Global Rumours: The Press, Telegraphy and the Boxer War in China, Summer 1900

Abstract

Listen

Translate article

Abstract In the summer of 1900, at the height of the Boxer War, the European and North American press began to spread the story that all the Western foreigners in Beijing had been massacred. Bringing together the histories of rumour, media and imperialism, as well as global history, this article traces the trajectory of how this press rumour emerged as a result of the interplay between news production, media technology and imperialist discourse. It shows how rumours emerge in response to a lack of reliable information, despite attempts by newsmakers to cling to established standards of objectivity. As the backbone of the transnational media network, telegraphy globalized rumours that would otherwise have remained local. However, the incompleteness of telegraphic information, as well as the spatial layout of the newspaper page, allowed editors to print different, and often downright contradictory, versions of the same story. This endowed press rumours with an unusual complexity. Finally, the rumour of the wholesale killing of Westerners in the Chinese capital owed much to imperialist ‘horizons of expectation’, which shifted the discussion to how the besieged Westerners had died. Even after the truth gradually filtered through, it was some time before the global rumour mill finally ground to a halt.