“Yuan Shih-kai was strongly opposed to the removal of the capital from the north. He advanced various arguments against this step, and when they failed to convince the Republican deputation, he is believed to have instigated a mutiny of the Third Division. On February 29 it broke loose and looted a portion of the capital. Troops in other centres, notably Fengtai and Yungpingfu, did likewise. And on the night of March 2 the trouble spread to Tientsin, which passed through a night of terror. The native city was the scene of firing, looting and incendiarism, and though the foreign concessions were not molested, they were placed under martial law as a precaution.
“The presence of Chinese troops within the native city was contrary to the terms of the protocol under which the administration of that area was returned to the Chinese in 1902 by the Provisional Government that had been established during the Boxer trouble. A proposal to despatch supposedly loyal troops to restore and maintain order was therefore resisted b the foreign Powers, and the foreign garrisons, reinforced by additional Japanese, undertook the responsibility of patrolling the city until conditions again became normal. The armed Chinese police also took drastic action to restore order as soon as the main body of looters had left hte city. When I visited it next morning numbers of heads, suspended by pigtails from bridges, lamp-posts and other points of vantage, formed a gory warning to prospective robbers.”

My first thought is that this truism applies to almost every country’s view of its neighbors. One could as truthfully say that analyzing French, Italian, etc. politics was not a strong suit of the Americans, English, Australians, etc. Reflection prompts me to add that the language barrier was likely much more influential on foreign opinions of China and the Chinese than it was for contemporary European states, given the relative small number of foreigners who did speak adequate Chinese.

On second thought, revolutions are by their very nature, messy affairs. For the foreign residents of China, this could only have been a cause of much stress, living as they did in a fish-bowl, separated from the coast by a very narrow corridor whose liberty of movement was only assured by foriegn troops. Yes, the Boxer Rebellion, barely a decade old, must have loomed large in their psyche. I suspect that their “best of humour” was a display meant to calm their families and reassure themselves that however dangerous things looked, they were “safe”, and thus nothing more than “whistling past the graveyard”.

Very nice piece, by the way.