Record of the Renshin Year Harbin Flood Disaster: Compiled by the Harbin Flood Relief and Reconstruction Committee, 1934

Description & Historical Context

Record of the Renshin Year Harbin Flood Disaster — 1934

An official documentary record of the great Harbin flood, compiled by the Harbin Flood Relief and Reconstruction Committee and published in 1934. The catastrophic inundation of the city by the Sungari river was among the defining disasters of the Northeast in the inter-war years, and this volume sets down the committee's own comprehensive account of its causes, course, and aftermath.

The work is organised into nine chapters that together form an exhaustive institutional record: the causes of the flood; the progress of the disaster; the drainage works; the relief of the afflicted population; the epidemic-prevention campaign; the measures taken to maintain public order; the relief funds; the losses sustained through the flood; and the reconstruction and rehabilitation enterprise. Few primary sources document a single urban disaster and its administrative response in such systematic depth.

As a first-hand record of catastrophe and recovery in Harbin, the volume is of substantial value to historians of the city, of disaster and public health, and of Northeast Asian urban administration. Official disaster reports of this kind were issued for institutional use and seldom preserved; surviving copies are accordingly uncommon.

A genuine institutional record of the period, well suited to a serious collection of Manchuria and Northeast Asian historical materials.

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