Study On The Agricultural Disasters In Yuan Dynasty

The agricultural disasters in Yuan Dynasty happened frequently, almost all kinds of disasters happened. There were many differences among the meteorological, organic and environmental disasters. They happened very unevenly. They had some characteristics in common, such as high frequency, many big, continuous and group disasters. So many disasters because of not only natural factors, but also social causes, especially the large-scale stationed troops and felling forests, these seriously damaged the vegetations on the earth's surface and had a great effect on the agricultural disasters, besides the above, making farmlands by circling lakes,exorbitant taxes,corrupt politics,frequent wars and a number of hungry and poor people existing, etc., all these made a stormy sea stormier effect on the disasters in Yuan Dynasty.In order to keep the society steady and safeguard their rule, the rulers paid much attention to aiding the victims of the disasters and forestalling disasters. They established special organizations for relieving the victims and supervising. They made laws and concrete standards to punish the officials who were irresponsible for relieving the victims of disasters. They regulated the orders of reporting,inspecting,examining and supervising disasters, and the time of reporting disasters and the standards of relieving. The ways of relieving and the origins of the money and grains for relieving were carried from those of the former dynasties, but its efforts were greater than theirs, so its effects were a bit better.The rulers had strong ideas of forestalling disasters, some of the ways of forestalling were summed up and carried from the former dynasties', and some were innovated as well. The idea "attaching importance to agriculture" had a process of developing gradually, from "the complete economy of moving about in search of pastures","initiatively realizing the importance of farming economy" to "paying attention to the farming economy". During the time, the rulers drew up many laws to develop agriculture and restrict animal husbandry. They paid much attention to agriculture and silkworm breeding, besides "Collection of Important Contents of Agriculture and Silkworm Breeding" issued by the government, large quantities of agronomists wrote books to disseminate agricultural technology. During the process of dealing with disasters, the rulers realized that "disasters could be harnessed" and the inherent relationship between "natural disasters" and "man-made disasters".But there were contradictions between "harnessing" and "respecting" all the time when they dealt with disasters;, and many witchcrafts were used, it influenced the effect of forestalling disasters. When forestalling disasters, the farming,organic,man-made and other technology were all used and the irrigating tools were improved and renewed. The ways were a little advanced at that time, some of them are still useful today. The stationed troops in Yuan Dynasty had a positive meaning to its politics,economy,society and other ways, but it heavily damaged the vegetations and aggravated the agricultural disasters.