The ‘Real Boxers at Earls Court’

In 1901, at the height of empire, public shock at the vulnerability of British colonial interests was accompanied by public appetite for spectacular re-enactments of British battlefield victories. Robert Brown shows how one performance of the ‘Relief of the Legations’ at the Military Exhibition in Earl’s Court, London, was reshaped by protests of Chinese performers who insisted on authentic representations of their rituals of resistance, destabilising and enriching the experience of metropolitan audiences...