Pwt 19-2016 boxers

PWT 19-2016 CONTENTS :

The Boxer Rebellion IIIPekin qui disparaît, the selection of a member of the Fench legation IVTwenty-six illustrations (out of one hundred and fifty vintage prints) 1-26Pricelist 27

WEEKLY TRANSMISSION N°19 THURSDAY 12 MAY 201655 DAYS AT PEKING : CHINA IN THE TIME OF THE BOXER REBELLION

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The e-bulletin presents articles as well as a selection of books, albums, photographsand ancient documents as they have been handed down to the actual owners

by their creators and by amateurs from past generations.

The physical descriptions, attributions, origins, and printing datesof the books and photographs have been carefully ascertained by collations

and through close analysis of comparable works.

The books and photographs consigned from all around the world are presented in chronological order. It is the privilege of ancient and

authentic things to be presented in this fashion, mirroring the flow of ideas and creations.When items are for sale, the prices are in Euros, and Paypal is accepted.

N°19 : The Boxer Rebellion

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Weekly Transmission 19 III 12 May 2016 .

THE BOXER REBELLION, BOXER UPRISING OR YIHEQUAN MOVEMENT

«The Boxer Rebellion was a violent uprising which took place in China towards the end ofthe Qing dynasty between 1899 and 1901. It was initiated by the Militia United inRighteousness (Yihetuan), known in English as the "Boxers", an offshoot of the Baguadao("Way of the Eight Symbols") folk religious network of north China, and was motivated byproto-nationalist sentiments and opposition to imperialist expansion and associated Christianmissionary activity. The Great Powers intervened and defeated the Chinese forces.

The uprising took place against a background of severe drought and the disruption caused bythe growth of foreign spheres of influence. After several months of growing violence againstthe foreign and Christian presence in Shandong and the North China plain in June 1900, Boxerfighters, convinced they were invulnerable to foreign weapons, converged on Beijing with theslogan "Support Qing government and exterminate the foreigners." Foreigners and ChineseChristians sought refuge in the Legation Quarter. In response to reports of an armed invasionto lift the siege, the initially hesitant Empress Dowager Cixi supported the Boxers and on June21 declared war on the foreign powers. Diplomats, foreign civilians and soldiers as well asChinese Christians in the Legation Quarter were placed under siege by the Imperial Army ofChina and the Boxers for 55 days.

Chinese officialdom was split between those supporting the Boxers and those favoringconciliation, led by Prince Qing. The supreme commander of the Chinese forces, the ManchuGeneral Ronglu (Junglu), later claimed that he acted to protect the besieged foreigners. TheEight-Nation Alliance, after being initially turned back, brought 20,000 armed troops to China,defeated the Imperial Army, and captured Beijing on August 14, 1901, lifting the siege of theLegations. Uncontrolled plunder of the Chinese capital and the surrounding countryside byforeigners ensued, along with rape, lynchings and summary executions.

The Boxer Protocol of 7 September, 1901 provided for the execution of government officialswho had supported the Boxers, provisions for foreign troops to be stationed in Beijing, and450 million taels of silver—more than the government's annual tax revenue—to be paid asindemnity over the course of the next thirty-nine years to the eight nations involved.

The events also left a longer impact. The historian Robert Bickers found that for the British inChina the Boxer rising served as the "equivalent of the Indian 'mutiny'" and came to representthe Yellow Peril. Later events, he adds, such as the Chinese Nationalist Revolution of the 1920sand even the activities of the Red Guards of the 1960s, were perceived as being in the shadowof the Boxers.» [Cf. Wikipedia]

Weekly Transmission 19 IV 12 May 2016 .

«Pékin qui disparaît, photographies prises en 1900-1903»

The photographic collection consists of one hundred and fifty vintage prints, all printed inthe period 1900-1903 when they were collected by a member of the French legation inPeking.

The collector gathered prints not only of the events and their consequences but alsophotographs documenting everyday’s life in China in the late Qing Dinasty. Only a minorityof the photographs are stamped or signed in negatives, but all are captioned in pencil inFrench language. The «French diplomat» probably took pictures himself, and then chose themcarefully from a Chinese photographer (group A), as well as Japanese (group B), French (groupC), Russian (group D) and maybe American photographers. The prints are in majority in goodcondition, with some creases and defects, the tonality varies from mediocre to very strongdepending of photographer’s processes. Sanshichiro Yamamoto and Y sui Tsu are both quotedby Claire Roberts, Photography and China, pages 50-51, Meynadier and Hocquart are bothknown to have taken pictures when present in the French legation during the Boxer rebellion.

The 150 prints can be listed in a coherent presentation of identification and format :

A. Y SUI TSU (& alii). Peking in the time of the Boxer Rebellion, 1901. Portfolio with thirty-six (36) latge albumen prints, 200x250 mm or 190x240 mm, on paper mount, signed andmonogrammed in several negatives (see pages 1-7)

B. SANSHICHIRO YAMAMOTO (studio Yamamoto Shōzō Kan, when active in Peking).«Fumeuse d’opium», Peking, c. 1900. Albumen print, 200x245 mm, photographer’s smalloval stamp in latin alphabet, verso, captioned in French in pencil on mount verso, strongtonality

(see page 8)

C. CIRCLE OF MEYNADIER, HOCQUARD. Pékin qui disparaît, photographies prises en 1900-1903. Forty (40) large citrate papers, arystotype and collodion-on paper, 180x225 mm or190x240 mm (pages 9-18)

D. N.P. (& alii). Peking, 1900-1903. Seventy-three (73) albumen or collodion or paper prints,120x160 mm or 100x145 mm (pages 19-26)

Weekly Transmission 19 1 12 May 2016 .

«À gauche, postes françaises, à droite la légation d’Allemagne» (Albumen print)

«The Beijing Legation Quarter was the area in Beijing, China where a number of foreignlegations were located between 1861 and 1959, known as Dong Jiaomin Xiang, it is locatedimmediately to the east of Tiananmen Square.

The foreign legations were originally scattered close to the Qing imperial government in thesouthern part of Beijing's old inner city. In 1861, in accordance with the Treaty of Tientsinwhich ended the Second Opium War, the British legation moved into the residence of PrinceChun, the French legation moved into the residence of Prince An, the American legationmoved into the private house of Dr S. William, a United States citizen, while the Russianlegation moved into the existing Russian quarters at the Orthodox church. Other countriesfollowed suit, and by 1900 the Japanese, German, Belgian and Dutch missions were also inthis area.»


«Rue des Légations après le siège, à droite Légation de France en ruines» (Albumen print)

«...The foreign legations continued to be surrounded by both Qing imperial and Gansu forces.While Dong Fuxiang's Gansu army, now swollen by the addition of the Boxers, wished topress the siege, Ronglu's imperial forces seem to have largely attempted to follow EmpressDowager Cixi's decree and protect the legations.

However, to satisfy the conservatives in the imperial court, Ronglu's men also fired on thelegations and let off firecrackers to give the impression that they, too, were attacking theforeigners. Inside the legations and out of communication with the outside world, theforeigners simply fired on any targets that presented themselves, including messengers fromthe imperial court, civilians and besiegers of all persuasions...»


«L’Éxécution des Boxers» (Albumen print)

«In many countries, views of the Boxers were complex and contentious. Mark Twain said that"the Boxer is a patriot. He loves his country better than he does the countries of other people.I wish him success." The Russian writer Leo Tolstoy accused Nicholas II of Russia and WilhelmII of Germany of being chiefly responsible for the lootings, rapes, and murders in what he sawas Christian brutality of the Russians and other western troops. The Russian revolutionaryVladimir Lenin mocked the Russian government's claim that it was protecting Christiancivilization: "Poor Imperial Government! So Christianly unselfish, and yet so unjustlymaligned!" The Indian Bengali Hindu Rabindranath Tagore attacked the European colonialists.A number of Indian soldiers in the British Indian Army agreed that the Boxers were right andthe British stole from the Temple of Heaven a bell, which was given back to China by theIndian military in 199. The American evangelist Rev. Dr. George F. Pentecost spoke out againstwestern imperialism in China and in favor of the Boxers...» (Wikipedia


«Obsèques de Li-Hung-Chang à Pékin, 1901» (Albumen print, signed in negative)

«Li Hongzhang (15 February 1823 – 7 November 1901) was a Chinese politician, generaland diplomat of the late Qing dynasty. He quelled several major rebellions and served inimportant positions in the Qing imperial court.

In 1901 Li was the principal Qing dynasty negotiator with the foreign powers who hadcaptured Beijing. On 7 September 1901, he signed the Boxer Protocol treaty ending the Boxercrisis, obtaining the departure of the foreign armies at the price of huge indemnities for China.Exhausted from the negotiations, he died from liver inflammation two months later at ShenlianTemple in Beijing.

Li left a word as his self-evaluation: "To know me and judge me is a task for the nextmillennium». (Wikipedia)


«L’Empereur Kwan-Siu se rend au Temple du ciel à Pékin pour l’offrande annuelle, 1902»

«The Guangxu Emperor (1871-1908), personal name Zaitian (Manchu: Dzai-Tiyan), was theeleventh emperor of the Qing dynasty. His reign lasted from 1875 to 1908, but in practice heruled, under Empress Dowager Cixi's influence, only from 1889 to 1898. He initiated theHundred Days' Reform, but was abruptly stopped when the empress dowager launched acoup in 1898, after which he was put under house arrest until his death.

Returning to the capital in January 1902, after the withdrawal of the allied powers, theGuangxu Emperor was known to have spent the next few years working in his isolated palacewith watches and clocks, some say in an effort to pass the time until the death of EmpressDowager Cixi. He also read widely and spent time learning English from Cixi's western-educated lady-in-waiting, Princess Der Ling.»


«Coiffeur ambulant» (Albumen print)

«The queue or cue is a hairstyle usually worn by men, in which the hair is worn long andoften braided, while the front portion of the head is shaven. It was worn traditionally by theManchu people, certain indigenous American groups and Gopis (devotees of Krishna).

The Manchu requirement that people living in areas under their rule, specifically Han Chinese,give up their traditional hairstyles and wear the queue was met with considerable resistance,although attitudes about the queue did change considerably over time.

The hairstyle was compulsory for all males and the penalty for not complying was executionfor treason. In the early 1910's, after the fall of the Qing dynasty, the Chinese no longer hadto wear the Manchu queue. While some, such as Zhang Xun, still did so as a tradition, mostof them abandoned it after the last Emperor of China, Puyi, cut his queue in 1922.»


«Mongols à Pékin avec leur chameau» (Albumen print)

«... During the course of the 17th and 18th centuries, most regions inhabited by ethnicMongols, notably Outer and Inner Mongolia became part of the Qing Empire.

Even before the dynasty began to take control of China proper in 1644, the escapades ofLigden Khan had driven a number of Mongol tribes to ally with the Manchu state. TheManchus conquered a Mongol tribe in the process of war against the Ming. Nurhaci's earlyrelations with the Mongols tribes was mainly an alliance.»


SANSHICHIRO YAMAMOTO (STUDIO YAMAMOTO SHōZō KAN, when active in Peking).«Fumeuse d’opium», Peking, c. 1900. Albumen print, 200x245 mm, photographer’s small oval stamp in latin alphabet, verso,captioned in French in pencil on mount verso, strong tonality. 2.500 euros


«Les Nations alliées» (P.O.P., officers are numbered in ink, 1 = Austria; 2 = Russia 3 = USA ;4 = Germany; 5 = England; 6 = France; 7 = Belgium; 8 = Italy; 9 = Japan)

«...British Lieutenant-General Alfred Gaselee acted as the commanding officer of the Eight-Nation Alliance, which eventually numbered 55,000.

The main contingent was composed of Japanese (20,840), Russian (13,150), British (12,020),French (3,520), U.S. (3,420), German (900), Italian (80), Austro-Hungarian (75) and anti-Boxer Chinese troops.»


«Rue Ka-Li-Men, près le quartier des Légations» (Citrate paper)

«...Also on 11 June, the first Boxer, dressed in his finery, was seen in the Legation Quarter.

The German Minister, Clemens von Ketteler, and German soldiers captured a Boxer boy andinexplicably executed him.»


«À la gare de Pékin en 1900» (P.O.P.)

«...On 30 May 1900, the diplomats, led by British Minister Claude Maxwell MacDonald,requested that foreign soldiers come to Beijing to defend the legations.

The Chinese government reluctantly acquiesced, and the next day an international force of435 navy troops from eight countries disembarked from warships and travelled by train fromDagu (Taku) to Beijing. They set up defensive perimeters around their respective missions.»


«Le Mur de la ville tartare de Pékin et la Porte de l’eau «Water-gate» par où sont entrées àPékin les troupes anglaises en 1900 — pendant le siège des légations» (P.O.P., 3rd album)

«The assault on Peking had taken on the character of a race to see which national armyachieved the glory of relieving the Legations. The commanders of the four national armiesagreed that each of them would assault a different gate.The Japanese had encountered stiffresistance at their assigned gate and were subjecting it to an artillery barrage. The British hadan easier time of it, approaching and passing through their gate, the Shawo or Guangqui, withvirtually no opposition. Both Americans and British were aware that the easiest entry into theLegation Quarter was through the so-called Water Gate, a drainage canal running beneaththe wall of the Inner city. The British got there first. They waded through the muck of the canaland into the Legation Quarter and were greeted by a cheering throng of the besieged, alldecked out in their "Sunday best". The Chinese soldiers ringing the Legation Quarter fired afew shots, wounding a Belgian woman, and then fled. It was 2:30 p.m on 14 August. TheBritish had not suffered a single casualty all day, except one man who died of sunstroke.»


«L’arrestation des Boxers» (P.O.P., Pékin qui disparaît, 3rd album)

«Peking was a battered city after the siege. The Boxers had begun the destruction, destroyingall Christian churches and homes and starting fires that burned throughout the city. TheChinese artillery aimed at the Legation Quarter and Peitang during the siege had destroyednearby neighborhoods.

The occupation of Peking became, in the words of an American journalist, "the biggest lootingexpedition since Pizarro"

The foreign powers in Peking sent out punitive missions to the countryside to capture or killsuspected Boxers. There was much indisciminate killing by the foreign troops. AmericanGeneral Chaffee said, "It is safe to say that where one real Boxer has been killed since thecapture of Peking, fifty harmless coolies or laborers on the farms, including not a few womenand children, have been slain." Most of the punitive missions were by the French andGermans.»


«L’éxécution des Boxers» (P.O.P., Pékin qui disparaît, 3rd album)

«All over the country, Boxer rebels and criminals were put to death in full public view. Andtheir corpses, or at least parts of them, were displayed as a warning to others.

Whether the sentence was death or torture, there were often Western photographers around,ready to capture the punishments on film for fascinated audiences back home. These are someof the graphic images which were produced.

Following the Boxer Rebellion in 1900, allied forces, including Germans, French, Russians,Japanese, British and Americans, occupied Beijing. Murder, rape and other atrocities werewidespread. According to one witness, “[T]he conduct of the Russian soldiers is atrocious,the French are not much better, and the Japanese are looting and burning without mercy.”(Cult Nation).


«Street Scene in Pekin» (Albumen print, Pékin qui disparaît, 3rd album)


«Chinese actors» (P.O.P., Pékin qui disparaît, 3rd album)


«Inauguration du monument Ketteler» (Albumen print, Pékin qui disparaît, 3rd album)

«On 12 June 1900, when Boxers moved to the inner city and burned down Christian churchbuildings, Ketteler reacted by ordering German embassy guards to hunt them down. On 18June, German troops captured a Chinese civilian suspected of being a Boxer in the inner cityand took him to the Legation Quarter... the crowd which later gathered to demand the man'srelease was fired upon by the guards; many were wounded... On June 17 the Chinese MuslimKansu Braves attacked Ketteler and his Marines at the Legations. After stones were hurled...Ketteler told his men to shoot back at the Muslim troops... Ketteler brutally attacked a Chinesecivilian for no known reason, and beat a boy who was with him after taking him to theLegations. Ketteler then murdered the boy by shooting him... Ketteler was specifically targetedby the Manchu captain En Hai for assassination, in revenge for Ketteler murdering the boy...After China's loss to the Eight-Nation Alliance in 1901, treaties were signed between Chinaand the nations. A memorial gate called the Ketteler Memorial (German: Ketteler-Denkmal)was erected at the location where he fell. Work on this gate began on 25 June 1901 and wascompleted on 8 January 1903.


Dongjiao Minxiang, «Entrée de la rue des légations» (Pékin qui disparaît, 3rd album)

«....Also on 11 June, the first Boxer, dressed in his finery, was seen in the Legation Quarter.The German Minister, Clemens von Ketteler, and German soldiers captured a Boxer boy andinexplicably executed him.[36] In response, thousands of Boxers burst into the walled city ofBeijing that afternoon and burned many of the Christian churches and cathedrals in the city,burning some victims alive.[37] American and British missionaries had taken refuge in theMethodist Mission and an attack there was repulsed by American Marines. The soldiers at theBritish Embassy and German Legations shot and killed several Boxers,[38] alienating theChinese population of the city and nudging the Qing government toward support of theBoxers. The Muslim Gansu braves and Boxers, along with other Chinese then attacked andkilled Chinese Christians around the legations in revenge for foreign attacks on Chinese.»


«Foule chinoise» (P.O.P., Pékin qui disparaît, P.O.P.)

«International tension and domestic unrest fueled the spread of the Boxer movement. First, adrought followed by floods in Shandong province in 1897–1898 forced farmers to flee to citiesand seek food. As one observer said, "I am convinced that a few days' heavy rainfall toterminate the long-continued drought ... would do more to restore tranquility than anymeasures which either the Chinese government or foreign governments can take."


«La porte de Tsien-Men, et la tour démolie par les obus, pendant les troubles des Boxers,1901» (P.O.P., cyrillic initials and negative number «13» in negative)

«... News arrived on 18 June regarding attacks on foreign legations. Seymour decided tocontinue advancing, this time along the Beihe river, toward Tongzhou, 25 kilometres (16 mi)from Beijing. By the 19th, they had to abandon their efforts due to progressively stiffeningresistance and started to retreat southward along the river with over 200 wounded.Commandeering four civilian Chinese junks along the river, they loaded all their woundedand remaining supplies onto them and pulled them along with ropes from the riverbanks. Bythis point they were very low on food, ammunition and medical supplies. Unexpectedly theythen happened upon the Great Xigu Arsenal, a hidden Qing munitions cache of which theAllied Powers had had no knowledge until then.

They immediately captured and occupied it, discovering not only Krupp field guns, but rifleswith millions of rounds of ammunition, along with millions of pounds of rice and amplemedical supplies».


«Soldats chinois en tenue d’hiver» (P.O.P.)

«... Meanwhile, in Beijing, on 16 June, Empress Dowager Cixi summoned the imperial courtfor a mass audience and addressed the choices between using the Boxers to evict theforeigners from the city or seeking a diplomatic solution. In response to a high official whodoubted the efficacy of the Boxers' magic, Cixi replied: — Perhaps their magic is not to berelied upon; but can we not rely on the hearts and minds of the people? Today China isextremely weak. We have only the people's hearts and minds to depend upon. If we castthem aside and lose the people's hearts, what can we use to sustain the country?

Both sides of the debate at the imperial court realised that popular support for the Boxers inthe countryside was almost universal and that suppression would be both difficult andunpopular, especially when foreign troops were on the march.»


«Le jour de l’éxécution des mandarins, auteurs des troubles boxeurs, 1901» (P.O.P.)

«On 7 September 1901, the Qing imperial court agreed to sign the "Boxer Protocol" alsoknown as Peace Agreement between the Eight-Nation Alliance and China.

The protocol ordered the execution of 10 high-ranking officials linked to the outbreak andother officials who were found guilty for the slaughter of foreigners in China.

Alfons Mumm (Freiherr von Schwarzenstein), Ernest Satow and Komura Jutaro signed onbehalf of Germany, Britain and Japan respectively.»


«L’arrivée des premières voitures avec les mandarins qui seront éxécutés» (P.O.P., cyrillicinitials and negative number «80» in negative)

«... The Qing government did not capitulate to all the foreign demands.

The Manchu governor Yuxian was executed, but the imperial court refused to execute the HanChinese General Dong Fuxiang, although he had also encouraged the killing of foreignersduring the rebellion.

An execution was impossible to be demanded of the court by the Allies because Dong Fuxiangwas the one protecting the Imperial Court. Empress Dowager Cixi intervened when theAlliance demanded him executed and Dong was only cashiered and sent back home. Instead,Dong Fuxiang lived a life of luxury and power in "exile" in his home province of Gansu. UponDong's death in 1908, all honors which had been stripped from him were restored and hewas given a full military burial.»


«Une voiture chinoise, 1901» (P.O.P., negative number «98» in negative)

«... It was reported that Japanese troops were astonished by other Alliance troops rapingcivilians. Roger Keyes, who commanded the British destroyer Fame and accompanied theGaselee Expedition, noted that the Japanese had brought their own "regimental wives"(prostitutes) to the front to keep their soldiers from raping Chinese civilians.

Thousands of Chinese women committed suicide; The Daily Telegraph journalist E. J. Dillonstated it was to avoid rape by Alliance forces, and he witnessed the mutilated corpses ofChinese women who were raped and killed by the Alliance troops. The French commanderdismissed the rapes, attributing them to "gallantry of the French soldier."

A foreign journalist, George Lynch, said "there are things that I must not write, and that maynot be printed in England, which would seem to show that this Western civilization of ours ismerely a veneer over savagery."


«Un soldat allemand en Chine, 1900» (P.O.P., ink signature ? lower right)


«Les ruines du palais Yuan Ming Yuan détruit par les alliés en 1860, près de Pékin» (P.O.P.)

Like the Forbidden City, no commoner had ever been allowed into the Old Summer Palace,as it was used exclusively by the imperial family of the Qing Empire.] The burning of the OldSummer Palace is still a very sensitive issue in China today. The destruction of the palace hasbeen perceived as barbaric and criminal by many Chinese, as well as by external observers.In his "Expédition de Chine", Victor Hugo described the looting as, "Two robbers breakinginto a museum, devastating, looting and burning, leaving laughing hand-in-hand with theirbags full of treasures; one of the robbers is called France and the other Britain. "In his letter,Hugo hoped that one day France would feel guilty and return what it had plundered fromChina.[


A. Y SUI TSU (& alii). Peking in the time of the Boxer Rebellion, 1901. Portfolio with thirty-six (36) latge albumen prints, 200x250 mm or 190x240 mm, on paper mount, signed andmonogrammed in several negatives (see pages 1-7). 36 albumen prints: 20.000 euros

B. SANSHICHIRO YAMAMOTO (studio Yamamoto Shōzō Kan, when active in Peking).«Fumeuse d’opium», Peking, c. 1900. Albumen print, 200x245 mm, photographer’s smalloval stamp in latin alphabet, verso, captioned in French in pencil on mount verso, strongtonality (see page 8). 1 albumen print : 2.000 euros

C. CIRCLE OF MEYNADIER, HOCQUARD. Pékin qui disparaît, photographies prises en 1900-1903. Forty (40) large citrate papers, arystotype and collodion-on paper, 180x225 mm or190x240 mm (pages 9-18). 40 large P.O.P. : 10.000 euros

D. N.P. (& alii). Peking, 1900-1903. Seventy-two (72) albumen or collodion or paper prints,120x160 mm or 100x145 mm (pages 19-25). 73 small P.O.P. : 9.000 euros

The four lots totalling 150 prints are offered at a price of forty thousand euros

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Number Nineteen, Second Season, of the Weekly Transmission has been uploaded on Thursday, 12th May 2016 at 18:15 (Paris time).

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«L’Enfer (Hell), peinture dans un temple bouddhique» (P.O.P.)

Weekly Transmission 19 Hell 12 May 2016 .

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