The early part of 1900 saw an outbreak of religious and anti-foreign
fanaticism in China which rapidly assumed alarming proportions. A sect
or society known as the Boxers, founded in 1899 originally as a
patriotic and ultra-conservative body, rapidly developed into a
reactionary and anti-foreign, and especially anti-Christian
organisation. Outrages were committed all over the country, and the
perpetrators shielded by the authorities, who, while professing peace,
encouraged the movement. Thousands of native Christians were massacred,
and the protests of the ministers of Christian powers disregarded or
answered by lies and denials, and at length Pekin itself became no
longer safe to Europeans.