Boxer movement

The Boxers, officially known as the Society of Righteous and Harmonious Fists (among other names), were a Chinese secret society and resistance movement based in Northern China that carried out the Boxer Rebellion, or Boxer Uprising from 1899 to 1901. The movement was made up of independent local village groups, many of which kept their membership secret, making the total number of participants difficult to estimate, but it may have included as many as 100,000. They originally attacked the Qing government, but soon called upon it to resist foreign influence. In the summer of 1900, groups of Boxer fighters destroyed foreign owned property, such as railroads and telegraphs, and murdered Christian missionaries and Chinese Christians. They then supported the Empress Dowager in resisting the resulting foreign invasion, which all but destroyed the group and ended the Rebellion, though some members continued in other groups across China.