In 1895, after China’s exhausted empire was defeated by Japan in a war over the Korean Peninsula, Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany (“Willy”) sent a letter to his cousin Tsar Nicholas II of Russia (“Nicky”). He warned about the dangers posed to white nations by the “yellow races.” Willy enclosed a print by a German artist named Hermann Knackfuss, showing the Archangel Michael rallying the European nations against the threatening Orient. Britannia with her Union Jack shield is there, looking worried, and there too is Germania with a winged helmet and the imperial sword, and Austria, and Italy. A blazing white cross lights up the sky above them. On the other side of a deep ravine, perched on a bank of dark clouds, sits a menacing Buddha enveloped in flames. The title of the painting, from which the print was taken: “Peoples of Europe, Guard Your Most Sacred Goods!” It is the only work for which Knackfuss is remembered.
Five years later, as the Western nations (and Japan) were burning and looting the imperial palaces of Peking, after crushing an anti-foreign rebellion staged by a band of armed Chinese mystics known as the Boxers, the German Kaiser fulminated once more against the “Yellow Peril.” The words of his so-called “Hun speech” are remarkable for their violence: