A Study On Rural Social Relief In Ming Dynasty

The Ming Dynasty is a typical rural society.Rural social relief is an important factor for the peasants' vital benefit and the rural social stability of the Ming Dynasty. There have been numerous research and creative ideas on the rural social relief of the Ming Dynasty from the 20th century.Although,the rural social relief played an important role at the time,the special research about this issue is not enough.So,it is very necessary to keep study this problem systematically.In the area of disaster preparedness,the Ming Dynasty established a comprehensive system for rural disaster preparedness,so that many warehousing, which based on the grassroots stratum and village-oriented,played a very good role in preparing for famine and have set up the relatively sound management system.At the same time,there were many plentiful disaster relieving measures of the Ming Dynasty, which had strong operational requirement and were very effective for ensuring the life and production of the peasants at the time.About helping the poor and vulnerable groups in rural area,the Ming Dynasty also developed many systematic measures.There were many standing organizations which helped the persons who lost consort,children or parents and the grassroots funeral.The Ming Dynasty's policy of providing graybeard was very important to ensuring graybeard's life and forming the social morale of respecting graybeard.And the medical support which faced to the grassroots stratum was flourishing.All of these established the system of supporting the poor and vulnerable groups in rural area of the Ming Dynasty.At the middle and later period of the Ming Dynasty,there were more folk social forces,and these various forces became more important in the rural social relief.At that time,there was a visible social phenomenon,which the squire stratum rose fast and played an important role on the rural social relief.Moreover,in the rural area of the Ming Dynasty,rich persons who always took the initiative to participate charitable activity and the merchant who was a more and more important social group both were active on the stage of philanthropy depending on their enough wealth.In addition, support from the clans was developing in the Ming Dynasty,and it was the aegis of clan members in rural area.There were some characteristics of the rural social relief of the Ming Dynasty. The system of rural social relief were complete relatively,and it's main part of reliving changed from unitary to divers.The rural social relief was related to social control. However,there was a district imbalance on the rural social relief of the Ming Dynasty. So,the rural social relief of the Ming Dynasty played a role,but it can not be too high appraised.The peasants' heavy burden and the officialdom's corruption reduced the effectiveness of the rural social relief,and not all rich persons and merchants had enthusiasm to do philanthropy.The peasants' insurrection at the final phase of the Ming Dynasty was inseparable from the loss of the rural social relief.