Primary sources for humanities: Asia

Scroll down to the 'by archive' dropdown to search one archive. The series covers a period of about 180 years (1800s to 1980s) when China experienced radical and often traumatic transformations from an inward-looking imperial dynasty into a globally engaged republic. Consisting of monographs, manuscripts, periodicals, correspondence and letters, historical photos, ephemera, and other kinds of historical documents, these collections provide comprehensive primary source materials for understanding the various aspects of China during the 19th and 20th centuries. [Part 1: Missionary, sinology and literary periodicals. -- Part 2: Records of the Maritime Customs Service of China 1854–1949. -- Part 3. Diplomacy and political secrets, 1869-1900. -- Part 4. Hong Kong, Britain and China, 1841-1951.-- Part 5. Imperial China & the West: Part I, 1815-1881. -- Part 6. Imperial China and the West. Part II, 1865-1905.]

The establishment in 1837 of the Presbyterian Church's Board of Foreign Missions signalled the beginning of a worldwide missionary operation destined to embrace some fifteen countries in four different continents The records offered here provide information on social conditions in China and on efforts to spread the gospel during the nineteenth century. These are records mainly of incoming correspondence from the mission field and outgoing correspondence from the Board headquarters.

The records offered here provide information on social conditions in Siam (renamed Thailand in 1948) and on efforts to spread the gospel during the nineteenth century. Documenting the church's educational, evangelical, and medical work, these are records mainly of incoming correspondence from the mission field and outgoing correspondence from the Board headquarters.

The Pan Pacific and Southeast Asia Womens Association was founded in 1930 to strengthen international understanding and friendship among the women of Asia and the Pacific and women of the U.S.A. The group promoted cooperation among women of these regions for the study and improvement of social, economic, and cultural conditions, and engaged in studies on Asian and Pacific affairs. The collection is sourced from the Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, USA.

This collection replicates all the minutes of meetings held by the Board of Directors of the Shanghai Municipal Council from July 1854 to December 1943. A wide range of topics were discussed at these board meetings from sanitation, transportation, telecommunication and postal service, to taxation, urban planning, gas supply and so forth. During the period covered by these minutes, Shanghai, as a treaty port, transformed from a traditional small coastal town into a trade centre of China and eventually an international metropolis that nurtured many of China’s and even the world’s modern industrial and commercial businesses.

This resource brings together manuscript, printed and visual primary source materials for the study of 'Empire' and its theories, practices and consequences. The materials span across the last five centuries and are accompanied by a host of secondary learning resources including scholarly essays, maps and an interactive chronology.

This collection provides researchers with six rare English-language journals, five of which were founded by Western missionaries in the Far East in the 19th century, covering a wide range of topics such as East-West communication, Christianity in China and other parts of Asia, and China's political, economic, and cultural landscape.

These files represent a large portion of the archives of the British-run municipal police force based in Shanghai's former international settlement. The special branch of the Shanghai Municipal Police was charged with providing an orderly environment for Shanghai's foreign trade and commerce. Carrying out its duties required the timely gathering of information on areas of potential instability that might threaten Shanghai's economic development and political calm. This branch's prime responsibilities were collecting intelligence on political demonstrations, strikes, labor and social unrest, foreign and domestic subversive activities, and areas of dispute between the international settlement and the Chinese government.

This collection of digitized primary sources provides access to more than 150 years of the longest-established association dedicated to the furtherance of anthropology in its broadest sense, the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland. This collection of association files, manuscripts, and photos documents the history of the association as well as the services it provided to contemporary anthropology and anthropologists. It is a collection of Wiley Digital Archives.

The Municipal Gazette provides a unique window into the workings of the Shanghai International Settlement (SMC) during the period of revolution, the Republic, internationalization of Shanghai, national uprising, and world war. The SMC was founded in July 1854 by a group of Western businessmen to govern the daily operation and infrastructure of the Shanghai International Settlement. By the mid-1880s, the Council had become a practical monopoly over the city’s businesses. The SMC was dissolved on December 17, 1943.

Socialism on Film is a comprehensive collection of documentaries, newsreels and features that reveals the world as seen by Soviet, Chinese, Vietnamese, East European, British and Latin American filmmakers. It ranges from the early twentieth century to the 1980s. Sourced from the archives of the British Film Institute (BFI), the collection consists of films produced almost exclusively in the communist world and later versioned into English for distribution in the West. The films have been conserved, digitised from the original reels, and are fully transcribed and searchable. The three modules are: 1. Wars and revolutions. 2. Newsreels and magazines. 3. Culture and society.

Database of material relating to the history of North American trade and cultural exchange with China and the Far East, focusing on the 18th and 19th centuries. Sourced from American and Canadian libraries, the resource documents this topic with manuscripts, rare printed sources, visual images, objects and maps.

Database of Church Missionary Society, South American Missionary Society, and Church of Zenana Missionary Society publications. Module 1 contains periodicals published from the early 19th century up until the 21st century. Module 2 presents the medical journals, the periodicals of the Asian missions, and the Historical Record of the Church Missionary Society and the Church of England Zenana Missionary Society.

Edward Sylvester Morse (1838-1925) was one of the first Americans to live in Japan. His archive provides a comprehensive insight into the culture and society of Meiji Japan. In addition to preserving the household records of a samurai family and many accounts of the tea ceremony, Morse made notes on subjects as diverse as shop signs, fireworks, hairpins, agricultural tools, to household construction, art and architecture. Morse devoted much of his life to the task of documenting life in Japan before it was transformed by Western modernization. The records also cover his work at the Imperial University of Tokyo where he taught science and was Chair of Zoology. He was a crucial figure in the initial engagement between Japan and America and his papers are also important for relations between East Asia and America in the first decades of the twentieth century.

The Modern Newspaper in China database includes hundreds of historical newspapers that were published between 1840 and 1949, at both national and local levels. The newspapers are full-text searchable, and support article or compete page downloads, including different local editions, such as Sao Dang Bao, Guilin and Kunming editions.

This database offers a wide-ranging archive of articles published by Xinhua, or New China News Agency, the official organ of China’s Communist Party. From 1946 to 1996, a U.S. government organization that became part of the CIA monitored, collected, and translated into English thousands of articles distributed by the Xinhua news agency to state-run media outlets. From the rise of Mao Zedong to the Korean War, China’s Cultural Revolution to America’s Civil Rights Movement, Propaganda and the Chinese Press allows users to see some of the 20th century’s most significant events through the eyes of China’s Communist leaders.

The Wiley Digital Archives: Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) collection includes materials from the society’s library, as well as its extensive archival and map collection. Hundreds of thousands of manuscript maps are complemented by manuscript material, fieldnotes, correspondence, drawings, pamphlets, atlases, gazetteers, and a range of other published and unpublished material. The archive sheds light on the impact of geographical science on history, exploration, colonialism, and diplomatic policies, as well as natural resources, cultural studies, anthropology, and ethnography.

This digital archive currently includes 150,000 pages of conference proceedings, reports of international women's organizations, publications and web pages of women's non-governmental organizations, and letters, diaries, and memoirs of women active internationally since the mid-nineteenth century. It also includes photographs and videos of major events and activists in the history of women's international social movements. There are also 25-30 essays exploring themes illuminated by the primary documents in the archive commissioned from leading contemporary scholars. The primary source material illuminates how women’s international organizations have focused on issues related to peace, poverty, child labor, literacy, disease prevention, and global inequality.

This collection contains un-catalogued pamphlets about communism, socialism, and class struggle. The pamphlets are global in scope, although they are all in English unless otherwise noted. The bulk of the collection originates from China and Soviet Russia during the post-WWII period, although Cuba and Britain are strongly represented as well. These materials include a selection of translated speeches from Mao Zedong, as well as Joseph Stalin, Vyacheslav Molotov, and other prominent Soviet policy-makers from the era. Also included are Cuban communist pamphlets from the late 1950s, as well as a small selection of pamphlets published in Britain during the late 1930s and early 1940s concerning class struggle and working conditions for laborers.

This collection comprises correspondence, studies and reports, cables, maps, etc. related to U.S. consular activities. The Dutch East Indies experienced the replacement of company rule by Dutch government rule and the complete transformation of Java into a colonial society and the successful extension of colonial rule to Sumatra and the eastern archipelago during the early 20th century. The boundaries of the modern state of Indonesia were defined during this time and the process of generally exploitative political, military, and economic integration began.

From sixteenth-century origins as a trading venture to the East Indies, through to its rise as the world’s most powerful company and de facto ruler of India, to its demise amid allegations of greed and corruption, the East India Company was an extraordinary force in global history for three centuries. This digital resource allows access a vast collection of primary source documents from the India Office Records held by the British Library, the single most important archive for the study of the East India Company. From before the Company’s charter in 1600 to Indian independence in 1947, the East India Company resource tells the story of trade with the East, politics, and the rise and fall of the British Empire.
Modules subscribed:
Module 1: Trade, Governance and Empire, 1600-1947
Module 2: Factory Records for South Asia and South-East Asia
Module 4: Correspondence: Early Voyages, Formation and Conflict
Module 5: Correspondence: Domestic Life, Governance and Territorial Expansion

Five users at a time
This database contains over 300 Chinese periodicals titles published during 1833-1911. From a wide range of subjects, including Chinese history, politics, literature, arts, culture, and social sciences, these were among the earliest journal publications in Chinese, documenting the major events at that time, including the events shortly before the 1911 Chinese Revolution. In addition, the Supplementary Series includes over 200 periodicals containing more than 250,000 documents. This series enhances the uniqueness and completeness of the Late Qing dynasty periodical full-text database, and also provides rare and valuable materials for the study of modern China.

Database of digitised materials, offering an array of Western perspectives and sources on China and Southeast Asia and spanning several centuries, from the first British mission to China in 1792-1794 through to the mid 20th century. Highlights include: British government records covering economic development in China and its neighbours, 1950-1980; Correspondence from the Macartney Embassy, the first British diplomatic mission to China, 1892-94; The diaries, notebooks and published writings of Rewi Alley (1897-1987), New Zealand educator and industrial organiser in communist China.

This resource brings together manuscript, printed and visual primary source materials for the study of global commodities in world history. The commodities featured in this resource have been transported, exchanged and consumed around the world for hundreds of years. They helped transform societies, global trading operations, habits of consumption and social practices.

Drawing upon the manuscript collections of the National Library of Scotland, this searchable online resource provides access to digital facsimiles of diaries and journals, official and private papers, letters, sketches, paintings and original Indian documents containing histories and literary works. The collection documents the relationship between Britain and India in an empire where the Scots played a central role as traders, generals, missionaries, viceroys, governor-generals and East India Company officials. The dates of the documents range from 1710 to 1937.