On The System Of The Qing Dynasty Famine Policy

Since the nineties of the last century, the history of famine, as a branch of the social history, has been gradually recognized by the academic sector. "Famine" by Guliang and "hunger" by Mozi, are all the meaning of the Great Famine. The Arakawa-Saving history, also known as the Famine Policy history, is the protective activities that people conduct in order to prevent or save the society from disasters. Many scholars have explained the phenomena and reasons for the disaster and investigated the contact between the history of famine and politics, economics, ideology and culture, etc. The arakawa-saving history is actually the activity that human control the nature. So the developing extent of the arakawa-saving career, in fact, is an indicator that human civilization progresses. Chinese feudal society frequently suffered from natural disasters, including Qing Dynasty. The various incentives by disasters, such as vegetation destruction and soil erosion, as well as the man-made factor of corrupt officials, resulted in frequent floods and droughts, enormous economic losses and a series of social problems in Qing Dynasty, which threatened the solid foundation of Qing Dynasty. In order to reverse the passive situation, the Qing government adopted a number of corresponding measures to mobilize people to combat, which were called the Qing Dynasty's "Famine Policy" system.This article is divided into four parts. The first part introduces specific legal measures of arakawa-saving by Qing Dynasty. Qing Dynasty, as the last dynasty of ancient society, based on the experiences of every dynasty's arakawa-saving, built a set of relatively perfect policy of arakawa-saving and at the meantime the policy of arakawa-saving got its top. The laws helps us know the Qing dynasty's attitude and policy of arakawa-saving and its strength and weakness, which is good for present policy of arakawa-saving. The second part describes the fundamental operating procedure of arakawa-saving. Every measure was made to a set of complete and fixed procedure, which helped the perfection of the arakawa-saving measures in theories. This part is based on the details of arakawa-saving, and then fully describes the detailed measures and methods in every step. The third part describes the Qing Dynasty's policy of preparation for next arakawa. The Qing government not only made a set of policies of araka-saving and also made a series of measures of preparation for next arakawa which help the government deal with the next sudden arakawa. The fourth part analyses the social problems and conflicts in the activities of arakawa-saving. Qing Dynasty's system of arakawa-saving has positive effects on the development of society. However, due to the faultiness of the policy and the corruption of the officials, it led to a series of social problems and conflicts, which has negative effects on the development of society.This thesis describes the Qing Dynasty's policies of arakawa-saving, and gets the experience and lessons of history. We should examine the Qing Dynasty's policies of arakawa-saving in positive and negative ways with the impartial and evolutive attitude. I hope this can help perfect the present policies of arakawa-saving in China.