Monday 4 July 2011

The Boxer Rebellion - A Fascinating Photograph

I was reading about the Boxer Rebellion today as I'm considering expanding my figure collection that way and came across the following photograph on wikipedia (click to enlarge):
It shows soilders from the 9 nations of the 8 nation alliance (British India is in the photo but didn't seem to count as an extra country when naming the alliance) that fought against the boxers at the beginning of the 20th century.  From left to right you have soilders representing, the United Kingdom, The United States, Russia, British India, Germany, France, Austria-Hungary, Italy & Japan.  What I find interesting (apart from the varied selection of uniforms on show) is that they've been arranged in height order, with the British on the left and the Japanese on the right, almost as if they've been arranged in order of superiority.  Its left me wondering who took the picture (I'm guessing a Brit) and wether the sizes are truly representative of a normal soilder for each army or if its essenitally a 'fixed' propaganda piece.  Anyway I found it interesting I hope you did too.

3 comments:

  1. Hi Keith

    Thanks for posting - I think I have looked at this photo hundreds of times and had not noticed the hight thing! Good observation on the order of superiority too. I think the guy third from the left is a Brit...and good to see the USA equiping their lads in excellent warm weather gear...I think our troops were given a cup of tea and a note letter from the War Office to keep them warm...LoL!

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  2. Been trawling through lots of these pictures recently in the Australian online archives. Culminating in our big Peking 1900 game last weekend.

    http://sotcw.blogspot.com/search/label/boxer

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  3. I thought the third guy from the left was a russian and the guy on the very left was the Brit, but I could be wrong.

    That Peking game looks fantastic will, I'd love to do something like that, but although I can always paint minis I find making myself make scenary very difficult.

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