The suppression of the Boxer movement in North China by the armies of six European states, the U.S. and Japan was a singular event in many ways: It developed from a series of local conflicts into an international crisis; it saw the only instance of multi-national military co-operation in the era of high imperialism; it reverberated through the global media system, both confirming and undermining notions of global hierarchies; it created forms of memory that have influenced the relationship between China and the world into the 21st century. Recent studies have pointed to the global ramifications of this particular event or have used it as an example to reflect on the different modes that constitute history. The proposed conference builds on these approaches, however, it focuses on a dimension that has hitherto been neglected: the crucial role of media in constructing the Boxer War as a transnational historical event. It thus situates itself at the intersection of different historical sub-disciplines: the evolving field of media history the already established genre of transnational history as well as theories of writing history. In so doing, it not only provides a fresh perspective on China’s relations with the outside world and her role as the Other on which the self-image of the “West” was based. At a more general level, it also contributes to our understanding of what constitutes an historical event.

For quite some time, there has been a growing scholarly awareness that events are not just “there”. In fact it is only through their representation(s) in media that actions acquire meaning and hence become events. This is as true of contemporaries as it is of historians. In trying to understand past events, the latter are confronted with a janus-faced phenomenon: On the one hand, there is no knowledge of what lies behind us except what is transmitted through media. Hence, as media historians have recently pointed out, media become something which cannot be gone beyond. Therefore it is important for historians to shift their attention from the content of historical “sources” to the media of history and their materiality, as it is the materiality which makes the content possible in the first place. On the other hand, it is obvious that media themselves are products of historical circumstances and that the practices associated with them change in the course of history. Hence it is necessary to understand media in their respective contexts, which can only be reconstructed by tapping into other media. The media discussed in this conference broadly fall into three categories: textual, visual and performative. The individual contributions will provide exemplary case studies, with the media under scrutiny ranging from the classical print and news media (newspapers, magazines, but also treaties and archival documents) to visual genres (cartoon, photography, film) to drama, parliamentary debates or toys for children. Papers will place a specific emphasis on the interplay between different genres.