Research On The Relations Between The Natural Calamities And Social Countermeasures In The Middle And Lower Reaches Of The Haihe River Water System From The Ming Dynasty To The Mid-Qing Dynasty

Middle and lower reaches of the Haihe River Water System, flowing throughBeijing, Tianjin and Hebei, fertilize the soil on both banks and have bred splendidculture with a long history. However, the constantly changing natural environmentand cumulative disaster-making factors from the Ming Dynasty to the Mid-QingDynasty have made the single economical structure based on agriculture prone to theraid of natural calamities.Natural calamities of this region from the Ming Dynasty to the Mid-QingDynasty include floods,drought, plague of insects, earthquake,hailing,smog, frostdisaster, snow storm, marine disaster and so on. Due to the influence of climaticconditions, social environment and different geographical conditions, the space-timedistribution of natural calamities are various with the main presentation of diversity,the tendency of effect, the characteristic of continuity and serious destructiveness.Natural calamities of this region take place rather frequently, which has complexreasons. Take flood and drought disaster as an example, the natural factors mainlyinclude climatic conditions, hydrological factor and topography and so on. thehumanities and social factors mainly contains population growth, environmentdamage and political factor.Natural calamities of this region have profound influence on the local socialeconomy and life, especially the farming society. Firstly, the local composition ofpopulation was changing because the natural calamitues were always taking awaypeople lives; Secondly, the natural calamities affects the nomal operation of the localagricultural production, which results in reducing area of cultivated land, transferringof ownership, variation of cropping system as well as fluctuation of price; socialconflicts emerge because of the social and unstable political pulse. In a word, theinfluences of natural calamities already penetrated each aspect which lived to thepeople and affected the social economy and life of the whole region.From the Ming Dynasty to the Mid-Qing Dynasty, integrated the previous experiences about natural calamities countermeasures, the successive government hadstranded forth towards this issue under their relatively perfected disaster reliefsystems. Meanwhile, spontaneous efforts from the regional communities had grown,but its practical effects should not be over-estimated.