Research On Natural Disasters In Ming And Qing Dynasties In The North-central Part Of Ningxia Province

In ancient China,the impact that the flood and drought disasters had on agricultural production and people's lives was the greatest among other natural disasters.In addition,earthquake and hail disasters also brought great damages.This paper mainly focuses on the study of flood,drought,earthquake,hail and other disasters,which had a high frequency of occurrence and heavy damage on people's life in the north-central part of Ningxia Province during the Ming and Qing Dynasties.Through collecting and sorting out the literature such as official history,veritable records and local chorography,the author analyzes the distribution characteristics of the disaster and its causes,discusses the measures taken by the government and the society in Ming and Qing Dynasties and concludes the law of development of disasters' occurrence,to help people to draw lessons from history.The author also hopes the study can make contributions to the prevention and mitigation of the disaster as well as the sustainable development of the social economy of the area.This paper includes seven chapters,and according to the contents,it can be divided into three parts.The first part,namely the first chapter,mainly illustrates the geographical environment in the north-central part of Ningxia Province.In terms of physical geographic environment,topographic features,characteristics of river and basin,vegetation and soil,climate types and other aspects were briefly introduced.And this is the natural basis of disaster formation and development.As for cultural geographical environment,this paper analyzed the evolution of administrative areas in Ningxia province as well as the evolution and establishment of the districts and counties of the Ming and Qing Dynasties.This is the primary issue that need to be clarified when studying the regulations and regions of natural disaster.The second part includes the second to the sixth chapters which made thorough studies on flood,drought,earthquakes,hail disaster and other low frequency disasters(such as freeze disaster,insect pests,mice disaster and wind damage)respectively.This paper firstly adds up the occurrence times of disasters in the above-mentioned area in Ming and Qing Dynasties through looking into official history and local topography;secondly,this paper analyzes the spatial and temporal distribution features of flood,drought,earthquake and hail disasters from disasters' occurrence age and average divided-period.Thirdly,the author makes a concrete analysis and discussion about successive disasters,major disasters and their influences based on the materials.Finally,the causes of these disasters in this area will be analyzed and concluded.The third part includes the seventh chapter.In this part,the author expounds the remedial measures(exempting from tax payment,imposition of a tax,scattered relief,usurious loan and offering consolation money)taken by the government.In the end,the author makes some conclusions on the basis of the whole paper,and puts forward some ideas and suggestions on how to draw lessons from the history,and make a greater contribution to the disaster prevention and mitigation as well as the sustainable development of the social economy.The main innovations of this paper are as follows: firstly,through searching official history,memoir,local chorography and other historical materials,the author is the first one who sorts out the data about all kinds of disasters happened in Ming and Qing Dynasties in central and northern part of Ningxia province comprehensively and systematically.Secondly,this paper gives a detailed analysis to the natural disasters and their spatial and temporal distribution characteristics in the mid-north of Ningxia in Ming and Qing Dynasties,discusses the natural factors,social factors and their particularities which affect the occurrence of disasters,and reveals the laws of natural disasters,as well as its disaster mechanism and what will happen after the disasters in a systematic way to have a scientific knowledge of occurrence mechanism,causes and frequency of disasters.This provides central and northern part of Ningxia province with historical lessons for preventing and reducing natural disasters and sustainable development of the society.This is also the aspect that the previous researches lack.