Benevolence and Efficacy: A Genealogy of Famine Food Treatises

Jiuhuang bencao 救荒本草 (Materia Medica for Famine Relief or the Famine Herbal), originally published in 1406, was the first printed monograph about famine foods in China. The book listed 414 entries of edible plants, with naturalistic illustrations and detailed texts specifying their identification, nutrition, toxicity, and food processing, aiming to tell people how to utilize a wide range of edible plants in times of scarcity.

As a humanitarian project, the influence of Jiuhuang bencao on famine administration was remarkable. Many successive editions and derivative works were published in major cities across the empire during the Ming, from which debates on the principles of famine relief emerged: some diligent magistrates sponsored the printing as a pragmatic solution of current famines, with extra efforts to tailor the book for local usage; some believed that the dissemination of the famine herbal could be a complement to the established relief practices, and multiple sources of knowledge on famine foods should be consolidated; some editions were produced as a gesture of benevolence, although leaving the people on their own searching for food solutions were not morally and politically correct; there was also criticism on the exaggerated significance of this book, suggesting that an over expectation on the “self-reliance” of the commoners indicated the slack performance in famine administration. By the end of the Ming dynasty, the title was incorporated in Nongzheng quanshu 農政全書 (Complete Treatise on Agricultural Administration), thus became a key reference for famine policies.

I will give an overview of the prefaces and postscripts of all the later editions and derivative works of Jiuhuang bencao from the sixteenth to the seventeenth century, as well as comments from other sources of the same period, in order to show the divergent ideas on famine-coping strategies and governmental responsibilities.