Global rumours: The press, telegraphy and the Boxer War in China, Summer 1900

In the summer of 1900, the European and North American press began spreading the story that all Western foreigners in Beijing had been massacred during the Boxer War. Bringing together the histories of rumour, media and imperialism as well as global history, this article traces the complexities of how this press rumour emerged as a result of the interplay between news production, media technology and imperialist discourse. It shows how rumours emerge in response to the lack of reliable information, despite attempts by newsmakers to cling to established standards of objectivity. As the backbone of the transnational media network, telegraphy globalised rumours that would otherwise have remained local. However, the incompleteness of telegraphic information as well as the spatial layout of the newspaper page allowed editors to print different, and often downright contradictory, versions of the same story. This endowed press rumours with an unusual complexity. Finally, the rumour of an all-out killing of Westerners in the Chinese capital owed much to imperialist ‘horizons of expectation,’ which shifted the discussion to how the besieged Westerners had died. Even after the real facts became gradually known, it took some time until the global rumour mill finally ground to a halt.