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On the last day of 1899, Chinese reactionaries abducted Sidney Brooks, a 24-year-old missionary of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts. They tortured him for hours and then murdered him. British authorities acted swiftly; two culprits were executed and an indemnity was demanded. But if the British thought this would quell the rising Chinese resentment, they were wrong.

Within six months, thousands of angry Chinese came screaming out of the villages of North China, twirling swords and chanting, "Burn, burn, burn! Kill, kill, kill!" They tore down chapels, cathedrals, orphanages, hospitals, and schools, and murdered missionaries and Chinese Christians. The uprising is called the Boxer Rebellion, and it dealt the modern Protestant missionary movement its most severe blow ever.

The causes of the uprising were many and complex, but the arrogance of foreigners is as good a summation as any.

Since the 1840s, foreigners had forced China's hand in treaty after treaty, gaining control of large parts of the country. The English, Americans, French, Dutch, Spanish, German, and, the largest group, Japanese, had divided up the country as if they were playing the board game Risk. Foreigners sometimes owned whole cities.

Worse, they swaggered through China knowing they could not be arrested for any crime. If a drunken sailor killed a prostitute or his captain set fire to a trading junk, they were protected by the extraterritoriality that is granted high-ranking diplomats.

Too many missionaries (though hardly Hudson Taylor) adopted a "Shanghai mentality," which regarded the world beyond their enclave as a "heathen colossus." In some places, missionaries were more intimate with British authorities, more interested in playing soccer at the consulate with sailors.

Many foreigners despised the Chinese. One Canadian reported that a "gentle-spirited Norwegian" told him "that after being out here for a few years, he got into such a dulled spiritual condition that he would, on occasions, knock down or beat a Chinese."

Missionary pride and Chinese anger shot up in 1899 when the Chinese government conferred official status on missionaries, making a bishop or superintendent the equal of a provincial governor, and ordinary foreigners the equivalent of district magistrates. Wrote one missionary, "What other government has bestowed such privileges upon ministers of the gospel?"

Many missionaries who did venture forth into the "heathen colossus" did so insensitively. Many publicly ridiculed sacred Chinese beliefs—ancestor worship and Confucian precepts. Some charged into temples while Chinese were worshiping and denounced them for bowing to idols.

One American writer spoke for most foreigners and too many missionaries when he wrote in early 1900, "The day is not distant when China will be delivered from its effete civilization and will come under the power of those motives which have their source in the vital truths of the Christian revelation."

By the late 1890s, more and more Chinese decided they had had enough. The Society of Harmonious Fists, or Boxers, led the way.

Their origin is unknown, but by the late 1890s, they had a mystical aura about them. They wore red ribbons around their wrists, yellow sashes, and yellow talismans. They believed they were invulnerable to foreign weapons. Their shamans conducted demonstrations in which a musket (loaded with a blank cartridge) was fired at a follower, "proving" the point. They murmured incantations that induced a trance-like state, and they had secret signals and passwords.

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