In his book, History in Three Keys: the Boxers as Event, Experience, and Myth, Paul Cohen utilizes the 1898-1900 Boxer Uprising in order to illustrate and discuss differing ways of comprehending the past. He thus closely examines one particular occurrance from modern Chinese history while at the same time discussing several methods of historiography.
     Cohen divides the varied means of conceiving of the past into the three categories of event, experience, and myth. An event, states Cohen, is a structuring of the past as narrated by a historian in an attempt to clarify and explain. Unlike the individual who experiences the occurrance directly, the historian is aware of both the final outcome and of the whole spatial and temporal range of experiences associated with the event before he communicates his understanding of it. In contrast to this view of the past as event, the past as experience "probes the thoughts, feelings, and behavior of the immediate participants". (p. xii) While it is being experienced, the outcome of a situation remains yet undetermined. Experiencers of the past are limited in their knowledge about the occurrances which they observe; they are also emotionally bound up in the situation as it unfolds. In Cohen's argument, the past as myth is again categorically different from the past as event or experience. When constructed as myth, the past is utilized in order to shape political or social conceptions of the present. Cohen states that the mythologizer, unlike the historian, does not seek to clarify and explain the past, but rather strives to reshape it into a paradigm to aid in the societal processing of contemporary issues. Says Cohen of the Cultural Revolution historians who mythologized the Boxer Uprising during the 1960's and '70's, "The point was not to write history that was free of politics; it was to write history that embodied the correct politics." (p. 282)
     After defining event, experience, and myth as three different means of perceiving the past, Cohen structures the rest of his book History in Three Keys according to this categorization. He devotes the first section of the book to an overview of the cultural roots and temporal progression of the Boxer Uprising, using the historian's voice to describe the uprising as an event. The next section of the book presents the Boxer Uprising through the memoirs, letters, and oral testimonies of those whose diverse experiences helped to shape it. In this section, Cohen discusses such experiential themes as drought, foreign incursion, spirit possession, magic, female pollution, rumor, and death. Thus in this section Cohen exemplifies the concept of the past as experience. The final section of Cohen's work recounts the Boxer Uprising as mythologized by Chinese historians of later years in order to serve various political and societal purposes. In this section, Cohen discusses the Boxers as they were portrayed during the New Culture Movement, the May Fourth Movement, and the Cultural Revolution.
     Within the context of the Boxer Uprising as a whole, Cohen traces smaller themes throughout their development as event, experience, and myth. One of these themes is the multifaceted role played by women in the Boxer movement. In the chapter titled "Magic and Female Pollution", Paul Cohen discusses the various roles played by women during the Boxer Uprising in experiential terms. Cohen first states that the conflict between Boxers and Christians was not regarded by the Boxers as a purely military confrontation. Instead, it was seen by them as a contest pitting their magic and the efficacy of their gods against those of the Christian missionaries. The Boxers claimed to possess magical skills which aided them in combat, such as healing powers, the ability to prevent the firing of guns, and the ability to control fire, as well as rituals which conferred invulnerbility. When it was demonstrated that, despite their vaunted magical prowess and their invulnerability rituals, individual Boxers could nevertheless be killed in battle, it became necessary to the movement to explain why this was so. Cohen states that the Boxers frequently blamed the failure of their magic on impurity and pollution in the external environment or lack of purity and morality in the individual affected. Environmental pollution prevented the Boxers' possession and invulnerability rituals from taking effect. Boxers often cited polluting factors present in the external environment, such as dirty water and the female pollution of nakedness or menstruation, as instrumental in causing their protective rituals to fail. To avoid having their ritual rendered thus inneffective, the Boxers induced the general population to take measures in order to prevent pollution. These measures included burning incense, lighting red lanterns, avoiding public disposal of dirty water, and sequestering women. Women in Tianjin, for example, were for a period of time ordered not to leave their homes.
     Although (married) adult women, who had been polluted by menstruation, intercourse, and childbirth, threatened the efficacy of the Boxers' magico-religious ritual, not all females were seen by the movement as being of negative influence. In fact, corps of female adolescents called the Red Lanterns played a role counterpart to that of the Boxers. The Red Lanterns were typically young enough that they had not experienced marriage, intercourse, or childbirth, and in the near famine conditions of the time many had not yet undergone menarche. This lack of female pollution ensured their purity, upon which their potent magical powers were based. The Red Lanterns were believed to have the ability to protect the Boxers in combat situations, to heal wounds, to restore life to the dead, to fly, and to control the wind.
     Cohen states that the majority of contemporary Chinese were prepared to accept the Boxers' claims to magical prowess, even when these claims might in individual cases be proven false in combat situations. When opponents of the Boxer movement wished to a cast aspersions on the Red Lanterns, for example, they called their morality into question by implying that they engaged in promiscuity or illicit sexual relations, rather than doubting the possibility of the magical powers which the Red Lanterns claimed. Thus Cohen argues that both Boxers and commoners viewed purity as engendering magical prowess; this applied not only to the Red Lanterns but also to the physical environment and the Boxers themselves. Although, given a polluted environment or insufficient moral purity Boxers' magic could fail, this occurrence of failure did not require the abandonment of the Boxers' entire belief system.
     In crafting the discussion of "Magic and Female Pollution", Cohen uses a selection of sources. Some are from the letters and diaries of missionaries in China at the turn of the century; more esoteric are the cited references about spirit possession and superstition in African and Islamic cultures (Gustav Jahoda, Superstition; Middleton, "Spirit Possession") and about Greek taboos regarding women (Delaney, "Mortal Flow", Beyene, From Menarche). The core body of Cohen's sources was written by educated Chinese contemporaries of the Boxers such as Liu Mengyang, Ai Sheng, and Guan He. Cohen thus uses a wide variety of references, including many first-hand Chinese accounts, in his treatment of the Boxers as experience. However, it must be remembered that these first-hand accounts are almost always by authors outside of the movement. Says Cohen, "It is impossible to explore the biographical consciousness of the Boxers because very few Boxers were literate and none appear to have left detailed contemporary accounts of their experience." (p. 291) If biographical materials about the Boxers is sparse, autobiographical information about the Red Lanterns is entirely absent. The reconstruction of the experience of female peasant rebels from the accounts of wealthy males of the scholarly elite raises fundamental questions about historiographical accuracy. Thus despite the wide range of sources utilized, Cohen did not have an ideal selection of references to work with when crafting his discussion of the experiences of women within the Boxer Uprising.
     The Red Lanterns are mentioned also in the first chapter in Cohen's book, which deals with history as event and is titled "The Boxer Uprising: a Narrative History". In this section Cohen states that the Red Lanterns were an organization of female Boxers, mostly teenaged girls and young unmarried women, who dressed in red and carried red handkershiefs and red lanterns. The Red Lanterns had little contact with male Boxers and were expected to provide magical assistance for the combatants rather than participate directly in battle. The discussion of female assistance and female hindrance to the Boxers' magic, as exemplified by the positive magical forces of the Red Lanterns and the potentially dangerous effect of older, civilian women, receives no treatment in the first chapter of Cohen's book. While discussing the Boxer Uprising as a historical event, Cohen states merely, "The Red Lanterns in fact contributed little to the history of the Boxers, when viewed (as in this chapter) as a series of interconnected events. Indeed, they can be ommitted from the Boxer story almost entirely, without significantly altering its overall thematic structure." (p.40)
     In the third section of his book History in Three Keys, Cohen deals with the past as myth. In the chapter titled "The Cultural Revolution and the Boxers" the author describes how the Red Lanterns are mythologized in several different ways in order to serve the needs of two distinct phases of the Cultural Revolution era.
     In 1967 a variety of articles discussing the Boxer Uprising were published in political journals by various Red Guard groups. These articles discussed ideas such as the analogy between the Boxers and the Red Guards and particularly accentuated the role of the Red Lanterns in the Boxer Uprising. The Red Lanterns were emphasized because the Red Guards identified with them and because they possessed a potent revolutionary symbolism. Says Cohen, "Like the Red Guards, the Red Lanterns were young, consisting mostly of teenagers, and they were rebellious, with a decided preference (as mythologized) for behaving outrageously toward civilized idols." (p.264) The red lantern became a powerful emblem of the revolutionary spirit in the hands of Jiang Qing, who wrote a political opera titled The Red Lantern (Hongdeng ji). Cohen describes "the symbolism of heroic young women, dressed in red, lighting the revolutionary path with their red lanterns" (p.267) and its resonance in terms of the ideals prized during the earliest stages of the Cultural Revolution.
     The Red Lanterns reemerged as symbolic historical figures of the late Cultural Revolution during the anti-Confucian campaign of 1973. This campaign was an effort to eradicate ideas such as the low status and subordination of women which were associated with Confucianism. In this context, the Red Lanterns appeared as a symbol of female emancipation. Cohen quotes an article of this era, saying "The heroines of the Red Lantern...fearlessly attacked 'the traitorous teachings of Confucius and Mencius", broke through the constraints of the Confucian ethical code, and "inscribed a glorious page in the history of the revolutionary struggle of the women of our nation." (p. 271) In this mythologization, the Red Lanterns played an active role in the Boxer Uprising; they maintained public order, gathered military intelligence, offered first aid to the wounded, aided in arson activities, and fought alongside male Boxers during battles. Says Cohen, "The Cultural Revolution Red Lantern has exchanged the reserve and elegance of her forbears for the persona of a fiercely rebellious warrior, who, sword in hand, takes her place side by side with male Boxers in the fight against the foreigner." (p.269) During the latter stage of the Cultural Revolution the Red Lanterns thus became not just an emblem of revolutionary ideals but also an empowering feminist symbol.
     Different aspects of the phenomena of the Red Lanterns are emphasized as they are portrayed through event, experience, and myth. In Cohen's discussion of the Red Lanterns as experience we become aware that both positive and negative roles are held by women with respect to the Boxers and their magic. It is noted that the Red Lanterns were believed to have potent magical powers and that they did not participate directly in combat. In this discussion there were no source materials written by women. In the explaination of the Boxers as event we learn that the Red Lanterns played only a very small role in the greater context of the uprising as a whole. In the Red Lanterns as mythologized during the Cultural Revolution we hear no mention whatsoever of magical powers. We are however told that the Red Lanterns participated in battle along side the male Boxers. Unlike the experiential accounts of the boxer Uprising, the sources describing the mythologized Red Lanterns of the Cultural Revolution are full of women's voices.
     Paul Cohen's book History in Three Keys offers a compelling argument in support of his differentiation between event, experience, and myth as means of understanding the past. His system of categorization is robust enough to support even his subsequent discussion of whether or not delineation between event, experience, and myth is too simplistic. Cohen states that an individual experiencing a historic occurrance will recourse to the myths present in their own cultural background in order to "process" it. A historian seeking to present an experience or analyze a myth will also introduce his own consciousness into his explanation. Says Cohen, "I explore analytical issues...that it would never have occurred to the Boxers themselves to raise... I analyze the process of mythologization in ways the mythologizers themselves would likely resist..." (p. 296) Since the consciousness of the historian is formed in part by the mythology of his native culture, neither first-hand experience nor the historiography of events can be entirely isolated from myth. The delineation between Cohen's three categories is thus not absolutely rigid. It is this ability to discern and discuss the weak points in his own argument which most persuades the reader of the validity of Cohen's thesis.
     Cohen goes on to question whether any one of his categories is of more value than the others. "Are we to understand the experienced past as being privileged over the historically reconstructed one because it is more real? Or the historically reconstructed past as preferable to the mythologized one because it is truer?" (p.294) The author answers this query in the negative, maintaining that each approach to the past is valid within a certain range. In his discussion of the role of women in the Boxer movement, Cohen's claim is demonstrably true. The examination of the Boxer Uprising as a historical event, although it offers a helpful overview of the period, provides little information about the Red Lanterns, who within the greater scheme of the uprising did not play a large role. The discussion of the Boxers as experience offers a multifaceted picture of the various roles played by women in the uprising, despite the lack of sources attributable to Chinese women. The Boxers as constructed during the Cultural Revolution provide a fascinating glimpse into the political and social situation of the 1960's and '70's through their mythological portrayal of the Red Lanterns. Each of these viewpoints - event, experience, myth - has much to offer an understanding of women's roles in the Boxer uprising.

Reference:
History in Three Keys: The Boxers as Event, Experience, and Myth;
Paul A. Cohen; Columbia University Press, 1997