利之所倚,患之所伏——试论西汉中后期的水利与水患

A Double-edged Sword: Advantages and Disadvantages of Water Conservancy Construction in the Middle and Late Western Han Dynasty

西汉中后期王朝渐入强盛,迎来了全国性水利建设的一个高峰期。水利事业兴起,一定程度上缓解了当时的经济、政治危机,而积渐所致,水利工程背后引发的河患频仍,同样迫使帝国行政艰难应对,二者相互交织成为鲜明的时代刻画。水利与河患之间的利患分析,为我们揭示出制度性短视这一早期帝国行政特点。

With the growing power, and with long-term stability and prosperity during the middle and later period of Western Han Dynasty, the zeal for construction of water conservancy across the nation also mounts to a pitch. The boom of building water projects may temporally ease the economic and political crisis to some extent, but at a later stage these projects unexpectedly turn to the source of troublesome frequent floods, which are like plague hard for government to tackle. The alternation between the benefits of water projects and the hazards like floods is the one of the distinctive characteristics of that age. After a series of analyses above, it indicates that there exists obvious system design deficiency in the early period of Western Han Dynasty.