The North China Famine of 1876-9: An Asymmetric, Gendered Experience
Keywords:
17th Century Chinese History, Famine Studies, Gender, Irish Famine, China Famine Relief Fund, Material History, Imperial History, 1878 North China Famine, ConfucianismAbstract
Inspired by a joint interest in famine studies and gender historiography, this paper looks to analyse the use of gendered imagery and narratives in inspiring local, regional, national, and international aid to the North Chi- na Famine of 1876-9. First, the paper discusses the experiences of Chinese women during the disaster. From this point, it interrogates different actors’ responses to these women’s predicaments, from the local to the international. In the case of international actors, the pa- per takes a note of the Irish perspective on the famine, one cloaked, as with many other western countries in the late 19th century, in Christian doctrine, racism and imperialism. The Irish view of China in this period is under-researched, and this paper hopes to provide a good addition to both work in comparative famine studies between the two countries, and more broadly to Chinese–Irish late imperial relations.
References
• Backus Rankin, Mary, ‘Alarming Crises/Enticing Possibilities - Political and Cultural Changes in Late Nineteenth-Century China’ in Late Imperial China, Vol. 29, 1 (Baltimore: 2008), pp. 40-44.
• Burton, Antoinette, Burdens of History: British Feminists, Indian Women, and Imperial Culture, 1865-1915, (Raleigh: 1994), pp. 207-212.
• Edgerton-Tarpley, Kathryn, Tears from Iron – Cultural Responses to Famine in Nineteenth Century China, (Berkeley: 2008), pp. 161-189.
• Edgerton-Tarpley, Kathryn, ‘The 'Feminization of Famine', the Feminization of Nationalism: Famine and Social Activism in Treaty-Port Shanghai, 1876-9’ in Social History, Vol. 30, No. 4, (London: 2005), pp. 421-443.
• Fuller, Pierre, ‘Decentring international and institutional famine relief in late nineteenth-century China: in search of the local’ in European Review of History: Revue européenne d'histoire, (London: 2015), Vol. 22, Iss. 6, pp. 873-889.
• Irish Times Archive, March 23rd, 1878, July 1878, and September 5th, 1878.
• Janku, Andrea, ‘The North-China Famine of 1876–79 – Performance and Impact of a Non-Event,’ in Measuring Historical Heat – Event, Performance and Impact in China and the West (Heidelberg, 2001), pp. 127-135.
• Le Constitutionnel, 17 January 1876, Available through the French National Library (https://www.bnf.fr/fr)
• Legge, Reverend Jas, The Famine in China: Illustrations by a Native Artist with a Translation of the Chinese Text, (London, 1878), pp. 1-36, Available at: https://visualizingcultures.mit.edu/tears_from_iron/famine_in_china/index.htm
• Martin, Amy E., ‘Victorian Ireland: Race and the Category of the Human’ in Victorian Review, Vol. 40, No. 1 (Baltimore: 2014), pp. 52-57.
• Ó Gráda, Cormac, Eating people is wrong, and other essays on famine, its past, and its future, (Princeton: 2015), pp. 1-23, 137-149.
• Reeves, Caroline, ‘Lost in Translation: Local Relief Provision and Historiographical Imperialism’, New Global Studies, Issue 2, (Berlin, 2018), pp. 277-292.
• Will, Pierre-Étienne, ‘Le stockage public des grains en Chine à l'époque des Qing (1644-1911) - Problèmes de gestion et problèmes de contrôle.’ In Annales. Economies, sociétés, civilisations. 38ᵉ année, N. 2, (Paris: 1983), pp. 259-278.
