Study About The Disaster And The Relief Measures Of The Late Qing Dynasty

The Late Qing Dynasty is a history of blood and tears of Chinese nation. During this time, China got into a semi-colonial and semi- feudal society step by step ,and was subjected to the imperialist humiliation and oppression, people were in deep distress, and the frequent natural disasters added fuel to the fire, continued to push the people to the abyss of disaster. Study of modern Chinese history, if overlooks the history of the famine, the understanding of modern history is incomplete. Studying Late Qing Dynasty famine history not only can make us learn the natural disasters and the government to the natural disaster response mechanism, but also let us look at social transformation in Late Qing Dynasty from another angle, thus grasp the modernizing course of Chinese society more profoundly. In previous research foundation,the thesis has made a systematic summary about the causes of natural disasters during the late Qing Dynasty (1840-1911), inspected the Qing government's policy about how to relieve famine, analyzed the disadvantages of government famine relief measures in the late Qing dynasty.This Paper is divided into four parts. The first part gives an overview of the late Qing dynasty's natural disasters. Drought, floods, locusts was considered three natural disasters in the human development history, because the length limits, the textual material has only made the outline to these three nature disasters. As the complement to text, the thesis has appended Famine in the late Qing Dynasty Annals Table in the end to expect to having a limpid , all-round reproduction about the late Qing dynasty. Among the second part,thesis has discussed natural diasters occurrence cause, including natural and social factors. Peculiar geographic conditions of our country and the climate characteristic were the natural factors. Ecological environment's destruction, the planting of opium, the frequent war, the arduous payment of taxes corvee as well as the Qing government politics's corruption were social factors which made the natural disaster occurr.The third part of the paper elaborated the late Qing dynasty government's famine relief measures. As the last feudal one in Chinese history, the Qing dynasty absorbed other dynasty s' experience of famine relief,set up a self-contained measure. There was a set of strict process, which included reporting, perambulating, approving and relieving. There was also food repertory to preparing for the disaster, such as ChangPing Cang,She Cangji Cang etc. There were various relief measures,such as reduction, relief, refugee arrangement ,the comforting and compensating victims in the natural disaster.The forth part of the paper analyzed the merits and demerits of the Qing government, the measure was maturity, which played an acctive part in the prophase of Qing dinesty. However, with the growing corruption Qing Dynasty , the famine relief measures played the role getting smaller, even useless.