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About this talk

In the summer of 1900 Empress dowager Cixi was forced to flee Beijing to escape the invading Allied Forces. This unplanned journey put her and her court into the deplorable situation of having to cope with the adverse conditions of a countryside ravaged by the lack of food and marauding armies and to an extent having to experience such conditions herself. The link between the floods and drought of those years and the threat of starvation, exacerbated by the memory of the devastating famine of the late 1870s, and the fast-growing popularity of the Boxer militia groups has been recognized for a long time. The significance of the relocation of the Qing court to Xi'an for the way famine relief was managed has received less attention. Private relief (yizhen, also known as charity relief) was formally integrated into the official relief campaign for the first time. This coincided with the end of the contribution system (juanna), which had become crucial for the funding of government relief. In the long term, this also opened the door for foreign relief agencies, who became increasingly dominant in the first decades of the twentieth century. Dr Andrea Janku will talk about her paper which explores how the famine relief campaign in Shaanxi in 1900 to 1901 relates to these changes.

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