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according to walter lafeber, what were the long term effects of the boxer rebellion?

According to historian Walter LaFeber, the long-term effects of the Boxer Rebellion were primarily political, ideological, and nationalist rather than just the immediate military defeat of the Boxers.

Core long-term effects

  • It helped spark a long Chinese revolution that unfolded over the next half century, culminating in the 1949 Communist victory.
  • Chinese people increasingly blamed foreign brutality and exploitation for their suffering, deepening anti-foreign and anti-imperialist sentiment.
  • The rebellion showed Chinese groups that they could organize militarily to resist outsiders, even if this particular uprising failed, which inspired later revolutionary movements.

LaFeber’s interpretation in context

In an interview often cited in teaching materials, LaFeber explains that in the short term, the United States and other imperial powers crushed the Boxers and massacred many participants, but this did not end Chinese resistance.

He stresses that “something very profound had happened”: for the first time, the Chinese had organized militarily on a national scale to push back foreign influence, and that memory helped fuel later revolutions.

Link to later revolutions

  • LaFeber connects foreign atrocities and the behavior of missionaries and foreign entrepreneurs after 1900 to the rise of anti-foreignism that fed the 1911 Revolution against the Qing dynasty.
  • He argues that the Boxer Rebellion is now seen as the beginning of a long revolutionary process that finally climaxed in 1949 with the establishment of a Communist government in China.

Simplified “Quick Scoop” answer

If you have to state it in one sentence for class:

According to Walter LaFeber, the Boxer Rebellion’s long-term effects were to ignite a long Chinese revolutionary movement, deepen anti-foreign nationalism, and show that organized resistance to foreign powers was possible, ultimately contributing to the revolutions that ended imperial rule and led to the 1949 Communist victory.

TL;DR: LaFeber sees the Boxer Rebellion less as an isolated failed uprising and more as the starting gun for a decades-long Chinese revolution driven by growing anti-foreign anger and nationalist mobilization.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.