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The signing of the Boxer Protocol in 1901
On January 1, 1913, the “six powers”—Britain, the United States, Germany, France, Russia and Japan—reached a preliminary agreement with China, to establish a loan of 25 million pounds. On December 31, 1912, China had defaulted on payments under the Boxer Indemnity Agreement, established in the aftermath of the Boxer Rebellion to compensate the major powers for losses sustained during the popular upheaval of 1900.
At the end of 1912, Russia and France, with the tacit support of the other major powers, vocally opposed the Chinese regime’s appeals for an extension of time to pay installments under the Boxer indemnity.
The Times [of London] articulated the concerns of the major powers that underlay the decision to grant a loan. The paper quoted a Peking correspondent who described the Chinese government as “dangerously invertebrate,” and noted that much of the south of the country was in a “lawless state.”
The terms of the loan, dubbed the “Reorganisation Loan,” were finalised in April 1913. They included direct foreign oversight of revenue collection in the Chinese salt industry. US President Woodrow Wilson withdrew from the loan agreement, as it was not viewed as sufficiently advantageous to American corporations.
The loan was part of the attempt by the major powers to maintain their grip over China, and prevent the development of further social upheavals in the aftermath of the Chinese Revolution of 1911.
In October 1911, a military revolt in Wuchang ignited a nationwide upheaval against the Manchu dynasty, which was viewed as the corrupt instrument of the great powers and a tiny imperial class. While the revolution toppled the dynasty within months, it was led by nationalist layers of the intelligentsia who mobilized disgruntled sections of the state bureaucracy and the military, but made no appeal to the peasantry or the urban masses. The incomplete character of the revolution was expressed in the ascension to power of Yuan Shikai, a warlord with close ties to the Manchus, in March 1912.
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