The Construction and Changes of Railway Cognition in Manchuria During the Boxer Movement Period

Abstract

During the Boxer Movement, the railroads were seen as a major object of contention and a place of conflict by both Chinese and Russian Empire parties, but there were significant differences in the perception of the railroads. Foreign countries, especially Russian Empire, viewed the railroads as an important means of transportation with modern technology and expected them to be successfully built and opened to traffic, and the Russian Empire army viewed them as an important force. On the Chinese side, the laborers saw the railroads only as an opportunity to support their families and lacked an understanding of their modern technological value. Qing officials and the Boxers were adamant that the railroads be dismantled, seeing them as detrimental to their own army and rejecting and destroying them as foreign symbols. The Manchuria region's awareness of railroads and modern technology at the time was significantly lower than that of other regions in China that were actively developing modern technology and industry at the same time.