author
Robert Coltman
1862–1931
A doctor-writer with a front-row view of late Qing China, he turned years of medical work in Beijing into vivid books on Chinese society and the Boxer uprising. His writing blends eyewitness detail with the perspective of an American physician living deep inside a changing world.
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 long medical career in China. He is remembered both as a physician and as an author whose books drew on direct experience rather than distant observation.
Coltman spent many years in Beijing and wrote about China for English-language readers at a time of intense political and social change. His best-known works include The Chinese: Their Present and Future (1891) and Beleaguered in Peking (1901), an eyewitness account of the Boxer uprising and the siege of the foreign legations.
That combination of medical service, long residence in China, and firsthand reporting gives his work a distinctive voice. For listeners interested in memoir, history, and travel writing from the edge of major events, his books offer an unusually immediate view of their era.