The Floods And Droughts And Coping Machanism Of Huizhou In The Qing Dynasty

Huizhou has not been the hardest-hit area in Guangdong Province or in the whole country which severely afflicted by floods and droughts. Partly as a result, there are blank fields in the history of natural disasters of Huizhou. This article is aimed at fill the gap by researching the facts and response of floods and droughts in Huizhou during the Qing Dynasty. The research is based on adsorbing and integrating the previous research results such as county annals, Qing court records and the early modern press. In the article, the first part makes a brief introduction about the basic situation of temporal and spatial scope of floods and droughts disaster in the Qing dynasty through the analysis of Huizhou’s physical geography, the statistics of historical data and chart. The second part mainly discusses the social influence of the floods and droughts disaster of Huizhou in the Qing dynasty. In the socio-economic aspect, the disasters led to human death, building destruction and crops failure which would trigger the appearance of Refugees and famine without appropriate solution. This article takes an example of the flood happened in Yongzheng Period to show how the Qing government took actions to relieve disaster and alleviate hunger. In the socio-cultural aspect, the disasters influence the folk religion. This article introduces two kinds of folk religion. One is Launched by the official across the country and another is originated from the spirit demands of local people, such as Madam Changfu and Saint Tangong. The third part talks about the countermeasures to disasters. In Disaster prevention, Huizhou government of Qing Dynasty built levees, dam and water conservancy projects according to local conditions. To in disaster preparedness, the government set different storage system At various times in history. In disaster relief, besides the systematical relief procedures, there were various measures such as tax exemption, rice cheap sale. All these actions are not only leaded by government, but also by the gentry class of Huizhou for various purposes.