AM Primary Sources: East Asian Studies - China Studies

The primary source explores the cultural and trading relationships that emerged between America, China and the Pacific region between the 18th and early 20th centuries. Content types collected in the datbase include ship logs, diaries, correspondence, account books, other shipping and commercial company records, catalogs of trade goods, and other records of prices.

This database contains rarely seen pamphlets from the Wason Pamphlet Collection at Cornell University. These pamphlets published between c.1750 and 1929 make up one of the most extensive collections of literature on China and the Chinese in the Western world. Types of material include speeches, annual reports, catalogues, guides, lecture notes, letters, magazine, and more.

Offers rich English-language sources relating to China and the West for the period of 1793-1980. Based on sources from the School of Oriental and African Studies and the British Library, London, the database includes disparate sources from visual images to papers of missionaries to records of diplomatic envoys that reflect Chinese history during the two centuries of monumental social and political upheaval that ultimately recreated China into a modern power.

Covers 500 years of the rise and fall of empires, this features a wide variety of material, including exploration journals & logs; correspondence; periodicals; diaries; government papers; missionary papers; travel writing; slave papers; memoirs; fiction; children's adventure stories; folk tales; exhibition catalogs; maps; marketing posters; photographs; and illustrations, with many in color.

From the British National Archives, this digital collection consists of British Foreign Office (FO) files covering the period 1949-1980. It addresses a crucial period in Chinese history, from the foundation of the Peoples Republic in 1949, to the death of Zhou Enlai and Mao Zedong, the arrest of the Gang of Four, and the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1976.

These files, combining eye-witness accounts, weekly and monthly summaries, annual reviews, reports and analyses with a synthesis of newspaper articles and conference reports, allow scholars and researchers the opportunity to examine developments in China and to assess US, Soviet, British, European and Commonwealth relations with China (including Hong Kong and Taiwan), from 1949 onwards.