page_title: Maurice Joostens
section_title: Aftermath
hierarchical_section_title: Maurice Joostens / Diplomatic career / Peking / Aftermath
caption_attribution_description: English: Receipt of the so-called 'Guldenboek' of the Belgian city of Antwerp. This page conmemorates the return of the Belgian diplomat Maurice Joostens to his hometown in 1902 after he survived the Boxer Rebellion and signed the Boxer Protocol.
context_page_description: Baron Adolphe Marie Maurice Joostens, was a Belgian diplomat. As a signatory of the Boxer Protocol, the final act at the Algeciras Conference and the Colonial Charter in which Congo Free State was ceded to Belgium, Joostens was an important Belgian diplomat in the age of New Imperialism. Throughout his career, Joostens was able to gain the absolute confidence of king Leopold II of Belgium and eventually he became one of the monarch's favourite diplomats.
context_section_description: Thanks to fact that Joostens was one of the diplomats who were sieged in the summer of 1900, the Belgian envoy became a prominent and well-known figure not only within diplomatic circles, but also within the public sphere. Whereas stories like these were not available in the European press before, the development of the press as a mass medium throughout the nineteenth century had made possible that the messages concerning the Siege of the International Legations reached big audiences in the western world. Where diplomats were often depicted as lazy, money spoiling and useless bureaucrats, the siege had pointed out the dangers and usefulness of the job. Nevertheless, the coverage of Joostens in Belgian and international press was quite one-sided and although some media covered also the diplomatic work of the Belgian envoy, the main focus was put on his role during the siege. Joostens remarkable performance at the Conference of Peking did not pass unnoticed at the Belgian royal court. In 1904 Leopold II gave Joostens the hereditary title of baron as a final reward for his time in Peking.
  This focus on his own person enabled Joostens to use this attention to put the Belgian expansion on the agenda of the Belgian economic scene as pointed out before. On the other hand, the attention for Joostens also played a great part in the awareness of the Belgian presence in China and raised the tangibility of the project for a great deal of people who had never heard of the activities of the Belgian missionaries, Belgian investors and Belgian diplomats before. Finally the different receptions, dinners and ceremonies celebrating Joostens' return to Belgium tightened to bonds within the Belgian imperialist lobby. Since diplomats usually hided behind the curtains of diplomacy Joostens' public performance is very noteworthy.
  Although Joostens' residence in Peking was undoubtedly the most important and notable time in his career, it had also its side-effects. Because of the harsh living conditions in Peking, Joostens unstable health fastly declined and in 1904 an emotionally and physically weak Joostens finally got the displacement he had been asking for since 1902. Being appointed as the envoy in Madrid Joostens was for the first time in his career promoted to be the highest-ranking official in a legation of a traditional European power. Since the living conditions in such a wealthy city were far better than in Peking the promotion took Joostens wishes into account.
caption: Conmemorative page in the Guldenboek highlighting the return of Maurice Joostens to his hometown Antwerp in 1902.
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