Barbarians Remix: The Year of the Boxers with historian Jeffrey Wasserstrom

Barbarians at the Gate · Jul 29, 2025 · 22m

Jeremiah and David are joined by Jeffrey Wasserstrom, historian of modern China and a longtime interpreter of the country’s shifting place in the world. Originally recorded in 2020, this conversation revisits the Boxer War of 1900—not through the usual lens of siege and rescue, but by examining what followed: the punitive occupation, the fractured international memory, and the long shadow cast by a global media frenzy. Wasserstrom’s reading reframes the Boxers not as an isolated burst of anti-foreign violence, but as part of a cycle of uprisings and reprisals that shaped modern China’s…