Fighting Famine in North China: State, Market, and Environmental Decline, 1690s-1990s

Defining famine as "hunger and food scarcity in the broadest sense, as well as subsistence crises that were catastrophic in scale and resulted in elevated levels of mortality" (p. 8), Li reasserts the crucial importance of famines, population pressure and rural poverty in the Chinese histo...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Asian studies review 2010, Vol.34 (3), p.377
Main Author: Edgerton-Tarpley, Kathryn
Format: Review
Language:English
Subjects:
Agricultural production
Economic trends
Famine
Rivers
Water shortages
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Summary:Defining famine as "hunger and food scarcity in the broadest sense, as well as subsistence crises that were catastrophic in scale and resulted in elevated levels of mortality" (p. 8), Li reasserts the crucial importance of famines, population pressure and rural poverty in the Chinese historical experience in the face of revisionist scholarship that has cast late imperial China's agriculture, commerce and demographics in a more positive light. Li concurs with earlier scholarship on the Qing famine relief bureaucracy that in eighteenth century the grain tribute system and state granaries were effective in "an impressive degree of food security for Beijing" (p. 164), directing from wealthier to poorer regions of the empire, and providing "economic and political stability through social welfare" (p. 191).
ISSN:1035-7823
1467-8403