author
Robert Coltman
1862–1931
A doctor-writer with a front-row view of late Qing China, he turned years of medical work and firsthand experience into vivid books about Chinese society and the Boxer Rebellion. His writing feels especially immediate because he was describing events he had lived through himself.
1 Audiobook
Beleaguered in Pekin: The Boxer's War Against the Foreigner
by Robert Coltman
About the author
Born in Washington, D.C., in 1862, Robert Coltman Jr. trained at Jefferson Medical College and went on to build a medical career in China. He spent many years there as a physician and became closely connected with high-ranking figures, including Li Hongzhang, an important Qing statesman.
That experience shaped the books he is remembered for. In The Chinese, Their Present and Future (1891), he wrote about China from the perspective of a physician observing everyday life, public health, and politics. Later, in Beleaguered in Pekin: The Boxer's War Against the Foreigner, he gave a firsthand account of the Boxer Rebellion and the siege of the foreign legations in Beijing.
Coltman died in 1931. For listeners interested in memoir, history, and travel writing, his work offers something special: not just commentary on a distant place, but the voice of someone who was there, watching major events unfold at close range.