The Boxer Rebellion as Described by Participants in Letters, Diaries and Photographs
Greenhill Books, 2000, £ 18.99, ISBN 1-85367-410-9, 256 pages

The title describes the book exactly--a group of first-person accounts of the Boxer Rebellion in 1900 and the Allied efforts to hold onto Peking and break the Boxer siege. Accounts from a variety of military and civilian leaders--US, British, Japanese, and German (primarily US) provide a representative view of the Allied observations and actions. It would have been better to include the Chinese point of view, but sadly it does not.

A Chronology outlines the major events and actions, and each major section includes a short introduction. A half-dozen maps (one per section) are helpful, and the 31 photos bolster the prose with visual support.

The more interested you are in the Boxer Rebellion, the more this book will appeal to you. Books of this genre--first-hand source aggregation--depend on at least cursory knowledge of the subject. Newcomers to the period will be better served by a general narrative. However, the more you know, the more you will appreciate the efforts of the participants.

As an aside, I'm also becoming more and more impressed with Greenhill books. We sometimes take for granted the "packaging" of a book--maps, photos, copy-editing, and the like. It's not that I'm singling out China 1900 over other Greenhill Books, but it's struck me that they produce an excellent, and I daresay oftentimes clever, product.

In any case, source material of minor battles is oftentimes hard to come by, and Boxer history buffs should rejoice over China 1900.

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