Geografie 2025, 130, 339-368
Drought, hunger, and migration: A retrospect of North China from the mid-18th century to the early 20th century
, Siyu Chen2,3, Rüdiger Glaser1, Xiuqi Fang4,5
1University of Freiburg, Institute of Environmental Social Sciences and Geography, Physical Geography, Freiburg, Germany
2University of Bern, Institute of Geography, Bern, Switzerland
3University of Bern, Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research, Bern, Switzerland
4Beijing Normal University, Faculty of Geographical Science, Beijing, China
5Beijing Normal University, Key Laboratory of Environmental Change and Natural Disaster of Chinese Ministry of Education, Beijing, China
Received March 2025
Accepted August 2025
Given the limited knowledge about the dynamics of the drought-migration nexus with social change, this study revisited the extreme droughts of 1743, 1877, and 1920 CE in North China based on multiple written sources and compared the characteristics of climate-related migration at different stages of sociocultural transformation between the mid-18th and early 20th centuries. It was found that the pathway of precipitation deficits → harvest failure → famine → migration was always strictly followed, revealing low precipitation and fleeing hunger as the initial trigger and root motivation for climate-related migration, while changes in management and transport changed the size and distance of the migration along the abovementioned pathway by influencing the possibility and necessity of moving. Additionally, a broader comparison including the outstanding droughts of 1911 and 1921 in Germany suggests that ensuring individual/household food consumption security was a core task for minimizing drought-induced migration.
Funding
This work was supported by the China Scholarship Council, grant No. 202106040016.
