In 1900, ‘civilisation’ went to war with China. More precisely, in August of that year, an eight-power expeditionary force entered Beijing with the express goals of relieving the diplomatic legations from besieging Boxer rebels and punishing a dynasty that had sided with Eastern ‘barbarism’ over Western ‘civilisation’. For several agonising weeks, foreign observers had been transfixed by stories of heroism and cruelty emanating from the imperial capital, as besieged diplomats and their families fought valiantly to fend off hordes of xenophobic religious fanatics intent on their destruction. That the vast majority of these stories later proved apocryphal was irrelevant, for they resonated powerfully within a ripening global mythoscape opposing Eastern savagery and irrationality to Western enlightenment and civilisation. From the First Opium War onwards, Westerners had cast themselves as the standard-bearers of civilisation, who would shake the Confucian world from its torpor and unleash the creative energies of Asia's millions by introducing them to the beneficent influences of Christianity, free trade and constitutional government.