Rebels With a Cause

umerous accounts have been penned about the tragic Pe- king summer of 1900, when foreign legations found them selves under siege by a xenophobic revolutionary movement encouraged by the Manchu court. The uprising continued for 55 days before order was restored and the ringleaders executed, often brutally � but not before the German minister had been assassinated.

That his death was announced by British newspapers five days before he was gunned down is just one of many amazing facts and details revealed in The Boxer Rebellion, a centenary work of major historical importance by Italian author Adriano Madaro, a leading world expert on China whose stature makes him the only non-Chinese member of the Chinese Academy of International Culture.

Madaro's weighty, superbly presented book-the first in a planned series of six covering the past two centuries of Chinese history � is different to all other "Boxer" roundups for the exclusivity of its revelations. While without preconceptions he rounds out the commonly known chronological and other events of the time, he scores extra high for having obtained, and now revealed, the contents of documents contained in the diplomatic bag of the Italian minister in Peking during the rebellion, the marquis Giuseppe Salvago-Raggi.

These hitherto mostly unseen papers and photographs, some shocking in their bestiality, had for decades been held by a descendant of the minister, a lady who was prepared to pass them only to someone of Madaro's academic prestige. For him, it was the scoop of a lifetime because he is at base a thoroughbred journalist as well as a serious author with numerous books about China to his credit. Based in the Veneto region of Italy, he has made approaching 100 visits, many of them lengthy, to China over the past 25 years.

The marquis, direct witness with his wife of the siege and its unnerving threats and tenterhook negotiations, kept careful notes about the stressful weeks under siege, when diplomats and other foreigners crowded under virtually one roof awaiting the arrival of liberating Indian and other troops.

Somewhat like the Mafeking siege in South Africa to come, it was a touch-and-go time with strange goings-on behind the scenes. Who exactly were the Boxers? Madaro tells us much that is new. He also delves into the true roles of the Powers then present in China, some of whom were responsible for violent military attacks against the empire's provinces.

What Cossacks did to suspected Boxers is, photographically, gruesome beyond measure � similarly the Chinese method of decapitation of the legally convicted. And in whose interest was it to cause riots that culminated in the German minister's demise?

The book's blurb claims that, a century on, The Boxer Rebellion re-opens a series of sensitive diplomatic dossiers which explain the collapse of the Heavenly Empire, opening up new horizons to understanding the history of modern China. Too true.