Li And The Oncoming Famine Relief

Zhili area had a lot of the disasters and famines in the late Qing Dynasty. After the disaster occurs, how the relief measure having been acted is very important for relieving effects on the famine. In the earlier Qing period, the government had enough financial power and material resources to aftercare the victims of disaster, restore production as soon as possible and maintain the social stability. But from the Daoguang period, the famine relief measures system declined gradually. The Qing Dynasty government corrupted day by day, the financial condition worsened increasingly. It made the governmental ability to relief disaster victims descend consumedly. The disaster relief relied on the local official's self-provided funds and the commodities in the great degree. In this kind of situation, the local official's ability and the measures he adopted in the disaster relief aspect were very important.This article describes the implementation of the Zhili famine relief measures when Li Hongzhang was the governor of this area. The main part has been divided into following several parts:The first part analyses the reasons for the Zhili area famine. There were natural reasons, including the climate, the terrain and the geological influences; Also had social factors, the tyranny, the corruption, the war and so on, they may initiated or aggravated the famine.The second part elaborates the governmental disaster relief ability dropped day by day in the late Qing Dynasty. The feeble national power caused the finance deficient, thus caused the funds insufficient and the storage lost seriously. The original famine relief measures system was unable to play the normal role.The third part discusses how Li Hongzhang tamed rivers of Zhili area. He made an overall plan, which in view of the river's characteristics, adopted many kinds of methods, established a series of waterway projection and reduced the calamities of drought and flood in the certain degree.The fourth part inspected the situation of aiding the victims of natural calamities. Li Hongzhang used different kinds of ways to aid the victims of natural calamities, it keep the social order of Zhili generally stable. He collected funds and foods for aiding the victims through many ways, for example, to strive for the central aid and so on . It manifested Li Hongzhang's individual ability in the process of famine relief measures implementation.