Mutual Defense Pact of the Southeastern Provinces

The Mutual Defense Pact of the Southeastern Provinces (simplified Chinese: 东南互保; traditional Chinese: 東南互保; pinyin: Dōngnán Hùbǎo) was an agreement reached in the summer of 1900 during the Boxer Rebellion by Qing dynasty governors of the provinces in southern, eastern and central China when the Eight-Nation Alliance invaded northern China. The governors, including Li Hongzhang (governor-general of Guangdong, Guangxi), Xu Yingkui (governor-general of Fujian, Zhejiang), Liu Kunyi (governor-general of Jiangsu, Anhui, Jiangxi), Zhang Zhidong (governor-general of Hubei, Hunan) and Yuan Shikai (provincial governor of Shandong), refused to carry out the imperial decree promulgated by the Qing imperial court to declare war on 11 foreign states, with the aim of preserving peace in their own provinces.^[1]

Some other Han-majority provincial authorities, such as the governor-general of Sichuan and the provincial governor of Shaanxi, did not formally join the mutual protection agreement but similarly disobeyed the imperial edict. Thus, for the first time, the vast majority of Han regional authorities refused to aid the Qing court. For much of the conflict, the main forces fighting for the Qing court (alongside the Boxers) were the Manchu Hushenying, the Manchu Peking Field Force and three of five divisions of the Qing court's most modernized Wuwei Corps (including its Manchu division and Muslim Gansu division), but Yuan Shikai commanded the other two divisions into Shandong and actively used them to suppress the Boxers, in open defiance of the Qing court. In Manchuria, large groups of Han bandits named Honghuzi ("Red Beards") also actively fought alongside Manchu banners, mostly as a response to the separate Russian invasion that had widespread atrocities against Manchus and Daurs like the Blagoveshchensk massacre and Sixty-Four Villages East of the River massacre.