Chinese Studies Resources - by type

Also known as the Declassified Documents Reference Service. These Digital collections of historical material on many topics include manuscripts, printed books and periodicals, and government documents. The material comes from the U.S. National Archives, the U.K. National Archives, and many other libraries and archives. East Asian topics include:

East Asia

• Earl George Macartney Collection - (letters, journals, logbooks 1792-1794)
• Papers of Sir Ernest Mason Satow (1843-1929)
• 19th Century English-Language Journals from the Far East
• European Colonialism in the Early 20th Century: German Colonies in Asia and the Pacific: From Colonialism to Japanese Mandates (1910-1929)
• Records of the Far Eastern Commission (1945-1952)

China

Religion

• Evangelism in China: Correspondence of the Board of Foreign Missions, (1837-1911)
• The Chinese Recorder and the Protestant Missionary Community in China (1867-1941)
• Papers of American Missionaries to Asia: Missionaries associated with Fujian and Taiwan (1889-1976)
• Papers of American Missionaries to Asia: Jay C. and Lucile C. Oliver and YMCA China (1905-1979)
• Papers of American Missionaries to Asia: Arthur M. Guttery and YMCA China (1919-1981)

Chinese Maritime Customs

• Chinese Maritime Customs Service Publications (1859-1948)
• Chinese Maritime Customs Service: The Customs’ Gazette (1869-1913)
• Service Lists and Reports of the Chinese Maritime Customs Service and Whangpoo Conservancy Board (1890-1943)

Shanghai

• Shanghai International Settlement: Urban Planning and Development (1845-1948)
• Minutes of the Shanghai Municipal Council (1854-1943)
• Policing the Shanghai International Settlement (1894-1945)
• Shanghai Municipal Council: The Municipal Gazette (1908-1942)

• Papers of Old Shanghai: Societies and Clubs (1860s to 1940s)
• Papers of Old Shanghai: Press, Education, Healthcare, and Charity (1863-1949)
• Papers of Old Shanghai: Business, Banking, and Insurance (1870s-1940s)
• Papers of Old Shanghai: Social Shanghai (1906–1912)
• Papers of Old Shanghai: Miscellanies (1920s-1940s)

International Politics

• Papers of British Consulates and Legation in China (1722-1951)
• Political Relations Between China, the U.S. and Other Countries (1910-1929)
• German Foreign Relations and Military Activities in China (1919-1935)
• Political, Economic, and Military Conditions in China: Reports and Correspondence of the U.S. Military Intelligence Division (1918-1941)
• China: Records of the U.S. Department of State (1930-1939)
• China: Records of the U.S. Department of State (1940-1944)
• Country Intelligence Reports on China (1941-1961)
• Records of the U.S. Information Service in China: Chinese Press Reviews and Summaries (1944-1950)
• General George C. Marshall's Mission to China (1945-1947)
• China: Records of the U.S. Department of State (1945-1949)
• Chinese Civil War and U.S.-China Relations: Records of the U.S. State Department's Office of Chinese Affairs (1945-1955)
• Records of US State Department’s Division of Chinese Affairs (1944-1961)
• Subject Files of US State Department’s Office of the Republic of China Affairs (1951-1978)
• Tiananmen Square and U.S.-China relations (1989-1993)

Economics

• Economic Cooperation Administration’s Relief Mission in Post-War China (1946-1948)
• Records of the National Council for United States-China Trade (1973-1983)

Biographic Material

• Norman Bethune Papers (1911-2000)
• FBI File on Owen Lattimore

Japan

Religion

• Evangelism in Japan: Correspondence of the Board of Foreign Missions (1859-1911)

International Politics

• Political Relations and Conflict between Republican China and Imperial Japan: Records of the U.S. State Department (1930-1939)
• Japan: Records of the U.S. Department of State Relating to Political Relations (1930-1939)
• Japan: Records of the U.S. Department of State Relating to Political Relations (1940-1944)
• Japan: Records of the U.S. Department of State Relating to Political Relations (1945-1949)
• Country Intelligence Reports on Japan (1941-1961)
• Japan at War and Peace : U.S. State Department Records on the Internal Affairs of Japan (1930-1949)
• Japan: U.S. Naval Technical Mission (1945-1946)
• Japan and Korea: Summation of Nonmilitary Activities (1945-1948)
• Records of the Far Eastern Commission (1945-1952)
• Japan: Records of the U.S. Department of State (1950-1959)

Japanese American Internment

• Japanese-American Relocation Camp Newspapers: Perspectives on Day-to-Day Life
• Japanese American Internment: Records of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library
• Final Accountability Rosters of Japanese-American Relocation Centers (1944-1946)

Economics

• Japan: Records of the U.S. Department of State Relating to Commercial Relations (1910-1949)
• Japan: Records of the U.S. Department of State Relating to Commercial Relations (1950-1963)
• Japan-U.S. Economic Relations Group Records (1979-1981)

Korea

• Evangelism in Korea: Correspondence of the Board of Foreign Missions (1884-1911)
• Korea: Records of the U.S. Department of State (1930-1963)
• Country Intelligence Reports on Korea (1941-1961)
• Japan and Korea: Summation of Nonmilitary Activities (1945-1948)

CADAL (China Academic Digital Associative Library) is a government-sponsored cooperative project of some 120+ academic libraries (2020), about half of which are from China, to create electronic resources for the use of their patrons. The venture is led by and housed in Zhejiang University, and most major Chinese academic institutions such as Peking, Qinghua, Fudan and Nanjing universities were participants from the beginning. CADAL originally grew out of a China-American Digital Academic Library venture, but only from the mid-2010s  a select group of overseas libraries have received access.

The major resource created by CADAL is a collection of scanned books, both in and out of copyright: 240 thousand ancient texts (including the Xuxiu siku quanshu 续修四库全书), 180 thousand republican works, 155 thousand republican periodical issues, 40 thousand newspaper issues, 800 thousand post-1949 books, 690 thousand works in Western languages, 13 thousand special collection works, 4 thousand videos, 55 thousand audiobooks and 63 thousand images. The collection is constantly increasing. The titles are not full-text searchable; but tables of contents are provided for easy navigation. Lately CADAL has added some special sections for material connected to the Manchuria Railway 满铁 13 thousand titles, modern local gazetteers 17 thousand, material on overseas Chinese 侨批 50 thousand items, and oracle bones from various institutions including from Princeton scanned with Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI) technology.

(In addition to the e-books database, the navigation bar also gives access to some other resources: calligraphic works (shufa 书法), a literary timeline (Zhongguo wenxue biannian shi 中国文学编年史), Chinese medicine (zhongyiyao 中医药), and Audio (yinpinku 音频库). Note that the video choice, available only in English, brings one to the main e-books database.)

Access to the books is dependent on the copyright status of the book: while some free access is available, especially to the ancient texts, access to in-copyright books is restricted to registered users at participant libraries: one borrows parts of books, which need to be returned in order to have them become available to other users. Hence, one first has to register (zhuce 注册), and in subsequent visits to log-in (denglu 登录). For this please select 登录/注册 from the upper right of the CADAL home page. To register then click on 快速注册. Please note that it is not necessary to add a mobile phone number 手机号 in order to the register and it is also not necessary to retrieve a verification code if one does not want to connect the personal account to a Chinese mobile phone number. The registration process can be soley finished via a valid email. After registration, the system will ask for an affiliation at the first login. Please choose IP range and select “Princeton University” as your affiliation (suozai danwei 所在单位). The system will connect your account to Princeton for 180 days. For this to work you must be either using the system from a university computer (including within the library), or access the database via the library link at the top of this database description.

Activities one performs when logged-in, including borrowing books, note-taking etc., are visible to all users from search pages etc.: hence, make sure to log-out especially on shared public computers. One is not logged out automatically, even not after days. To log-out, go to one’s personal account page (registeredname’s CADAL in the English, registeredname的CADAL in the Chinese interface), and click on tuichu 推 出. This account page is available in the top navigation bar, and is also the page from where one returns  books, see one’s borrowing history, etc.  (One can choose to set the interface to English, but only a limited number of top-level screens have been translated.)

Once logged in, and directed to one’s account page, one can perform a simple search in the search box. On the resulting page, one can somewhat refine one’s search by limiting the result to title or author, and by selecting some rough facets of categories (such as ancient books or republican-period books—note that all categories are listed, even if not applicable), tags (biaoqian  标签 ) or publisher.
Under a cover image of each result, one can choose to see more details on the book, or decide to read it by clicking on the book. If choosing to read it, one is brought to a reader interface where one can display the table of contents, navigate forward and backward within a book, and change the display from one page to two pages at a time and vice versa. Printing (by right-clicking, one page at a time) does not work very well—it may be better to take screen shots.

Depending on the copyright status of the book, one will receive a request after viewing a couple of pages to check out the remainder of the chapter (jieyue 借阅). One receives a message that borrowing was successful (if the item was not borrowed by someone else), and can continue to read.

To return the chapter to the CADAL library, navigate to the borrowing page (jieyue in the top navigation bar), where one can see the status of one’s checking in-and-out. Click, if not yet selected, on the weihuan 未还button, and then return chapters by clicking on guihuan 归还 after each chapter one has checked out. And remember to log-out (also possible from this page.)

One can look at one’s notes, tags, comments, messages etc.  from the navigation bar, and there may be recommendations listed based upon one’s readings.

This database is based mainly, but not exclusively, upon the holdings of the Library of the School for Oriental and African Studies and the British Library. It consists of all kinds of English-language textual and visual sources relating to China and the West, with key documents relating to the Chinese Maritime Customs service, letters, diaries, color paintings, maps, drawings, photographs, and fully searchable missionary periodicals such as the Chinese Recorder. Important subjects treated include the Amherst and Macartney embassies, the Opium, Boxer, Russo-Japanese and Sino-Japanese wars, events such as the Taiping Rebellion, and the Rape of Nanking, and the missionary movements.

On the Chinese mainland publishers have over the years preferred to publish large collections of primary and secondary print material. At the East Asian Library, we try to give access to the contents of these sets by adding searchable content note fields and scanning table of contents pages that we add to the catalog record, but for many large sets it is not possible to add all the information in a way that would allow easy searching. The Chinese Big Set Table of Contents database tries to address this problem. It provides searchable indexes for 2,500 large sets of from 130 different publishers from mainland China. The covered book sets were published 1985-present, but the database is most comprehensive for 2015-present. The table of contents (ToC) information can be searched and the ToCs can be downloaded in PDF format.

A discovery service for full-text cross-database searching in a number of East Asian Studies databases and full-text searching in printed books.

Note: Not all databases covered in this search engine are currently subscribed to by Princeton. The title list below shows titles that Princeton has access to (in green), database for which Princeton currently uses other providers than the ones linked from Crossasia ITR (in orange), and database currently not available in Princeton (in red).

Please use the grey “Provider Link” to gain direct access to the content from the search results. Direct access will only be available for databases currently subscribed to by Princeton. The direct links will only work on campus and via VPN. Princeton NetID is not supported!

The system currently includes:

Adam Matthew - China America Pacific
Adam Matthew - China Trade & Politics
Adam Matthew - Foreign Office Files China & Japan
Adam Matthew - Meiji Japan (only metadata)
Airusheng - Local Gazetteer (1, 2)
Brill - The Japan Chronicle (1902-1940)
Brill - Mobilizing East Asia (1931-1954)
Brill - North China Daily News
Brill - North China Herald
Brill - North China Standard (1919-1927)
Diaolong - Classical Works of Japan
Diaolong - Daozang jiyao
Diaolong - Dunhuang shiliao
Diaolong - Gujin tushu jicheng
Diaolong - Qingdai shiliao
Diaolong - Sibu congkan
Diaolong - Sibu beiyao
Diaolong - Siku quanshu
Dioalong - Yongle dadian
Diaolong - Xuxiu Siku quanshu
Diaolong – Zhengton Daozang
Diaolong – Zhongguo Fangzhi yiji
Diaolong – Zhongguo Fangzhi xuji
East View - China Comprehensive Gazetteers
Gale - China and the Modern World: Records of the Maritime Customs Service of China (1854-1949)
Gale - Missionary, Sinology, and Literary Periodicals (1817-1949)
Renmin Ribao
SBB digital: Asian language collection (selection)
SBB digital: Western language Asia collection
Ta Kung Pao 大公報 (1902-1949)
Ariti - eBooks (Princeton can acquire individual titles upon request)
Brill - The Chinese Student Monthly (1906-1931)
CNKI - eBooks (Princeton can acquire individual titles upon request)
Fulltext search in print books (links to catalog of the State Library Berlin)
Adam Matthew - Area Studies: China and Southeast Asia (content mostly available in microform)
Adam Matthew - Area Studies: Japan (content mostly available in microform)
ISEAS Publishing - Asian Studies eBooks
NLC - Early Twentieth Century Chinese Books (1912-1949) (Many titles available in Princeton via CADAL)

The newly developed Digital Library of Qing Archives of the National Palace Museum (NPM) in Taibei integrates the former Grand Council Archives Database = 清代宮中檔奏摺及軍機處檔摺件, the Qing Historical Figures Database = 大清國史人物列傳及史館檔傳包傳稿資料庫, and the Index to Qing Archival Volumes Database = 清代文獻檔冊目錄資料庫 as well as other holdings of Qing archives at the NPM. The new database is free and does no longer require usernames and passwords. For their own convenience users can create a free account to use further options like tracking their search history. High-resolution images of the documents are available in three different formats (JPEG, PDF, IIIF) for browsing and in the case of PDF for downloading.

The database may be searched by responsible official, title, matter and document number. The Qing Palace Memorials are the zouzhe memorials directly sent from a local official to the emperor, which were kept, after the emperor made his decisions, at court; a copy was made for the Grand Council Archives. Dates of the decisions, plus original accompanying material, was kept with the copy for the latter office, not with the former originals. The database also functions as a Qing biographical database, based upon 10-plus biographical compilations, for those individuals having submitted memorials.

Part of the database are material used by the Guoshiguan to prepare biographies planned to be included in the Qingshi to be compiled later, held at the NPM. They include the so-called biographical packages (zhuanbao), biographical drafts (zhuangao), and the biographies presented to the court, the Jinchengben Da Qing guo shi ren wu lie zhuan. The biographical packages contain a wide variety of notes, texts, obituaries, memorials, chronologies, memorials, nianpu, even collected writings and other material; 3,536 such packages are included. The 8,384 drafts included are in various stages of compilation, of which only the very the last stage are those made for the Qingshigao. The 2,726 volumes of biographies presented at court to the emperor are official bound biographies of officials of specific ranks. A few are in Manchu.

Alternative Access:

With this system the NPM offers an alternative system for searching through its Qing archives holdings, rare books, and historical maps.

Below are listed the modules of the ProQuest Digital National Security Archive that are related to East Asia:

China

• US Intelligence and China: Collection, Analysis, and Covert Action, 1945-2010
• China and the United States: From Hostility to Engagement, 1960–1998

Japan

• Japan and the United States: Diplomatic, Security, and Economic Relations, Part I, 1960–1976
• Japan and the U.S.: Diplomatic, Security, and Economic Relations, Part II: 1977–1992
• Japan and the United States: Diplomatic, Security, and Economic Relations, Part III, 1961–2000

Korea

• The United States and The Two Koreas, 1969–2000
• The United States and the Two Koreas, Part II: 1969–2010

Diplomacy and Political Secrets comprises over 4,000 China-related historical documents selected from the following India Office Records: the Political and Secret Department Records, the Burma Office records, and the Records of the Military Department. These documents consist of manuscripts and monographs in the form of reports, memoranda, correspondence, pamphlets and official publications, intelligence diaries, accounts of political and scientific expeditions, travel diaries, handbooks and maps, reflecting the security concerns of British India regarding the frontier regions of China bordering British India (Xinjiang, Tibet, and Yunnan.) They range from 1869 through the cooperation between China and Britain during WWII.

The database "Foreign Office Files for China, 1919-1980" contains complete digitized images of all British Foreign Office files dealing with China, Hong Kong and Taiwan during published during the period 1919-1980. There are six subsections: 1919-1929: Kuomintang, CCP and the Third International; 1930-1937: The Long March, civil war in China and the Manchurian Crisis; 1938-1948: Open Door, Japanese war and the seeds of Communist victory; 1949-1956: The Communist revolution; 1957-1966: The Great Leap Forward; and 1967-1980: The Cultural Revolution.

This database contains full text images of hundreds of thousands of government documents from the Ming and Qing dynasties. The database may be searched by responsible official, title, matter and document number.  It is produced by the Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica, Taiwan. To login please click “licensed usage” 授權使用 on the entry website of the database.

Below are listed the modules of the ProQuest History Vault database that are related to East Asia:

CIA Cold War Research Reports and Records on Communism in China and Eastern Europe, 1917-1976
This module consists of two major series of records: CIA Research Reports from 1946–1976 and records collected by Raymond Murphy on Communism in China and Eastern Europe from 1917–1958. Beginning in 1946 with reports of the CIA's predecessor, the Central Intelligence Group; The module includes reports on security, international questions, and biographical reports (including profiles of relatively unknown leaders). The Murphy Collection provides information on war recovery efforts, international aid, and the formation of countries and substantial information on the Chinese Communist Party.

Confidential U.S. State Department and Diplomatic Post Special Files, Asia, 1945–1966
Contains documents State Department officials considered too sensitive or important to forward to the general Central Files. The set of State Department and Diplomatic Post records covers the U.S. occupation of Japan following World War II, development of postwar Japan, the San Francisco Peace Conference of 1951, and economic conditions in Japan; the Korean War, peace negotiations, U.S.-Korea relations, and the rebuilding of South Korea after the end of fighting in the Korean War; military and economic relations between Japan, Korea, and the U.S. in the 1950s.

Confidential U.S. State Department Central Files, Asia, 1960–1969
These modules collects exclusively those U.S. State Department Central Files that have not been microfilmed by the National Archives: special reports on political and military affairs; studies and statistics on socioeconomic matters; interviews and minutes of meetings with foreign government officials; court proceedings and other legal documents; cables sent and received by U.S. diplomatic personnel; reports and translations from foreign journals and newspapers; and countless translations of high-level foreign government documents. The countries covered in this module are: China, Far East (general), Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Laos, Philippine Republic, and Vietnam.

Immigration: Records of the INS, 1880–1930
The files cover Asian immigration, especially Japanese and Chinese migration, to California, Hawaii, and other states.

Japanese American Incarceration: Records of the War Relocation Authority, 1942–1946
The Records of the War Relocation Authority document the day-to-day running of the relocation camps from 1942–1946. The collection is organized by relocation center.

A collection of documents from the British Colonial Office on colonial Hong Kong, providing detailed information on the political, military, social, economic, and external development of Hong Kong in the context of modern China, the British Empire in Asia, and the international politics of East Asia.

Textual Analysis Tools allow for the identification and visualization of patterns, trends, and relationships, while the applied HTR (Handwritten Text Recognition) allows handwritten documents to be full-text searchable.

Digitized in two parts from the FO 17 series of British Foreign Office Files held at the UK National Archives, Part 1 of Imperial China and the West provides General Correspondence relating to China from 1815–1905. The FO 17 series provides a vast and significant resource for researching every aspect of Anglo-Chinese relations during the nineteenth century, ranging from diplomacy and war, to trade, piracy, riots and rebellions within China, international law, treaty ports and informal empire, transnational emigration, and translation. The files provide archival sources which cover the Canton System, the Opium Wars of 1839–1842 and 1856–1860, and the presence of Britain and other foreign powers in China in the 19th century. The hand-written documents of FO 17 have been processed with Handwritten Text Recognition (HTR) technology, as well as item-level information drawn from the Foreign Office Indexes in series FO 605.

A detailed review of this database and its content is available from the Journal of East Asian Libraries https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2809&context=jeal.

Even though this free database by the Institute of Modern History of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences is mainly focused on the Sino-Japanese War and Sino-Japanese relations, it gives access to a wide range of resources from the Republican Period. These include archives, books, newspapers, journals, communist publications, audio recordings, photographs and even musical scores. Reading access is free.

Also known as the Declassified Documents Reference Service. These Digital collections of historical material on many topics include manuscripts, printed books and periodicals, and government documents. The material comes from the U.S. National Archives, the U.K. National Archives, and many other libraries and archives. East Asian topics include:

East Asia

• Missionary Files: Methodist Episcopal Church Missionary Correspondence, 1846-1912 (China, Japan, Korea)
• Missionary Files: Methodist Episcopal Church Missionary Correspondence, 1846-1912 (China, Japan, Korea)
• Missionary Files: Methodist Episcopal Church Missionary Correspondence, 1912-1949 (China, Japan, Korea) Missionary Files:
• Methodist Episcopal Church Missionary Correspondence, 1912-1949 (China, Japan, Korea)
• Despatches from U.S. Consuls in Singapore, Straits Settlements, 1833-1906 

China

• Despatches from U.S. Ministers to China, 1843-1906
• Despatches from U.S. Consuls in Amoy, China, 1844-1906
• Despatches from U.S. Consuls in Antung, Manchuria, China, 1904-1906
• Despatches from U.S. Consuls in Canton, China, 1790-1906
• Despatches from U.S. Consuls in Chefoo, China, 1863-1906
• Despatches from U.S. Consuls in Chinkiang, China, 1864-1902
• Despatches from U.S. Consuls in Chunking, China, 1896-1906
• Despatches from U.S. Consuls in Foochow, China, 1849-1906
• Despatches from U.S. Consuls in Hangchow, China, 1904-1906
• Despatches from U.S. Consuls in Hankow, China, 1861-1906
• Despatches from U.S. Consuls in Hong Kong, 1844-1906
• Despatches from U.S. Consuls in Macao, China, 1849-1869
• Despatches from U.S. Consuls in Mukden, Manchuria, China, 1904-1906
• Despatches from U.S. Consuls in Nanking, China, 1902-1906
• Despatches from U.S. Consuls in Newchwang, Manchuria, China, 1865-1906
• Despatches from U.S. Consuls in Ningpo, China, 1853-1896
• Despatches from U.S. Consuls in Shanghai, China, 1847-1906
• Despatches from U.S. Consuls in Swatow, China, 1860-1881
• Despatches from U.S. Consuls in Tientsin, China, 1868-1906
• Notes from the Chinese Legation in the United States to the Department of State, 1868-1906
• Selected Records of the U.S. Legation in China, 1849-1931Evangelism in China: Correspondence of the Board of Foreign Missions, (1837-1911)

Japan

• Selected Records of the U.S. Legation in Japan, 1855-1912
• Despatches from U.S. Ministers to Japan, 1855-1906
• Despatches from U.S. Consuls in Kanagawa, Japan, 1861-1897
• Despatches from U.S. Consuls in Nagasaki, Japan, 1860-1906
• Despatches from U.S. Consuls in Osaka and Hiogo (Kobe), Japan, 1868-1906
• Despatches from U.S. Consuls in Yokohama, Japan, 1897-1906
• Notes from the Japanese Legation in the United States to the Department of State, 1858-1906
• Minutes of Treaty Conferences between U.S. and Japanese Representatives, and Treaty Drafts, 1872
• British Foreign Office: Japan Correspondence, 1856-1905
• British Foreign Office: Japan Correspondence, 1906-1913: Dominance of the Genro
• British Foreign Office: Japan Correspondence, 1914-1923: Emergence of Japan as a Pacific Power
• Japanese Old Photographs in Bakumatsu-Meiji Period
• Meiji and Taisho Eras in Photographs
• Portraits of Modern Japanese Historical Figures

Korea

• Despatches from U.S. Ministers to Korea, 1883-1905
• Despatches from U.S. Consuls in Seoul, Korea, 1886-1906
• Notes from the Korean Legation in the United States to the Department of State, 1883-1906

The East Asian Library at Princeton has built the largest known collection of Chinese Archival Handbooks. These handbooks give detailed descriptions on archival collections within Chinese archives. For ease of use the library is scanning and making accessible table of contents and archival fond list of these handbooks for online browsing.

The Maritime Customs Service of China was a predominantly British-staffed bureaucracy under the control of successive Chinese central governments from 1854 until 1950. At the heart of Chinese trade, communications and international affairs, it was the only bureaucracy in modern China which functioned uninterruptedly between 1854 and the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949.

The records in this collection - official correspondence, despatches, reports, memoranda, and private and confidential letters - constitute often unique evidence of Chinese life, economy and politics through the Taiping Rebellion, the Boxer Rebellion, the Revolution of 1911, the May 30 Movement, the two Sino-Japanese Wars, and the Chinese Civil War.

The records are arranged into five sections: 1. Inspector General's Circulars; 2. London Office Files; 3. The Policing of Trade; 4. Semi-Official Correspondence from Selected Ports; and 5. The Sino-Japanese War and its Aftermath, 1931-1949. They are in manuscript format, and were scanned from the microfilms Princeton also possesses.

This is a full text searchable database of documents covering the Tokyo Trials of World War II Japanese war criminals, collected from sources around the world. The database includes transcripts of the proceedings of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, court exhibits of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, transcripts of the interrogations by the prosecutors, historical photos, and relevant audio-visual resources.

The resources have been classified and indexed with parallel translations in English, Chinese and Japanese.

The database includes photographs or copies of original texts from the National Archives of the United States and related material acquired from sources around the world and was compiled by the Center for Tokyo Trial Studies at Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

The complete collection will be published in stages. The first stage includes the English-language Collection of Court Exhibits of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East.  There is cross-referencing among the images, texts, audio and video material. In the future, all documents will be available in English, Chinese and Japanese. At this moment, some parts are already available in English, but related books and documents are still largely in Chinese only.

To use the database please click on the button “Log In” button in the top menu and choose “Institutional User Login” without filling in anything, to proceed.

Declassified documentary records of the U.S. intelligence community in the Far East during the Cold War (1945-1991). With focus on People's Republic of China, North Korea and North Vietnam. Also covered are Japan, Taiwan, Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, and Australia.

The documents in this database were brought together by the Center of Local Archives at Shanghai Jiaotong University. The archives (mostly in manuscript form) originate mainly from private collections in the provinces of Jiangsu, Anhui, Fujian, and Jiangxi. Major parts of the collections come from Shicang 石仓 (Zhejiang) and from Huizhou 徽州. Included are contracts, private and company ledgers, examination documents, medical prescriptions, local theater and opera material, court records, letters, family records, and various other types of material. The majority of the documents date from the Qing and Republican period, but there are also some Ming and PRC documents included. Currently, this database is the only one of its type in China.
The texts have been arranged according to regions, with archives from families in the same region put together, by village.  Various (full-text and multidimensional) searches and functions are available through searches in simplified and traditional characters.

ACCESS NOTE: Please confirm IP authentication when opening the database.

Operated by the China Academic Digital Associative Library (CADAL) this database includes Dunhuang manuscripts (images included are mostly from China and the UK, but are supposed to increase over the next years) as well as collections of other local manuscripts (currently mostly contracts). The database is freely available. Please note that the image viewer of the database works best with the Edge and Chrome browsers, but seems to have problems with Firefox.