After the Boxer uprising, China faced indemnity obligations imposed by foreign powers under the 1901 settlement. An indemnity imposed by foreign powers is about more than the payment schedule.
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The payments involved political coercion, international finance and long-term fiscal consequences. Finance can express political domination as efficiently as any treaty language.
The later history of payments and remissions deserves precise treatment. Changes in payment and later remissions or reallocations require attention to individual countries and dates.
Describing the indemnity only as a number misses the asymmetry of bargaining power behind it. A single large number cannot convey who possessed the bargaining power.
How should historians connect treaty obligations to education, reform and state capacity in the following decades?