PEKING PLOTS: FICTIONALIZING THE BOXER REBELLION OF 1900 By Ross G. Forman “A handful of foreigners have shown China what they can do against murderous thousands, and it only remains for the Pow- ers to stamp the lesson deeper, and exact punishment for the guilty and full compensation for losses sustained.” — W. Murray Graydon, The Perils of Pekin (1904) “To ~nd something akin in its savage barbarity you must go back to Lucknow, where a mixed multitude shut up in the Residency were holding out against fearful odds in expecta- tion of relief by Havelock’s Highlanders, resolved to perish of starvation rather than surrender, for the fate of Cawnpore stared them in the face. “It adds point to this parallel to remember that the Tartar rulers of China are cousin german to the Great Moghul who headed the Sepoy Mutiny. “It was some excuse for the King of Delhi that he was seeking to regain his throne. No such apology can be offered for the Empress Dowager of China. She has made war not without provocation, but wholly unjusti~able, on all nations of the civilized world.” — W. A. P. Martin, The Siege in Peking (1900) THIS ESSAY REVIEWS THE LITERARY PRODUCTION — primarily adventure novels, and several of them bestsellers — centered around the events of the 1900 Boxer Rebellion, in which a Chinese “secret society,” with the collusion of certain Manchu authorities, carried out a systematic attempt to annihilate all Westerners and “native Christians” living in China. 1 The Boxers, so-called because their “superstitious” practices looked like magic boxing, swept across North China from the spring of 1900, eventually throwing much of the imperial capital of Peking (Beijing) into confusion. 2 Forced to hole up in the Legations and other barricaded areas, the Westerners of the region joined forces under largely British leadership and fought against incredible odds to protect themselves, holding out 19 Victorian Literature and Culture (1999), 19–48. Printed in the United States of America. Copyright © 1999 Cambridge University Press. 1060-1503/99 $9.50