Taiwan’s Natural Disasters And Social Response In Qing Dynasty(1684-1895)

Taiwan is the largest island in China, located at the border of the East China sea and South China sea. Taiwan features a subtropical monsoon climate, so the rainwater concentrated in summer and autumn. And it also located in the low latitude of North Pacific Ocean, the key point, so typhoons are visiting Taiwan every year with rainstorm. At the same time, when Taiwan came with drought, we can always see rivers run out of water. According to this, we can judge that Taiwan is a place with frequent natural calamities.This paper is mainly about Taiwan’s natural disasters in Qing Dynasty represented by earthquake, flood, wind, drought from 1684 to 1895. The number of natural calamities presented a rising tendency in the time distributions at Taiwan during Qing Dynasty, especially in the period of Emperor Guangxu, and its active period and quiet period appeared alternately. On the geographical distribution, the amount of natural calamities appeared a law of successively increasing, the least is south of Taiwan, then middle part, north area, east area. These disasters brought different levels damage to Taiwan society in the Qing Dynasty. At best, houses were demolished, people were hurt, crops were damaged, but at the worst, many families broken up and lost all their fortune. Because of the unique geographical location and political status, the disaster prevention and relief attracted extensive attention in Taiwan. The management of Qing government on Taiwan went through a process from slightly overlook to seriously take, as well as the famine policy. After the disasters, local gentries, business groups, common people, nearly all the hierarchies took part in the action. But at the end of Qing Dynasty, the central government’s financial was so poor that local gentries in Taiwan became the main force of disaster relief.The thesis follows the information of Taiwan’s natural disasters in Qing Dynasty, unite disaster science and sociology to analysis the disasters and its influence, the social relief at different periods in different areas in a historical geography perspective. At last, I put forward some ideas about the question.