Photographs – China – Boxer Rebellion Important and rare group of approx eight Chinese execution photographs c1900s. Chinese freedom fighters (Boxers) being beheaded by Allied forces. Boxer Rebellion officially supported peasant uprising of 1900 that attempted to drive all foreigners from China. “Boxers” was a name that foreigners gave to a Chinese secret society known as the Yihequan (“Righteous and Harmonious Fists”) they first began as a secret society who turned into a rebel force responding to the hordes of western Christian missionaries invading villages and attempting to convert their Chinese countrymen they embraced the slogan “Support the Qing destroy the foreigners” and tracked down Chinese Christian converts and the foreign missionaries. Their retaliation towards the missionaries was taken as aggression towards Western European nations who banded together to form the Eight-Nation Alliance made up of the UK Japan Russia France the US Germany Austria-Hungary and Italy. On the execution methods Journalist George Lynch wrote “There are things that I must not write and that may not be printed in England which would seem to show that this Western civilization of ours is merely a veneer over savagery.”