Study On The Records Of Natural Disaster And Disaster Control In Chronicle Such As Hunan Chorography Ect

Abstract: there are more than 400 extant chorography of Hunan published before the establishment of P.R.C,90% of that are written during the Qing dynasty, many materials about natural disasters are kept in those works. In this paper, the author studied the Hunan chorography as well as some other chorography to investigate the natural disaster and disaster control in Qing dynasty. In the Hunan chorography, descriptions concerning disaster are mainly kept in chapters such as Yixiang, Shuili, Tifang,T angyan, Cangchu, Zhaoyu, Minghuan, and Renwu etc.,we can get a whole image of the natural disasters happened in that period by combining those segments together. Frequently happened Floods and droughts brought huge damage in Hunan during Qing dynasty. Qing government tried to enhance the local governments' disaster control ability by reforming their administrative systems and laws. The local government built barn for food reserve, constructed irrigation works, planted trees, grew crops more resistant to drought so to prevent the natural disasters being happen on the one hand, on the other hand, they also adopted some remedy measures such as relieving, transfering millet and financial helps etc, all those reduced the loss caused by disasters in some extent. Chorography not only kept a steady, continuous and up-to-date record about natural disasters, but also good in style of writing.Like other historical materials, due to factors such as time of compilation, social background, chorography too suffered from the problems of true and false, simply following the old ones, lack of investigation, praise more and criticize less and wrong recordings etc. So, we must discard the coarse and keep the essential, discard the false and keep the original when using those materials, and get the material organized, so we can do a better job in studying the history of natural disaster.Though there are problems in using chorography, they are still the most systematical, detailed and authoritative historical materials in study the disaster history of Hunan . Those sources not only show us the features of natural disasters and disaster controls in Hunan, but also convey the ideas about disaster control of the past, thus being the indispensable materials in study the history of natural disaster.