That this was vaguely understood by the masses is now quite certain.  The Boxer movement of 1900, like the great proletarian risings which occurred in Italy in the pre-Christian era as a result of the impoverishment and moral disorder brought about by Roman misgovernment, was simply a socio-economic catastrophe exhibiting itself in an unexpected form.  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.  By more than doubling the burden of foreign commitments, and by placing the operation of the indemnities directly in the hands of foreign bankers by the method of monthly quotas, payable in Shanghai, the Peking government as far back as fifteen years ago was reduced to being A government at thirty days’ sight, at the mercy of any shock of events which could be protracted over A few monthly settlements.  There is no denying this signal fact, which is probably the most remarkable illustration of the restrictive power of money which has ever been afforded in the history of Asia.

The phenomenon, however, was complex and we must be careful to understand its workings.  A mercantile curiosity, to find the parallel for which we must go back to the Middle Ages in Europe, when “free cities” such as those of the Hanseatic League plentifully dotted river and coast line, served to increase the general difficulties of a situation which no one formula could adequately cover.  Extraterritoriality, by creating the “treaty port” in China, had been the most powerful weapon in undermining native economics; yet at the same time it had been the agent for creating powerful new counter-balancing interests.  Though the increasingly large groups of foreigners, residing under their own laws, and building up, under their own specially protected system of international exchange, a new and imposing edifice, had made the hovel-like nature of Chinese economics glaringly evident, the mercantile classes of the New China, being always quick to avail themselves of money-making devices, had not only taken shelter under this new and imposing edifice, but were rapidly extending it of their own accord.  In brief, the trading Chinese were identifying themselves and their major interests with the treaty-ports; they were transferring thither their specie and their credits; making huge investments in land and properties, under the aegis of foreign flags in which they absolutely trusted.  The money-interests of the country knew instinctively that the native system was doomed and that with this doom there would come many changes; these interests, in the way common to money all the world over, were insuring themselves against the inevitable.