Magic Spells vs. Machine Guns: The Boxer Rebellion (Episode 37) #chinesehistory #history

Added: 2026-05-24

[00:00:00]Imagine fighting a machine gun with a piece of paper and a magic spell. Sounds crazy. In 1900, this was the main strategy.

[00:00:08]Welcome to the Boxer Rebellion. They were called the Boxers. Their motto, "Support the Qing, destroy the foreign."

[00:00:14]Their method, [music] destroying anything Western. Trains, bad luck. Telegraph poles, evil spirits.

[00:00:21]Even pencils were contraband. And who backed them? Empress Dowager Cixi. She was angry at the foreigners. She thought, "These guys claim they can stop bullets. Let's use them." It was a gamble, a very, very bad gamble. The Boxers besieged the foreign embassies.

[00:00:38]But the world didn't send a letter of complaint. They sent an army, the Eight-Nation Alliance. It was like the Avengers, but for colonialism. It wasn't a battle, it was a physics lesson.

[00:00:50]The Boxers chanted their spells, the Alliance brought Maxim guns. [music] Invulnerability met high-velocity rounds. Spoiler alert, the spells didn't work. But amidst the chaos, there was humor. Officially, Li Hongzhang told the invaders, "This city is just an old, broken house." Isn't that worth yelling?

[00:01:07]He was the only one using his brain. You know, August 1900, Beijing fell. The Divine Army was gone. Cixi fled the palace, claiming she was just hunting in the West. The Dragon Throne was occupied by foreign.

[00:01:20]>> [music] >> The bill arrived, the Boxer Protocol, 450 million taels of silver. Why that number? [music] One tael for every Chinese person. It was a national humiliation, automatized. The dream of destroying the foreign ended with China becoming a semi-colony. Magic couldn't save a nation, only modernization could.

[00:01:38]Subscribe. Next, >> [music] >> the end of the Qing Dynasty.