Qing Kangxi, Yongzheng And Dry During The Period Of Natural Disasters And Coping Mechanisms

China was once dubbed as "the land of famine" and Yunnan has been a province frequented by natural disasters. Natural disasters, however, in some way has curbed the economic development, so it seems important to make a research on the history of the natural disasters that has retarded Yunnan's economic development. But up to the present, few articles have been written on this topic and the existing ones have only simply listed the natural disasters in a certain period of time without referring to their causes and resultant havoc. Fewer articles have been found on the natural disasters that had happened during the Kang-Yong-Qian period; nor has any authoritative work on that topic appeared. In view of this, on the basis of other scholars' reseaching ,this article on the strength of historical materials tries to research on the natural disasters within the period of Kang-Yong-Qian(three emperors who ruled China sequentially during the Qing Dynasty)(AD1662—AD1795)and the coping mechanisms in the expectation that it can provide some thoughts for future research on that topic.This paper approaches the topic from seven aspects. The introduction part mainly introduces the concept of natural disaster and the scholarship on famine and natural disaster of the aforementioned period together with the inadequacies with an emphasis on the research's realistic importance of choice of the topic. The first part classifies the natural disasters in the Kang-Yong-Qian period and from the statistics of the incidences of earthquakes, floods, droughts and plagues it is not hard to see that human activity has to do with natural disasters: it is a catalyst to natural disaster. Through analysis of Yunnan's natural disasters in the specified period the second part summarizes the characteristics of the disasters: widespread, successive, accumulative, frequent and destructive. The third part traces the causes in natural and social light. Besides unstoppable natural factors, corruption among officials, war and excessive farming are factors which cannot be neglected. The fourth part is the central part of this paper focusing on the coping mechanisms of Qing government in face of natural disasters. After entering north China, the Qing dynasty was still able to pay enough attention to natural disaster, building warehouses, constructing water facilities and setting up a set of fairly perfect mechanisms of preventing disasters and providing disaster relief. The fifth part expounds the tangible results of Yunnan's disaster relief work achieved in the Kang-Yong-Qian period. The final part, as the conclusion of this paper, sums up the lessons and experiences the Qing dynasty has left us and points out its relevance to the economic development of Yunnan today.