A Study On Flood Relief In Wuhan In 1931

As for the research of famine relief ,it is inadequate at present and unmatched with the important influence of the famine. At the present there have been some treatises on the history of famines,most of those are large-spanned or macroscopical and paying attention to the cause of famine, the characteristics of famine and its social political impact. When it comes to the elaborating on the idiographic relief activity or operation and individual case study on the analysis about the salvation system, that is deficient.So this thesis is focused on flood salvation as research subject ,which treats Wuhan three towns as research spectrum and chooses flood in the year of 1931 as study case which is famous for its severity and devastation in the modern Chinese history. The first chapter of the treatise review the situation of flood in Wuhan in 1931 and the serious status of the time, analysing the natural cause as well as the social cause.The second chapter probes into the governmental organization and its activity in salvation in Wuhan in 1931. When flood takes place, the Nanjing government realizes the severity of the flood, making an active and broad mobilization and the fixed organization桼elief Affair Committee(RAC) begins to plan and prepares to do the salvation work. Afterward, for the serious famine, the government forms the Flood Relief Council (FRC)as the special relief organs which establishes subcommittee in Wuhan. The RAC and the FRC attach importance to macroscopic work such as relief guideline and measures, allocating relief materials, sending technicians, etc; the subcommittee in charge of the relief work of Hubei province, is responsible for taking frondose measures and operation. In this part, there are also analysis on another relief institution桿rgent Relief Committee of Hubei Province(URCHP). The URCHP has its feature in its organization. It is composed of governmental and nongovermental forces. Thus it is a semiofficialrelief organization. In contrast to the other official relief institutions, the URCHP works more meticulously and representative. Its content are more abundant and feasible to analyse and examine. Therefore we specially arrange a chapter for URCHP. Work-relief and peasant-relief are crucial work in the course of salvation, they will be disucssed concentratively in the last chapter.The third chapter discourses mainly upon the social group relief. Their activities could be divided into two parts: direct relief and indirectly relief. The chapter will analyse in sort the activity of the countrymen institution,education,doctor,religious party,charity group and the press. The different relief motivation among them will be discussed.The last chapter will probe into the influence that the flood makes, the relation between government and community, defects existing in the salvation and the sum-up of the experience as well as lessons during the relief.From the course of salvation we could draw conclusions that the social relief function of Nanjing government is so incomplete,its relief system is also unsound with lots of concrete defects existing. As for the communal organizations, both the traditional social institution and the rising communities actively join in the relief which reflects the blossom of the social forces. After all, as a whole the governmental organs play principal role in the relief and cooperates very well with social parties. The salvation mobilization of the government is effective, which not only succeeds to the mode of traditional relief but also tried on some new salvation methods ,such as work-relief and peasant-relief and leave behind much useful experience. The relief in the flood pushes the government to improve its salvation system as well.