Defying the Court: A Spatial Analysis of the Central–Local Government Relationship During the Boxer Uprising (1900–1901)

Abstract

The central–local government relationship has always been an important topic for political research of the Late Qing period. Former researchers focused mainly on political systems, finding historical archives to explain how the Qing Court decentralized or centralized its power. These approaches fail to consider how local officials in fact reacted to central command. This research is an attempt to apply the social science method to a classical historical study. I firstly examine the various political decisions of governors when they were faced with a series of big events during the Boxer Uprising (1900–1901). After arranging them using strict criteria, I will conduct spatial and structural analysis on their diversity, and furthermore explore the internal and external influencing factors. Statistics indicate that governors of coastal provinces and of the provinces along the Yangtze River were more likely to express their opinions to the Qing court, while the North and Northeastern provinces tended to obey the central orders. Regional differences mainly have a positive correlation with provincial structural factors, such as revenue and relations with foreign powers. The correlations are also determined by personal political experience and resources of governors.