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
China
Religion
Chinese Maritime Customs
Shanghai
International Politics
Economics
Biographic Material
Japan
Religion
International Politics
Japanese American Internment
Economics
Korea
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.
An extensive range of archival material connected to the trading and cultural relationships that emerged between China, America and the Pacific region between the 18th and early 20th centuries. Manuscript sources, rare printed texts, visual images, objects and maps document this fascinating history.
The resource includes a wide range of manuscript, printed and visual primary-source materials as well as other key features to support research and teaching. One can use the fully searchable interactive chronology to discover facts and world events, explore voyages to China using an interactive map, find out about different merchants and the companies they formed in the Merchant Biographies and view online exhibitions to find out about aspects of the collection. A helpful tour of the collection is available.
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.
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.
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.
Confidential U.S. State Department Central Files, Asia is a module of the ProQuest History Vault. It 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.
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.
With this system the NPM offers and alternative search system for searching thorough its Qing archives holdings, rare books, and historical maps.
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.
Primary sources only, three contemporary Chinese political movements; first the Chinese Cultural Revolution, second the Chinese Anti-Rightists Campaign, third the Great Leap Forward and the Great Famine. There is a fully functional search-engine in both Chinese and English, with data retrievable by author, subject, title, date, keywords, and (new!) locality (the documents themselves are in Chinese, naturally.) New features further include keyword highlight and toggle between Chinese and English.
The Cultural Revolution database includes primary sources mostly written during the Cultural Revolution; memoirs and interviews are not included. Sections included are CCP documents, directives, and bulletins; speeches, directives, and writings concerning the Cultural Revolution by Mao Zedong, Lin Biao, and other CCP leaders; important newspaper and magazine editorials and articles; important documents of the Red Guards and the Mass Movement; and material regarding “heterodox thoughts.” Materials are indexed in both English and Chinese, but the text is in Chinese. There is a introduction by Yu Yingshi.
The Anti-Rightist database includes more than 10,000 documents (directives, bulletins, speeches, editorials, published views and their denunciations, original archives) including the so-called “rightist” articles themselves. Included are also materials related to contemporaneous campaigns, including the prior Campaign against the Hu Feng Counterrevolutionary Clique, Campaign for Eliminating Counterrevolutionaries, and Socialist Transformation of Industry and Commerce, and the subsequent Debate over Red and Expert, Double-Anti Campaign, Movement for Opening One’s Heart to the Party, and Campaign to Pull Out White Flags and Plant Red Flags.
The Great Leap and the Great Famine database includes more than 7,000 documents (directives, bulletins, internal reports, officials’ speeches, and major media commentaries with detailed citations.) Of the material 50% is from internal archives at various levels, including 3,000 highly classified records and investigative reports filed during the Great Famine. Included are documents on the context of these topics, as on such policies and campaigns as the state monopoly on grain purchase and marketing, the Collectivization of Agriculture, the Campaign to Eliminate Counterrevolutionaries, the Great Debate on “Red and Expert,” the “Dual-Antis” Campaign, the Campaign to “Open One’s Heart to the Party,” and the Campaign to “Pull Out White Flags and Erect Red Flags”.
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
China
Japan
Korea
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.
