The Foreign Service Journal, September 2007

56 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / S E P T E M B E R 2 0 0 7 ehran’s two-week detention of 15 British sailors this spring inevitably calls to mind the much longer hostage crisis involving 52 U.S. diplomats (including the author), who were held by Iranian students from November 1979 until January 1981. But a similar crisis that erupted during the summer of 1900, the siege by Chinese dissidents of the foreign diplomatic missions in Beijing — then known and here referred to as Peking — remains obscure. In terms of causes, reactions, behaviors and conse- quences, however, the Iranian students’ takeover of Em- bassy Tehran in 1979 and the Chinese dissidents’ attack on Western embassies in Peking in 1900 were remarkably sim- ilar. One sheds light on the other. Most importantly, both were tipping points, both in the acceleration of change and in the two countries’ relations with the West, including the United States. The Storm Gathers In December 1899, the U.S. legation in Peking received a telegram from American missionaries in Shantung province, on the Northeast China coast. It warned: “Unless the legations combine pressure, Americans consider the situation almost hopeless.” The next month, British missionaries sent a similar warning to their legation about a secret society, “The Fists of Righteous Harmony,” now known as the Boxers. These were peasants dedicated to ridding China of “foreign devils.” They supported the fading imperial dynasty, headed by the regent, referred to as the Dowager Empress. In return, she issued an imperial edict on Jan. 11, 1900, praising the Boxers as “peaceful and law-abiding people who … combine for the mutual protection of the rural population.” In March 1900, as the situation in the region deteriorated, the diplomatic chiefs of mission in the capital met to consider calling for naval reinforcements, but stopped short of doing so. The next month, the Dowager Empress issued another edict, obviously intended to reassure the foreigners. It denounced the Boxers by name and concluded, “Let all tremblingly obey!” The diplomatic corps thought this satisfactory, at least until May 17, when three villages were destroyed and 61 Christian converts T HE B OXER S IEGE : A P RECEDENT FOR THE I RANIAN H OSTAGE C RISIS T HESE TWO MAJOR BREACHES OF DIPLOMATIC FACILITIES WERE SEPARATED BY EIGHT DECADES AND THOUSANDS OF MILES . B UT THEY HAVE MUCH IN COMMON . T B Y M OORHEAD K ENNEDY Moorhead Kennedy, J.D., LL.D., DPS, entered the Foreign Service in 1960. Overseas, he served in Yemen, Greece, Lebanon, Chile and Iran. While in Washington, he founded and was the first director of the Office of Investment Affairs (1971-1974), the first time that the State Department addressed institutionally the international role of major cor- porations. In Tehran, his final overseas post, he was held hostage from 1979 to 1981, after which he received the department’s Medal for Valor. Following his release and retirement from the Foreign Service, Dr. Kennedy applied lessons learned throughout his career, and especially in captivity, to cross-cultural problems abroad and in the United States. A frequent lecturer and TV commentator on the American response to terrorism, he has published three books: The Moral Authority of Government (with R. Gordon Hoxie, Brenda Repland, ed.; Transaction Publishers, 1999); Think About Terrorism: The New War- fare (with Terrell E. Arnold; Walker and Company, 1988); and The Ayatollah in the Cathedral: Reflections of a Hostage (Hill and Wang, 1986), in addition to many articles in vari- ous periodicals and collections.