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Updated: June 26, 2025
When the Premier, General Tuan Chi-jui, had made his statement to Parliament on the 10th March, regarding the necessity of an immediate rupture with Germany, he had implied that China had already received assurances from the Allies that there would be a postponement of the Boxer Indemnities for a term of years, an immediate increase in the Customs Tariff, and a modification of the Peace Protocol of 1901 regarding the presence of Chinese troops near Tientsin.
Further, such money indemnities are to be taken as it may prove possible to exact from an already ruined foe; trade and commerce with the enemy is to be discouraged or prohibited; and, above all, a bitter and unforgiving hatred is to reign for ever between the victor and the vanquished.
Bethmann-Hollweg fell for failing to control the Reichstag, but his successor Michaelis was a mere Prussian bureaucrat who only accepted the Reichstag resolution "as he understood it," and the fate of Russia soon made it clear that his understanding of "no annexations and no indemnities" did not preclude the "liberation" of large parts of Russia and their subjection to German influence, nor the insistence upon "guarantees" which would reduce Belgium and Serbia to a similar plight.
And although matters equally important, such as the funding of all Chinese indemnities and loans into one Consolidated Debt, as well as the withdrawal of the right of foreign banks to make banknote issues in China, were not touched upon, the same principles would undoubtedly have been applied in these instances, as being conductive to the re-establishment of Chinese autonomy, had Chinese negotiators been clever enough to urge them as being of equal importance to the older issues.
The other commission, appointed to ascertain the indemnities due for slaves carried away from the United States after the close of the late war, have met with some difficulty, which has delayed their progress in the inquiry.
What with the equipment and excursions of the National Guards federations, patriotic festivals and parades, the writing, printing and publication of innumerable documents, reimbursements for suppressed offices, the installation of new administrations, aid to the indigent and to its charity workshops, purchases of grain, indemnities to millers and bakers, it was under the necessity of providing for the cost of the universal demolition and reconstruction.
The dying Manchu dynasty, at last in open despair, turned the revolt, insanely enough, against the foreigner that is against those who already held the really vital portion of their sovereignty. So far from saving itself by this act, the dynasty wrote another sentence in its death-warrant. Economically the Manchus had been for years almost lost; the Boxer indemnities were the last straw.
It may be summarized as follows: the Japanese delegation decided to give its entire support to the Allies in all matters concerning the future relations of Germany and Russia, western Europe, the Balkans, the African colonies, as well as financial indemnities and reparations. The fate of the Samoan Archipelago must be determined in accord with Britain and the United States.
Even the attendants of the former, and the clerks of the latter, demanded, or rather extorted, douceurs from the exhausted and almost ruined German petitioners; who in the end were rewarded for all their meanness and for all their expenses with promises at best; as the new plan of supplementary indemnities was, on the very day proposed for its final arrangement, postponed by the desire of the Emperor of the French, until further orders.
With the consent of, and at the request of, the Indian Government, Sultan Feysul has imposed additional heavy duty on all the produce coming in from the rebel tribes, that he may have a fund from which to pay indemnities to foreigners who suffered loss during the invasion. A good many Banyan merchants, British subjects, suffered losses, and their claim alone amounted to 120,000 rupees.
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