19世纪中美应对大蝗灾的比较研究

A Comparative Study on the Great Locust Plague in China and America in the 19th Century

19世纪中后期,同一纬度带的中国与北美大陆几乎同期经历了罕见的大蝗灾,影响两国至深:发生于中国清咸丰年间的大蝗灾被列为近代十大灾荒之一,而美国的大蝗灾则颠覆了新移民者征服新土地的信念,从根本上改变了北美土地的农业垦殖方式。两国的蝗灾无论是从技术史的角度解析蝗害的除治,还是从社会学史探讨两国在蝗害发生、蝗害成因及蝗虫应对都有着显著的相似性,同时也体现了不同政治体制、文化背景下灾害应对的差异性。

In the late 19th century, China and North America, located in the same latitude, both experienced a rare locust plague at the same period and exerted great impacts on the two countries. The locust disaster in the reign of Emperor Xianfeng of China was classified as one of the Ten Modern famines, while the great locust plague in the United States subverted the new immigrants＇ belief of conquering the new North American land and fundamentally changed their ways of agricultural reclamation. There are obvious similarities in methods of wiping out locusts from the perpective of technological history, as well as cau-ses. prevention and solutions to locust plague from the perspective of sociological history, while there are also differences in the ways of coping with disasters un-der different political systems and cultural backgrounds.