Famine Victims Selling Their Children from The Famine in China, Illustrations by a Native Artist (1878)

The Northern Chinese Famine of 1876–1879 ( zh, 丁戊奇荒) was marked by

drought A drought is defined as drier than normal conditions.Douville, H., K. Raghavan, J. Renwick, R.P. Allan, P.A. Arias, M. Barlow, R. Cerezo-Mota, A. Cherchi, T.Y. Gan, J. Gergis, D. Jiang, A. Khan, W. Pokam Mba, D. Rosenfeld, J. Tierney, an ...

-induced crop failures and subsequent widespread starvation. Between 9.5 and 13 million people in

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

died, mostly in

Shanxi Shanxi (; ; formerly romanised as Shansi) is a landlocked province of the People's Republic of China and is part of the North China region. The capital and largest city of the province is Taiyuan, while its next most populated prefecture-lev ...

province (5.5 million dead), but also in

Zhili Zhili, alternately romanized as Chihli, was a northern administrative region of China since the 14th-century that lasted through the Ming dynasty and Qing dynasty until 1911, when the region was dissolved, converted to a province, and renamed ...

(now Hebei, 2.5 million dead),

Henan Henan (; or ; ; alternatively Honan) is a landlocked province of China, in the central part of the country. Henan is often referred to as Zhongyuan or Zhongzhou (), which literally means "central plain" or "midland", although the name is al ...

(1 million) and

Shandong Shandong ( , ; ; alternately romanized as Shantung) is a coastal province of the People's Republic of China and is part of the East China region. Shandong has played a major role in Chinese history since the beginning of Chinese civilizati ...

(0.5 million). The population reduction in censuses, which include famine migration, shows a drop of 23 million people, among which Shanxi lost 48% (8.18 million), Shaanxi lost 25% (2.43 million), Henan lost 22% (7.48 million). The drought began in 1875 and was influenced by the

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Relief efforts

British missionary

Timothy Richard Timothy Richard (Chinese: 李提摩太 ''Li Timotai'', 10 October 1845 – 17 April 1919) was a Welsh Baptist missionary to China, who influenced the modernisation of China and the rise of the Chinese Republic. Biography Richard was born on ...

first publicized a drought-caused famine in Shandong during the summer of 1876. He appealed to the foreign community in

Shanghai Shanghai (; , , Standard Mandarin pronunciation: ) is one of the four direct-administered municipalities of the People's Republic of China (PRC). The city is located on the southern estuary of the Yangtze River, with the Huangpu River flow ...

for money to help the victims. In March 1877, the Shandong Famine Relief Committee was established with the participation of diplomats, businessmen, and Protestant and Roman Catholic missionaries. Richard became aware that drought conditions were even worse in neighboring Shanxi province, which at that time was virtually unknown to foreigners. During early 1878, Richard journeyed to Shanxi. His "famine diary" described conditions. "That people pull down their houses, sell their wives and daughters, eat roots and carrion, clay and leaves is news which nobody wonders at...The sight of men and women lying helpless on the roadside, or if dead, torn by hungry dogs and magpies ndof children being boiled and eaten up is so fearful as to make one shudder." Shanxi was the most seriously affected province in the famine, with an estimated 5.5 million dead out of a total population of 15 million people. Remote and inaccessible rural districts suffered most. To combat the famine, an international network was established to solicit donations, most of which came from England and foreign businesses in China. These efforts brought in 204,000 silver

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More than 40 Roman Catholic and 31 Protestant missionaries administered the relief efforts in the field, which helped about 3.4 million people in Shanxi alone. The Protestants included Arthur Henderson Smith and

William Scott Ament William Scott Ament (Chinese Names: 梅子明 and 梅威良 Mei Wei Liang) (14 September 1851 – 6 January 1909 in San Francisco) was a missionary to China for the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) from 1877, and wa ...

, who would later achieve prominence. Three Protestant missionaries died of disease, probably

typhus Typhus, also known as typhus fever, is a group of infectious diseases that include epidemic typhus, scrub typhus, and murine typhus. Common symptoms include fever, headache, and a rash. Typically these begin one to two weeks after exposure. ...

, which was rampant in the famine area. The Qing government, Chinese philanthropists, and businessmen also responded to the famine, raising funds with an illustrated pamphlet titled "Pictures to Draw Tears from Iron". There was rivalry between the foreign and Chinese relief efforts. The Chinese feared the missionaries would use their famine work to spread Christianity and to adopt and Christianize orphaned children. They raised large sums of money to establish orphanages and to redeem women and children who had been sold into slavery. While most foreign relief emphasized Shanxi, the private Chinese effort was mostly in Henan, whose people they believed to be fiercely anti-foreign, and Shandong.

The rains return

During June 1879, heavy rains began to fall in much of the famine area, and with the harvest that autumn, the worst of the famine was over. However, many rural areas had been depopulated by starvation, disease, and the migration of destitute people to urban areas. To the foreigners, the huge loss of life during the famine was due to the "backwardness" of China and the inefficiency and corruption of the Qing government. The famine made Chinese, in the words of one scholar, increasingly aware of their "material inferiority and insulted cultural pride", increasing their dissatisfaction with the Qing. The Protestant missionaries believed their work during the famine would establish good will among the Chinese for foreigners and create opportunities for missionary work. Missionaries, including the Oberlin Band, began to work in sizable numbers in Shanxi province after the famine.

Relief efforts

The rains return

See also

References

Further reading