Study Of The Qing Dynasty In Henan Natural Disasters

Henan province is the most place where natural disasters happen frequently. In Qing Dynasty, Henan province suffered a variety of disasters, such as floods, droughts, earthquakes, hailstorms, plagues of locusts, injuries, etc. These disasters brought an extremely catastrophic damage and influence to the people's life and economy in Henan province. Through doing research on the features and conditions of these five natural disasters in Henan, Qing Dynasty, probing into their causes and the influence they have on society, and further generalizing the disaster prevention, disaster providence people used then , this paper tries to give some useful reference to disaster prevention, disaster providence and environment protection.This paper is divided into five parts to do complete research on the natural disasters in Henan province. The structure and the main content of the paper are as follows.Part 1. The brief introduction of the natural disasters in Henan , Qing Dynasty. Based on a large amount of recorded historical materials, a chart is made to reflect the primary conditions about floods, droughts, earthquakes, plagues of locusts in Henan province, Qing Dynasty by using exact data.Part 2. The features of the natural disasters in Henan , Qing Dynasty. Through the integrated analysis of all kinds of historical materials, the features of the natural disasters in this period can be generalized as high frequency, multitudinousness, associated happenings, interlocal unbalance and large disaster area.Part 3. The causes of the natural disasters in Henan province , Qing dynasty. As to the causes of the disasters, there are both natural factors and social factors. Natural factors including climate factors and geography factors are the decisive factors of the natural disaster's happening, while social factors including aimlessly reclaiming and cultivating wasteland, deviation in harnessing the Yellow River, influence of wars, corruption in administration of officials and heavily feudal exploitation, etc , in return, accelerate the destruction that natural factors cause to society.