AM Primary Sources: East Asian Studies

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.

India Office Records from the British Library, London, containing royal charters, correspondence, trading diaries, minutes of council meetings and reports of expeditions, among other primary sources documenting the history of British trade and rule in the Indian subcontinent and beyond from 1599 to 1947. Includes Factory Records for South Asia, South-East Asia, China, Japan, and the Middle East.

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.

British Government documents dealing with Japan in the interwar period, during Word War II and during subsequent American occupation. Sourced from the FO 371 and FO 262 series at The National Archives, UK, in addition to a selection of FO 371 Far Eastern General sub-series, and Western and American Department papers.

Socialism on Film is a collection of documentaries, newsreels and features from Soviet, Chinese, Vietnamese, East European, British and Latin American filmmakers, sourced from the British Film Institute, and covering the period from the Russian Revolution to the 1980s. The collection consists of films produced almost exclusively in the communist world and later versioned into English for distribution in the West.