The Boxer Rebellion is an engaging, suspenseful, and incredibly dramatic work from all aspects. Diana Preston, an Oxford-trained historian, writer, and broadcaster, reveals truths behind the rebellion that newspapers alone might not be able to tell.

Preston’s prologue begins by discounting reports by Western newspapers of the events occurring in China during the rebellion. While the newspapers depicted the Westerner’s experiences as those of defeat and suicide, in actuality, their experiences were of persistence and stubborn survival. A quick, somewhat factual description of the entire event serves as a historical basis to interpret the rest of the book.

Each of her chapters in this book is organized into groups of four or five chapters, each with a common theme. The first grouping, The Poison in the Well: China on the Eve of the Boxer Rebellion, immerses the reader in the early 20th century China before and right at the beginning of the rebellion. “Death and Destruction to the Foreigner!” 20 June-21 July 1900 holds most of the meat of the book, with graphic, emotional, and dramatic descriptions of the isolated, besieged, and extremely nervous Europeans and the conditions they lived in along with the atrocities committed by the Chinese. War and Watermelons: 21 July-14 August 1900 describes the paradoxical truce between the Westerners and the Imperial Court where at times court messengers would deliver fruits and other gifts while other times court troops would fire on the foreigners. Murder, Rape, and Exile: Scenes from the Boxer Summer explains how the foreigners became like the Chinese in the degree of dishonor apparent through their behavior during their conquests. Finally, Another Country? China in the Wake of the Boxer Rebellion completes the story by describing how the foreigners, Chinese, and their respective governments returned to their normal lives and reflects on how the conflict changed each side.

One of the best attributes of this book is how Preston sets the facts of the conflict straight. While she mentions that the Times newspaper applauded how “a small segment of the civilized world, cut off and surrounded by an Asiatic horde, has exhibited those high moral qualities the lack of which renders mere numbers powerless”, she points out the uncivilized looting and killing the foreigners participated in after their victory over the Chinese. Overall, Diana Preston has found just the right balance of emotions and facts from both sides of the conflict to create an intriguing and accurate view of the events of the Boxer Rebellion.

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