Primary Sources

China, America and the Pacific
Manuscripts, rare printed sources, images, objects, and maps document the cultural and trading relationships that emerged between America, China, and the Pacific region between the 18th and early 20th centuries.
China: Culture and Society
Extremely rare pamphlets from Cornell University Library’s Charles W. Wason Collection on East Asia covering education, emigration, the foreign presence, missionaries, wars, rebellion, reform, opium, healthcare, and language.
Coverage: 1750 to 1929.
China: Trade, Politics and Culture 1793-1980
English-language original source material detailing China¹s interaction with the West. Provides insight into customs, events, and the monumental social and political upheaval that recreated China as a modern power.
Coverage: 1793-1980.
China and the Modern World
English-language monographs, manuscripts, periodicals, correspondence and letters, historical photos, ephemera, etc. on diplomacy/international relations, economy/trade, politics, Christianity, sinology, education, science and technology, imperialism, and globalization in China.
Coverage: 1817-1949.
East India Company
Executive papers and factory records of the East India Company charts the history of British trade with the East, politics, and the rise and fall of the British Empire.
Coverage: 1595 to 1947.
Foreign Office Files for China
Formerly restricted British diplomatic dispatches, letters, newspaper cuttings, maps, economic assessments, and synopses on leading Chinese personalities from the constant exchange of information between London and British diplomatic outposts in China. Provides unprecedented levels of detail into one of the most turbulent centuries of Chinese history
Coverage: 1919-1980.
Global Commodities: Trade, Exploration and Cultural Exchange
Visual, manuscript, and printed materials explore the history of fifteen key commodities that have been transported and consumed around the world for hundreds of years, transforming societies, global trading operations, habits of consumption, and cultural practices.
Coverage: 18th - 20th century.

Chinese Maritime Customs Service: The Customs’ Gazette, 1869-1913
The Customs’ Gazette, published by order of the Inspector General of Customs of China in Shanghai, provided quarterly reports on trade that were prepared and submitted by various custom houses based across the country. This statistical and narrative information provided the central Chinese government with an in-depth analysis on trade. But, the Gazette also provided insights into local and regional economic and social conditions, policing of customs and trade, and conditions at Treaty Ports.
The Minutes of the Shanghai Municipal Council, 1854-1943
his 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, such as sanitation, transportation, telecommunication and postal service, taxation, urban planning, gas supply, street lighting, rickshaw operator management, animal protection, and police system. The minutes taken from July 1854 to December 1906 are handwritten while the rest are typewritten.
Policing the Shanghai International Settlement, 1894-1945
The Customs’ Gazette, published by order of the Inspector General of Customs of China in Shanghai, provided quarterly reports on trade that were prepared and submitted by various custom houses based across the country. This statistical and narrative information provided the central Chinese government with an in-depth analysis on trade. But, the Gazette also provided insights into local and regional economic and social conditions, policing of customs and trade, and conditions at Treaty Ports.
Shanghai Municipal Council: The Municipal Gazette, 1908-1940
he Municipal Gazette provides a unique window into the workings of the Shanghai International Settlement during the period of revolution, the Republic, internationalization of Shanghai, national uprising, and world war.

Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS) Daily Reports
FBIS Daily Reports issued by the U.S. Government, includes translations of broadcasts, news agency transmissions, newspapers, periodicals, and government statements from nations around the world. Current coverage includes 1941-1996.
Making of the Modern World
Digital facsimile images of unique primary sources that track the development of the modern, western world through the lens of trade and wealth. History, political science, social conditions, technology and industry, economics, area studies, etc.
Coverage: 1450-1930.

MIT Visualizing Cultures (open access)
Collections of visual materials from early modern China and Japan, accompanied by scholarly essays. Particularly relevant to this class are the collections of paintings, prints, and photographs in the units “Rise and Fall of the Canton Trade system,” “the Garden of Perfect Brightness,” “the First Opium War,” “the Second Opium War,” “John Thomson’s China (photo albums 1873-74),” “Shanghai’s Lens on the News (Dianshizhai huabao 1884-98),” “Yellow Promise/Yellow Peril (foreign postcards of the Russo-Japanese War, 1904-05),” “Photography & Power in the Colonial Philippines (US conquest and occupation, 1898-1902),” “the Boxer Uprising,” and “the Empress Dowager and the Camera.”

Archives Unbound
Includes resources on Chinese History and US relations with East Asia and the Pacific world.
Gale Primary Sources
Newspapers, books, manuscripts, maps, and photographs. Simultaneously search: 17th-18th Century Burney Collection Newspapers, 19th Century U.S. Newspapers, Sunday Times (London), Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO), Making of the Modern World, Times Literary Supplement, and Times Digital Archive, Financial Times (London).
HeinOnline
Comprehensive legal research database. Extensive coverage of law reviews and historical access to resources such as the Federal Register, the Code of Federal Regulations, and US Supreme Court decisions. Legislative history and select foreign and international materials. Contains specialized libraries: intellectual property, taxation and economic reform, etc.
History Vault
Digitized materials, largely related to US history.
Proquest Congressional Publications
U.S. Congressional materials (hearings, bills, Congressional Record and compiled legislative histories) and Executive Branch documents.

Chinese Local Gazetteers database = 中國方志庫
Rare and special edition local gazetteers printed in China from ancient times to 1949. Included are gazetteers of jurisdictions, temples, mountains etc.
Access Note: Select from the Products and then click "Login." Exit required when leaving database.

Grand Secretariat Archives
Grand Secretariat Archives is a database that contains documents originally housed in the storerooms of the Grand Secretariat of the Qing dynasty (1644-1912). After 1949 these documents were kept at the Institute of History and Philology of Academia Sinica. The entire archive contains about 310,000 items. The collection, dating from the Ming dynasty to the Qing dynasty (1368-1912), encompasses a wide variety of subjects.

Scripta Sinica 漢籍全文資料庫
Full-text database for almost important classics, especially those related to Chinese history. Particularly, it Includes the Veritable Records (shilu), Collected Statutes (huidian), and the officially compiled histories of imperial China

MIT Visualizing Cultures
Collections of visual materials from early modern China and Japan, accompanied by scholarly essays. Particularly relevant to this class are the collections of paintings, prints, and photographs in the units “Rise and Fall of the Canton Trade system,” “the Garden of Perfect Brightness,” “the First Opium War,” “the Second Opium War,” “John Thomson’s China (photo albums 1873-74),” “Shanghai’s Lens on the News (Dianshizhai huabao 1884-98),” “Yellow Promise/Yellow Peril (foreign postcards of the Russo-Japanese War, 1904-05),” “Photography & Power in the Colonial Philippines (US conquest and occupation, 1898-1902),” “the Boxer Uprising,” and “the Empress Dowager and the Camera.”
The Kam Wah Chung collection (1880s-1940s)
Nearly 20,000 documents centering on Ing Hay, an immigrant traditional Chinese medical practitioner in John Day, Oregon from the 1880s to the 1940s. Of those, about 7,000 are written in traditional Cantonese Chinese. And of those, only a few hundred are translated to English. Comprising the document collection are personal and business letters, business records, accounts, Chinese and English books and newspapers, calendars, flyers, estate records, Chinese medical encyclopedias, medical books, secret society books, divination records and accounts, gambling records, receipts, Doc Hay’s medical formulas, patient records, cards and postcards, posters, checks, epigrams, prescriptions, and a variety of other miscellaneous items.

HathiTrust
Digitized collections of some of the nation’s great research libraries, established in this repository to archive and share their digital content.
Access Note: VU is a partner institution. Login is required for downloading. Tutorial: https://researchguides.library.vanderbilt.edu/HathiTrustAccess