians who turned it over to the Allies. Under siege in Peking was the North Cathedral, the Beitang of the Catholic Church; the Beitang was defended by 43 French and Italian soldiers, 33 foreign Catholic priests and nuns and about 3,200 Chinese Catholics.
The defenders suffered heavy casualties from lack of food and Chinese mines that exploded in tunnels dug beneath the compound. Austria-Hungary had a single cruiser SMS Zenta on station at the beginning of the rebellion, based at the Russian concession of Port Arthur. Detachments of sailors from the Zenta were the only Austro-Hungarian forces to see action; some were involved in defending the legations under siege while another detachment was involved in the rescue attempts. In June, the Austro-Hungarians helped hold the Tianjin railway against Boxer forces and fired upon several armed junks on the Hai River near Tong-Tcheou in Peking, they took part in the seizure of the Taku Forts commanding the approaches to Tianjin, the boarding and capture of four Chinese destroyers by Capt. Roger Keyes of HMS Fame; the Austro-Hungarian Navy sent the cruisers SMS Kaiserin und Königin Maria Theresia, SMS Kaiserin Elisabeth, SMS Aspern and a company of marines to China. Arriving in September, they were too late as most of the fighting had ended and the legations relieved.
The cruisers together with the Zenta were involved in capture of several Chinese forts. The Austro-Hungarians suffered minimal casualties during the rebellion. After the Boxer uprising, a cruiser was maintained permanently on the Chinese coast and a detachment of marines was deployed at the Austro-Hungarian embassy in Peking. Lieutenant Georg Ludwig von Trapp, made famous in the 1959 musical The Sound of Music, was decorated for bravery aboard SMS Kaiserin und Königin Maria Theresia during the rebellion. At the outset of the Boxer Rebellion, Britain was engaged in the Boer conflict in South Africa. With the army tied down by the war, the British had to rely on the China Squadron and troops from India; the Royal Navy's China Squadron, stationed off Tientsin, consisted of the battleships Barfleur and Centurion. British forces were the third-largest contingent in the international alliance, consisted of the following units: Naval Brigade, 12th Battery Royal Field Artillery, Hong Kong & Singapore Artillery, 2nd Battalion Royal Welsh Fusiliers, 1st Bengal Lancers, 7th Rajput Infantry, 24th Punjab Infantry, 1st Sikh Infantry, Hong Kong Regiment, 1st Chinese Regiment, Royal Engineers, other support personnel.
The Australian colonies did not become a unified federation until 1901. As such several of the colonies, independently of each other, sent contingents of naval and army personnel to support the British contingent. For example, South Australia sent its entire navy: the gunboat HMCS Protector. Australia, was not an official member of the eight-nation alliance and its forces arrived too late to see significant action. Britain provided 10,000 troops, of which a large part were Indian troops, made out of units of Baluchis, Gurkhas and Punjabis. Germany had gained a presence in China after the Juye Incident in which two German missionaries were murdered in November 1897; the concession in Kiaochow, with the port of Tsingtao, was used as a naval base for the East Asia Squadron and a trading port. It was garrisoned by the Imperial German Navy. At the outbreak of the Boxer Rebellion in June 1900, the garrison of the German concession comprised the III. Seebataillon with 1,126 men, a marine/naval artillery battery, a
British Supreme Court for China
The British Supreme Court for China was a court established in the Shanghai International Settlement to try cases against British subjects in China and Korea under the principles of extraterritoriality. The court heard appeals from consular courts in China and Korea and from the British Court for Japan, established in 1879. Britain had acquired extraterritorial rights in China under the Treaty of Nanking in 1842; the United States obtained further extraterritorial rights under the Treaty of Wanghsia, which Britain was able to take advantage of under the Most Favoured Nation provision in a Supplemental Agreement to the Treaty of Nanking. Subsequently, under the Treaty of Tientsin, these rights were provided for directly in a Sino-British Treaty. In 1858, Britain obtained extraterritorial rights in Japan under the Anglo-Japanese Treaty of Amity and Commerce; the Treaty of Tientsin specified how such jurisdiction was to be governed: Disputes between British subjects would "be subject to the jurisdiction of the British authorities."
For criminal acts, Chinese subjects would be arrested and punished by the Chinese authorities, according to Chinese law. In similar fashion, British subjects tried and punished by the Consul, "or other public functionary authorized thereto", according to British law. Where a British subject wished to lodge a complaint against a Chinese subject, or vice versa, it had to be presented to the British consul, who would "do his utmost to arrange it amicably." Failing that, "he shall request the assistance of the Chinese authorities, that they may together examine into the merits of the case, decide it equitably." In civil matters, Chinese authorities would enforce debts owed by Chinese subjects to British subjects, British authorities would do for those owed by British subjects to Chinese subjects. Jurisdiction in the first instance, as well as in matters involving British defendants, was vested in the British consular courts, while in the Shanghai International Settlement matters relating to criminal acts and debt enforcement involving Chinese defendants were vested in a "Mixed Court".
Matters relating to complaints were not considered to be judicial. Appeals from British consular courts went to the Supreme Court of Hong Kong, which became unpopular as British economic activity rose in the Yangtse valley; the establishment of the British Supreme Court for China and Japan was not challenged from any official quarter in China, as it was seen to be not only a way to more efficiently try matters close to the scene, but to allow Qing officials to exert direct pressure on British authorities when they were not satisfied with a sentence. In 1879, reflecting the growing British commercial interests in Japan and the inconvenience of bringing a first instance action in Shanghai, the British Court for Japan was established in Kanagawa with first instance jurisdiction in Japan; the Court for Japan heard appeals from consular courts in Japan. Appeals from the Court for Japan were heard by the Chief Justice and Judge of the Supreme Court in Shanghai; the United Kingdom obtained extraterritoriality in Korea as a result of the United Kingdom–Korea Treaty of 1883.
The court's jurisdiction was subsequently extended there in 1884, but the court's name remained unchanged. Under the terms of the Anglo-Japanese Treaty of Commerce and Navigation of 1894, Britain gave up extraterritorial rights in Japan with effect from July 1899; the court was renamed the British Supreme Court for China and Corea in 1900. The Court for Japan heard its last case, filed before the end of July 1899, in early 1900. Under the Japan-Korea Treaty of 1910, Korea was annexed by Japan and Britain automatically lost extraterritorial rights in Korea; the court was, in January 1911, renamed the "British Supreme Court for China". In the 1920s there were negotiations with China to give up extraterritorial rights. In 1930 and 1931, after the Kuomintang consolidated their rule in China, Britain reached an agreement in principle with the Chinese Foreign Minister to give up extraterritorial rights; the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931 and Northern China in 1937 put the issue on the backburner.
The Court ceased to function on 8 December 1941 when the Japanese Navy occupied the court premises at the start of the Pacific War. After 9 months internship, either at home or in the Cathay Hotel, the judges and British staff of the court were evacuated to Britain aboard the SS Narkunda, it was, only in 1943 during World War II that Britain gave up extraterritorial rights in China under the British-Chinese Treaty for the Relinquishment of Extra-Territorial Rights in China signed on 11 January 1943 and which came into force on 20 May 1943. The United States gave up its extraterritorial rights at the same time; the court therefore had had jurisdiction over British subjects in Korea for 27 years. In Shanghai, the court was housed in the British Consulate compound. From 1865 to 1871 cases were heard using the rooms, used by the consular court. In 1871 a dedicated court building to stand at the back of the consulate building facing on to Yuanmingyuan Road was opened. In 1913 the building was expanded to add a Police Court and a second court south of the main court room.
Rooms of similar size were built to the north for consular offices. The building still can be seen from Yuanmingyuan Road. In Yokohama, the British Court for Japan sat in the British
United States
British Empire
United States, 
Kingdom of the Netherlands, 
Russian Empire, 
French colonial empire
Kingdom of Prussia
Austro-Hungarian Empire
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