About This Page
This page is part of the Hoax Archive, a collection of history's most interesting and notorious deceptions categorized by theme and time period.
Hoax Museum Archives
|
The Great Wall of China Hoax
Date: June 25, 1899
Categories: Media Hoaxes, Hoaxes by Journalists, Newspapers and Magazines, 1850-1899
Categories: Media Hoaxes, Hoaxes by Journalists, Newspapers and Magazines, 1850-1899
Response
Within days, the news of the imminent destruction of the Great Wall of China had appeared in papers throughout America. Papers that reported it included the Chicago Daily Tribune, Portsmouth Herald, Fort Wayne Sentinel, Lima Daily News, Newark Daily Advocate, Washington Post, and the New York Times. Of these papers, only the New York Times questioned the story's veracity.
The New York Times wrote:
If there is anything which modern China can safely be assumed to regard with respect and devotion it is that famous wall, so ancient, so useless, so queer, and so inconvenient. Like most other things in China, its material is such as to preclude the idea of employing it in making things of present necessity, and that is another reason why the reported scheme is incredible and incomprehensible. And if the Chinamen had decided to destroy the noblest embodiment of Chinese instinct and policy, why shouldn't they do it themselves? Though they may lack the energy requisite for building so large and remarkable a structure, still they would have no difficulty in tearing it down.
As the story continued to spread, many newspapers elaborated on it, inventing new details. For instance, the Fort Wayne Sentinel claimed that the bricks from the wall were to be used to build dikes to contain the Yangtse River. The Newark Daily Advocate wrote that the proposition to demolish the wall came from the dowager empress of China herself.
The Boxer Rebellion Rumor
Wilber's 1939 article appears to be the first time that a connection was made -- at least, in print -- between the 1899 hoax and the Boxer Rebellion in China. Here is Wilber's version of events:
Several years passed. Bishop Henry W. Warren of the Methodist Episcopal church returned to the States from China. He was delivering a lecture on conditions in the Orient at the Trinity M.E. Church in Denver. Wilshire was assigned to report on the lecture.
"You may not realize, friends," said the learned Bishop, during his introductory remarks, "the power of the printed word. Bad news and false news pick up added fuel and eventually blaze devastatingly..."
Nothing yet of interest here. Then --
"As an example of the havoc that can be wrought, take the 'Boxer Rebellion.' The spark that set off the tinder in that terrible war was struck in a town in Western Kansas or Nebraska (it was Colorado) by three (four, you will remember) reporters who concocted and printed a wild yarn, for what reason I have never been able to find out, that the huge sacred Chinese Wall was to be razed by American engineers, and the country thrown wide open to hated foreigners."
In a rear pew, Wilshire almost fell from his seat as he listened:
"This pure canard reached China and the newspapers there published it with shouting headlines and editorial comment. Denials did no good. The Boxers, already incensed, believed the yarn and there was no stopping them. It was the last straw and hell broke loose to the horror of the world. All this from a sensational but untrue story."
"You may not realize, friends," said the learned Bishop, during his introductory remarks, "the power of the printed word. Bad news and false news pick up added fuel and eventually blaze devastatingly..."
Nothing yet of interest here. Then --
"As an example of the havoc that can be wrought, take the 'Boxer Rebellion.' The spark that set off the tinder in that terrible war was struck in a town in Western Kansas or Nebraska (it was Colorado) by three (four, you will remember) reporters who concocted and printed a wild yarn, for what reason I have never been able to find out, that the huge sacred Chinese Wall was to be razed by American engineers, and the country thrown wide open to hated foreigners."
In a rear pew, Wilshire almost fell from his seat as he listened:
"This pure canard reached China and the newspapers there published it with shouting headlines and editorial comment. Denials did no good. The Boxers, already incensed, believed the yarn and there was no stopping them. It was the last straw and hell broke loose to the horror of the world. All this from a sensational but untrue story."
In 1956 Wilber's article was reprinted in Great Hoaxes of All Time, edited by Robert McBride and Neil Pritchie. The tale of how an American newspaper hoax caused the Boxer Rebellion in China was subsequently retold by many authors (and preachers), all of them apparently relying on Wilber's article for their facts.
However, there are a number of problems with Wilber's facts. First of all, it is doubtful that the Boxers were ever aware of the Denver newspaper hoax. Not a single history of the Boxer Rebellion has ever suggested that the hoax may have played a role in events.
Second, Wilber describes Bishop Henry Warren as being the source of information about the role the hoax played in the Boxer uprising. Warren was a well-known methodist Bishop, but according to contemporary newspaper accounts, he spent most of 1899 in South America hospitalized for appendicitis. There is no indication he was in China during the Boxer Rebellion.
It is possible that Wilber himself invented the connection between the Denver hoax and the Boxer Rebellion. If so, he was guilty of the old journalistic strategy of taking a good story and "improving" it.
But it is also possible that Wilber merely reported a rumor that had been circulating by word of mouth. If this is the case, there is a possible explanation for the origin of the rumor. At the start of the twentieth century, American newspapers often spoke of the need to tear down the Chinese wall of tariffs and protectionism in order to allow American companies access to the Chinese market.
Someone, perhaps a missionary, may have heard that the Boxers were angry about foreign demands to tear down the Chinese wall of protectionism, but misunderstood it to mean that the Boxers were angry over demands to tear down the Wall of China. Thus, the rumor may have been born.
Links and References
- "Bishop Warren Ill: Recovering from an operation for appendicitis at Buenos Ayres." (March 9, 1899). Fresno Morning Republican.
- "Topics of the Times." (June 28, 1899). New York Times.
- Warner, Charles. (July 8, 1899). "Great wall of China is doomed." Fort Wayne Evening Sentinel.
- "Demolished by dynamite: How China's Great Wall will be used to build modern cities." (Sep. 25, 1899). Newark Daily Advocate.
- "To Tear Down Chinese Wall." (Jun 27, 1899). The Washington Post.
- "Plan to raze Chinese wall." (Jun 26, 1899). Chicago Daily Tribune.
- Wilber, Harry Lee. (Spring 1939). "A Fake That Rocked the World." The North American Review. 247(1): 21-26.
- Wilber, Harry Lee. (1956). "A Fake That Rocked the World," in Great Hoaxes of All Time, Robert Medill McBride and Neil Pritchie (eds.), Robert C. McBride Co. New York: 17-24
- Harvey, Paul. (1980). More of Paul Harvey's The Rest of the Story. William Morrow & Co., New York: 136-138.