China in 1903
Early in the 20th century, China was an empire in crisis. At that time, the fading Qing Dynasty was humbled by the great powers; the wisdom of Confucius and the skill of artisans seemed powerless in the face of Western science and industrialism. Britain, Russia, Japan, Germany, France, and the United States had been extracting "spheres of influence," territory, and war indemnities. Only their mutual suspicion kept them from carving China up "like a melon."
The most sensational recent event had been the Boxer uprising. In 1900, a folk sect known for martial arts rituals, the Boxers, vented its hostility toward foreigners and Christians. Boxers instigated sometimes deadly attacks on Chinese Christians and Western missionaries in several northern provinces. The dramatic climax was the Boxer siege of the foreign legations in Beijing. This brought down upon China international retaliation and a huge indemnity.
Ironically, many signs of national revival soon followed. The Dynasty introduced major reforms, even as revolutionary groups expanded. Increasingly, young people travelled abroad to see and learn. Many observers, even American missionary Arthur H. Smith, whose views of Chinese ways had been disapproving, detected a new day dawning.
These improvements affected mainly coastal cities; villagers and townspeople in the interior provinces remained mired in poverty In 1903, an American scientific expedition, financed by the Carnegie Institution, received permission to trek across the interior provinces of north China to search for marine fossils. The expeditions young topographer, R. Harvey Sargent, brought along a camera and used it to capture these images of a fading age. His photographs fix before us the faces of those durable people whose ancestors had seen greatness and whose descendants would be citizens of a strong, modern China fifty short years later.