Competition Between Government-led and Private Famine Relief in Late Nineteenth-century China

• In Event: Disaster and the State in Late Imperial China

Abstract

This paper explores how in the latter half of the nineteenth century the government’s use of the sale of rank and office (“contributions”) to raise funds for famine relief changed under the pressure of competing ideas of private donations for a national cause. Scholars have focused on the rise of private fund-raising and the competition between foreign missionaries and Shanghai elites in famine relief for the northern province of Shanxi during the Great North China Famine (1876-1878). They have neglected or misinterpreted the role of the government-led “contributions” in famine relief. In contrast, this paper analyze both archival and published sources to argue that government-led famine relief contributions underwent fundamental changes in the decades following the 1870s. When private relief donations by urban elites in Shanghai, under the influence of new media like the daily Shenbao, started to transcended local interests, the government had to increase the stakes in order to compete with private relief efforts. While earlier government-led famine contributions stayed local and received only secondary status awards, for example door inscriptions by higher ranking officials, they were now imbued with national importance, and large contributors could be awarded official rank as in the more prestigious wartime contributions. These changes are an important indication of the changing relationship between the imperial state and its elites.

Author

• Elisabeth Kaske, Carnegie Mellon University