A Study In The Relationship Between The Natural Calamities And Social Countermeasures In Yi And Shu Rivers Basin During Qing Dynasty

Yi River and Shu River, flowing through south Shandong and north Jiangsu, fertilize the soil on both banks and have bred splendid regional culture with a long history. However, the constantly changing natural environment and cumulative disaster-making factors since the Yellow River captured the Huaihe River 1194 have made the single economical structure mainly based on agriculture, under-developed commerce and relatively obstructed traffic system prone to the raid of natural calamities.Natural calamities of this region during the Qing Dynasty include floods, drought, locusts,earthquake, hailing and so on. Due to the influence of climatic conditions, social environment and respectively different geographical conditions, the space-time distribution characteristics of natural calamities are various with the main presentation of diversified, extensively affected, continues and serious damaging.Natural calamities of this region have profound influence on the local social development, especially the farming culture. Firstly, the local composition of population was changing because the natural calamities were always taking away people lives; Secondly, stability of agricultural production was influenced due to the continually reduced area of cultivated land, transfer of and ownership, variation of cropping system, fluctuation of price as well as animals slaughter resulting from natural calamities; last but not the least, social conflicts emerge because of the social and unstable political pulse. Considering all the factors above, the influences of natural calamities already penetrated each aspect which lived to the people and affected the development level of the whole region.Integrated the previous experiences on natural calamities countermeasures, the Qing government had stranded forth towards this issue under its relatively perfected disaster relief systems. Nevertheless, spontaneous efforts from the regional communities had exceeded the government as the main power for disaster relief because the corruption and favoritism in the government, although its practical effects shall not be over-estimated.