The Study Of Flood And Its Coping Mechanisms In Jiangxi Province Of Ming Dynasty

The floods of Jiangxi province is very serious in Ming dynasty and resulted huge social economic loss and population casualties. This paper tries to showing the original feature of the floods in Jiangxi province by collecting the flood historical data to explore the characteristics about the time and space distribution of the floods. At the same time, the paper discusses what the people in Jiangxi had been taken to resist the floods to provide some experience for the flood-fighting disaster relief and controlling flood disaster prevention for today.Firstly, this thesis gives an account of general state of flood in Jiangxi. In the Ming dynasty of all276years, there are400times floods which distributed in181years. The floods happened very frequently. There were five times of large-scale floods and five times of prodigious floods which brought about destructive damage.These floods had obvious characteristics in time and space distribution. From the Ming dynasty to see, the floods were less in the earlier stage and gradually increase later, to the JiaJing Period and WanLi Period to the peak, after that, the floods were a little less but still serious.Through the floods of season distribution, it distributed in four seasons:the summer the most, next is spring, autumn is less and winter is the least. Through the flood of regional distribution, the areas around Poyang Lake and downstream of great rivers flooded more while the upper reaches of the rivers and mountainous watershed regions flooded less.In the face of the frequent floods, governments at all levels and folk society took lots of measures to prevent and alleviate the disaster. By taking actions of water conservancy project and establishing food warehouses, to a certain extent, it reduced the frequency of floods and alleviated the harm of the floods. In the face of the floods, the governments usually took these actions such as pension and relief, reducing taxes and changing the way of pay taxes, as well as praying, while the civil society took measures of self-rescue and mutual aid as well as praying. These measures to the floods were helpful for holding the society steady and ensuring the social activity progress.