Sea battalion to suppress the Boxer Rebellion

Officers and crews of the 1st sea battalion which is sent to China to suppress the Boxer Rebellion. Major general von H¨pfner is 3rd of left in the first row. The Chinese boxer secret society Yi-he tuan had committed robberies of institutions and foreigners in China, partly supported by the imperial Chinese government. Climax of the Boxer Rebellion was the assassination of the German ambassador Klemens Freiherr von Ketteler on the 19th of June in 1900 as well as the besiegement of the embassy quarter in Beijing from the 20th of June until the 14th of August in 1900 by an expedition corps consisting of eight states (Germany, France, Great Britain, Italy, Japan, Austria-Hungary, Russia and the USA). Numerous bloody punitive expeditions against the rebels (boxers = pugilists, a secret society against Christianity and the industrialisation of China by foreigners). China committed to pay reparations and had to allow stationing of foreign troops at strategically important points.