Boxer Rebellion
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50 free Boxer Rebellion trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
The Boxer Rebellion pulled more of the world's great powers into a single fight than almost any event before 1914. A secret society of villagers in northern China rose against foreign influence, the imperial court threw in its lot with them, and an international army marched on Beijing to rescue its besieged diplomats. This quiz covers the countries involved and what each one contributed, the beliefs and rituals of the rebels, the weeks under siege in the diplomatic quarter, and the punishing peace settlement that followed. Along the way are the fun facts people remember: a future president behind the barricades, a cannon with an odd nickname, and a famous musical's unlikely link to the fighting. It suits students revising late imperial China, quiz hosts looking for a history round, and anyone curious about how one summer in 1900 shaped the century that followed.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Georg von Trapp, a naval officer decorated in the Boxer Rebellion, later inspired which Broadway show?
The Sound of Music
The Sound of Music tells the story of the family he went on to raise. In 1900 he was a young officer on an Austro-Hungarian cruiser and joined the assault on the coastal forts guarding the road to Beijing.
Q 02Which future US president, then a young mining engineer, was trapped in a besieged Chinese port city in 1900?
Herbert Hoover
Herbert Hoover and his wife Lou were caught in the foreign settlement for weeks. He helped build barricades while she nursed the wounded and carried a pistol.
Q 03What supernatural protection did Boxer fighters believe their rituals of spirit possession gave them in battle?
Immunity to bullets
Immunity to bullets was the Boxers' great promise. Leaders staged proof for new recruits by firing guns loaded with blanks at one another.
Q 04Kaiser Wilhelm II urged German troops sailing for China in 1900 to fight like which ancient warriors?
The Huns
The Huns under Attila were the model Wilhelm named, telling his men to take no prisoners. British propaganda later turned the word into a wartime insult for Germans.
Q 05Which American author called the Boxer a patriot and attacked clergy who seized reprisals from Chinese villages?
Mark Twain
Mark Twain wished the Boxers success, and in a scathing 1901 essay he went after a respected American churchman who had led soldiers through villages collecting fines.
Q 06Why did Westerners in China nickname the anti-foreign rebels of 1899–1900 the 'Boxers'?
Their martial arts drills
Their martial arts drills, known in English at the time as Chinese boxing, earned the label. It was probably coined by Americans living in North China.
Q 07Which ruler of China, dominant at court since the 1860s, backed the Boxers and defied the foreign powers in 1900?
Empress Dowager Cixi
Empress Dowager Cixi had crushed a reform drive two years earlier. When foreign armies took Beijing she fled the capital, then came back and held power until her death in 1908.
Q 08The siege of the foreign legations in Beijing in 1900 lasted how long before an allied army broke through?
55 days
55 days passed, from 20 June to 14 August, while nearly 900 foreigners and roughly 3,000 Chinese converts held out behind barricades.
Q 09The Boxer Protocol fined China 450 million taels, a traditional unit of weight, of which metal?
Silver
Silver was China's working currency, and the bill, payable over 39 years, came to more than the government's entire annual tax revenue.
Q 10Which country, though its legation in Beijing was besieged in 1900, stayed outside the Eight-Nation Alliance?
Spain
Spain sent no army, yet the Boxer Protocol of 1901 was signed in its Beijing legation, where its minister served as doyen of the diplomatic corps.
Q 11Which Beijing university grew from a school funded by America's refunded share of the Boxer indemnity?
Tsinghua
Tsinghua began in 1911 as a preparatory school for students headed to American colleges, paid for with money Washington handed back.
Q 12American troops were rushed to China in 1900 from which territory the United States had only just annexed?
Philippines
The Philippines held thousands of US soldiers fighting a local independence war, so the first regiments could sail for China in June.
Q 13Which actor played the US Marine major in the 1963 Hollywood epic about the siege of Beijing's legations?
Charlton Heston
Charlton Heston starred opposite Ava Gardner and David Niven. Director Nicholas Ray suffered a heart attack during the shoot, and two other directors finished the film uncredited.
Q 21How did the first allied relief column set out for Beijing in June 1900 before Boxers forced it to turn back?
By train
By train: about 2,000 sailors and marines filled five commandeered trains, but Boxers tore up the track ahead and behind, and the column had to fight its way back.
Q 22To which ancient inland capital, home of the Terracotta Army, did the imperial court flee from Beijing in 1900?
Xi'an
Xi'an lay beyond mountain passes that the foreign armies had no orders to cross, so the court could bargain over peace from a safe distance.
Q 23Why did the besieged legations' makeshift cannon of 1900 earn the nickname 'the International Gun'?
Parts from several nations
Q 14The Boxers' best-known slogan vowed to destroy the foreigners and to support which ruling house?
The Qing dynasty
The Qing dynasty was never the Boxers' target, which is why historians call the word rebellion a misnomer. The court ended up fighting alongside them.
Q 15Which natural disaster in North China, blamed by villagers on foreigners and their churches, swelled Boxer ranks?
A severe drought
A severe drought followed the Yellow River floods of 1898, leaving young farmhands idle, hungry and ready to blame outsiders.
Q 16Which US president sent about 5,000 troops to China in 1900 without asking Congress to declare war?
William McKinley
William McKinley acted on his own authority against a recognised government, a step the historian Walter LaFeber called the origin of modern presidential war powers.
Q 17In which diplomatic compound, the largest in Beijing's foreign quarter, did most civilians shelter in the 1900 siege?
The British legation
The British legation was the biggest and most defensible compound, and a crew of clergymen nicknamed the fighting parsons took charge of fortifying it.
Q 18In which Chinese province, the birthplace of Confucius, did the Boxer movement first take root in the late 1890s?
Shandong
Shandong had watched Germany seize a naval base on its coast in 1897, and resentment of foreign churches and railways there fed the first Boxer bands.
Q 19Russia used the Boxer crisis as a pretext to flood which Chinese region with troops to guard its new railway?
Manchuria
Manchuria ended up fully occupied by the tsar's armies, and the tensions that followed led to war with a Pacific rival in 1904.
Q 20Whom did the Boxers brand the 'primary devils' to be driven out of China or killed?
Christian missionaries
Christian missionaries topped the list, with Chinese converts labelled the secondary devils. Villagers resented clergy who shielded their flocks in local lawsuits.
Parts from several nations went into it: a British barrel sat on an Italian carriage and fired Russian shells, served by an American crew.
Q 24Which diplomat's killing on a Beijing street in June 1900 persuaded the foreign legations to dig in?
The German minister
The German minister, Baron Clemens von Ketteler, set out in a sedan chair to protest at the foreign office and was shot dead by a Manchu army captain.
Q 25What name was given to the teenage girls' units, dressed entirely in one colour, that supported the male Boxers?
Red Lanterns
Red Lanterns were said to fly, walk on water and set enemy houses ablaze, powers the male Boxers never claimed for themselves.
Q 26Villagers in North China accused foreign-built churches of deliberately upsetting which traditional Chinese practice?
Feng shui
Feng shui, the art of siting buildings in harmony with the land, was thought to be flouted by churches raised where temples had stood.
Q 27Which distant colonial war tied down Britain's army in 1900, limiting the troops it could send to China?
The Boer War
The Boer War in South Africa was absorbing much of the British Army, so London relied heavily on its China Squadron of warships and on its allies.
Q 28France's first troops to reach China in 1900 were marines already stationed in which nearby French colony?
Indochina
Indochina was France's closest base, and the force it supplied included many Vietnamese and Cambodian conscripts with little experience.
Q 29Which Russian novelist praised the Boxers and blamed the tsar and the German Kaiser for atrocities in China?
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy, by then a celebrated pacifist, held Nicholas II and Wilhelm II chiefly responsible for the killing and pillage carried out by their soldiers.
Q 30Which port city, the gateway to Beijing, did allied troops storm in July 1900 at the cost of their heaviest losses?
Tianjin
Tianjin fell on 14 July, opening the road to the capital about 120 km away. Italy later came away with a concession of its own in the city.