LibGuides: History: Asia

Asia - General

Asia Through a Lens
From the National Archives (UK): Explore these remarkable images taken from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office photographic collection (CO 1069). The full collection can be seen on Flickr, and includes scenes from across the Asian continent, including China, Malaysia and Sri Lanka.
East Asia Image Collection
Digitized photographs, negatives, postcards, and slides of colonial Taiwan (1900-45) and occupied Japan (1947-52) from the Lafayette Digital Repository.
International Dunhuang Project
IDP is a ground-breaking international collaboration to make information and images of all manuscripts, paintings, textiles and artefacts from Dunhuang and archaeological sites of the Eastern Silk Road freely available on the Internet and to encourage their use through educational and research programmes.
National Security Archive - Asia
The National Security Archive's continually growing collection of Electronic Briefing Books (EBBs) provide timely online access to critical declassified records on issues including U.S. national security, foreign policy, diplomatic and military history, intelligence policy, and much more. Updated frequently, the EBBs represent just a small sample of the documents in our published and unpublished collections.
Visualizing Cultures - MIT
Visualizing Cultures was launched at MIT in 2002 to explore the potential of the Web for developing innovative image-driven scholarship and learning. The VC mission is to use new technology and hitherto inaccessible visual materials to reconstruct the past as people of the time visualized the world (or imagined it to be). Topical units to date focus on Japan in the modern world and early-modern China. The thrust of these explorations extends beyond Asia per se, however, to address "culture" in much broader ways—cultures of modernization, war and peace, consumerism, images of "Self" and "Others," and so on.
Wilson Center Digital Archive
The Digital Archive contains once-secret documents from governments all across the globe, uncovering new sources and providing fresh insights into the history of international relations and diplomacy. The Digital Archive is overseen by the Wilson Center's History and Public Policy Program and focuses on the interrelated histories of the Cold War, Korea, and Nuclear Proliferation.

China

China: Trade, Politics & Culture 1793-1980 This link opens in a new window
China: Trade, Politics & Culture provides access to manuscript material relating to the activities and observations of British and American diplomats, missionaries, business people and tourists in China from 1793 to 1980, together with rare periodicals, colour paintings, maps, photographs and drawings. All of the printed materials (including the typescript records of Chinese Maritime Customs officials) have been double-keyed and are full-text searchable.

Chinese Pamphlets: Political Communication & Mass Education
Pamphlets, picture books, and other propaganda issued during the early years of the People’s Republic between 1947 and 1954. This is the “street literature” of the revolution: comic books, leaflets, and other ephemera distributed to the general population of provincial cities and villages.
East Asia Collection - Wisconsin
The East Asian Collection includes historical images that present a visual archive of 20th century East Asian cultural heritage. Currently, the collection consists of images that document early 20th century China including the the Sino-Japanese Conflict (1937-1945), a visual history of Buddhist practices and temples in China, and other images of daily life in both rural and urban China. The completed project will be a valuable resource for research into this region and its history.
Hong Kong Government Reports Online
Hong Kong Government Reports Online (HKGRO) is a full-text image database providing online access to pre-World War II issues of four major government publications, namely, Administrative Report, Hong Kong Sessional Papers, Hong Kong Hansard and Hong Kong Government Gazette.
Ling Long Women's Magazine - Columbia
Ling long women's magazine, published in Shanghai from 1931 to 1937, was popular during a time of dramatic material, social, and political change in China. Today, the magazine offers researchers a unique glimpse into women's lives in Republican-era (1911-49) Shanghai.
Sidney Gamble Photographs - Duke
Sidney D. Gamble (1890-1968), an avid amateur photographer, began taking pictures in China during his first trip to the country with his family in 1908. He returned three more times between 1917 to 1932 and continued photographing the daily life of Chinese citizens. A sociologist and renowned China scholar, he traveled throughout the country to collect data for social-economic surveys and to photograph urban and rural life, public events, architecture, religious statuary, and the countryside.
Visualizing China
This project locates, digitalizes, archives, and disseminates online photographs from the substantial holdings of images of modern China held mostly in private hands outside that country.

Korea, Japan, Taiwan

Modern Korean History Portal - Wilson Center Digital Archive
The Modern Korean History Portal is a learning and a research tool for students, educators, and professional historians interested in Korea.
Database on Inter-Korean Relations - Wilson Center Digital Archive
Using fresh and policy-relevant historical data, the Database on Inter-Korean Relations informs and supports current and future efforts to peacefully reunify the Korean Peninsula and achieve reconciliation in post-unification Korea.
National Library of Korea Digital Collections
Digitized books and other sources covering topics in history, literature, music, current affairs and the economy.
Korean Literary Collection - Online database
'Between Liberation Space and Time, 1945-1950' was an exhibition of rare literary works from the Korean collection of the University of Washington Libraries displayed in the Allen Library from May 10, 2006 through August 31, 2006.
Korean War Propaganda Leaflets
This collection contain propaganda leaflets produced by the United States Army a as well as leaflets produced by the communist forces in Korea.
National Institute of Korean History - Digital Archives
The NIKH has established a systematic database and internet service network for the purpose of facilitating the investigation, collection, exhibition, and release of historical materials in cooperation with related institutions.
North Korea International Digitization Project
The North Korea International Documentation Project serves as an informational clearinghouse on North Korea for the scholarly and policymaking communities, disseminating documents on the DPRK from its former communist allies that provide valuable insight into the actions and nature of the North Korean state. It is part of the Wilson Center's History and Public Policy Program.
Birth of the Constitution of Japan
The National Diet Library's online exhibition "Birth of the Constitution of Japan" presents the major events and important documents involved in the framing and enactment of Japan's Constitution.
Japan Center for Asian Historical Records - Digital Archive
JACAR has built and operates an online database for releasing Asian historical records, that are historical documents of Japan concerning to the modern Japanese relations with other countries, particularly those in Asia. The documents of the archive are provided by the National Archives of Japan, the Diplomatic Archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan, and the National Institute for Defense Studies of the Ministry of Defense of Japan.
Japan Newspaper Clippings Collection
“Newspaper Clippings Collection” is the newspaper article clippings that collected from end of the Meiji era (around 1910) to 1970.
Japanese Foreign Policy 1867-1912
Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan - Japanese Diplomatic Documents Collection
Japanese Historical Texts - UC Berkeley
The Japanese Historical Texts Initiative (JHTI) is a digitized, searchable database of important Japanese historical documents and their English translations.
Japanese Photographs - Bakumatsu-Meiji Period
This database is digitized “Japanese Old Photographs of the Bakumatsu-Meiji Periods Collection” in the Nagasaki University Library, and it is open to the public.
You can search for more than 7,600 photographs taken in various parts of Japan during the Bakumatsu-Meiji Period.
National Archives of Japan - Digital Archive
The National Archives of Japan's Digital Archive provides access to the descriptions and digitized images of the historical records preserved by the National Archives of Japan.
Shashin Shuho (Magazine) - Japan Center for Asian Historical Records
Shashin Shuho is a weekly graphic magazine published by the Cabinet Information Department (later the Cabinet Information Bureau) from 1938-1945.
Formosa - 19th Century Images
This digital library gathers together a large body of primarily European and American images of the island of Taiwan – called "Formosa" by foreign visitors in the nineteenth century – and its various peoples, natural resources, wildlife, and built environment.
Taiwan Nichinichi Shinpō - UC Santa Barbara Library
Taiwan Nichinichi Shinpo (Taiwan Daily News) is the official and most prominent Japanese newspaper in Taiwan during the colonial period from 1895-1944.

India, Pakistan, Afghanistan

Afghanistan Digital Library
The Afghanistan Digital Library will retrieve and restore works published in Afghanistan between 1870 and 1930; the long-term objective is to collect, catalogue, digitize and provide access to as many of this period's publications as possible.
Arthur Paul Afghanistan Collection
Digitized Afghanistan Materials in English from the Arthur Paul Afghanistan Collection.
Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi
Digital Collection of the writing and speeches of Mahatma Gandhi.
Medical History of British India
This feature on the 'Medical History of British India' provides an entry into the history of disease and its prevention in 19th and 20th-century British India, including veterinary medicine and animal husbandry.
Oral History Collection - Cambridge
Digital Collection of oral history and other sound recordings from the Centre of South Asian Studies - Cambridge.
Panjab Digital Library
The mission of the Panjab Digital Library (PDL) is to locate, digitize, preserve, collect and make accessible the accumulated wisdom of the Panjab region, without distinction as to script, language, religion, nationality, or other physical condition.
The Tibet Mirror - Columbia
The Tibet Mirror (Tib. Yul phyogs so so'i gsar 'gyur me long) was published from 1925 to 1963 in Kalimpong, and chronicles the most dramatic social and political transformation in Tibet during a time when vernacular writing was relatively scarce and a Tibetan media practically non-existent.

Southeast Asia

South East Asia Digital Library
Drawn largely from the collections of universities and scholars in this region, SEADL contains digital facsimiles of books and manuscripts, as well as multimedia materials and searchable indexes of additional Southeast Asian resources. Nations represented in the collection include Brunei, Cambodia, East Timor, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam.
South East Asian Images and Texts - Wisconsin
The Southeast Asian Collection includes historical images that present a visual archive of 20th century Southeast Asian cultural heritage.
Modern Indonesia Collection - Cornell
The 75 titles in this series are divided into four categories: Interim Reports, Translations, Monographs, and Bibliographies. These works capture the drama of Indonesia's political and social evolution through the twentieth century: its struggle for independence from the Dutch under the leadership of Sukarno, reactions to the Japanese Occupation, the development of its civil government, its civil insurgencies, and the conditions that prevailed throughout the long dictatorship of General Suharto.
Dutch East Indies Photographs
The collection consists of some 3000 photographs from the period between 1860 and 1940. Most of them were taken by professional photographers who took pictures of landscapes and street life, in addition to photographing houses and factories and taking portrait and group photos. Some of them even took to the road to record all the facets of the Dutch East Indies.
Indonesia Independent - Photographs
The collection contains more than 4500 photographs and album pages from the photographers Cas Oorthuys and Charles Breijer.
Philippines Photographs Archive - Michigan
The digital photographs archive consists of over 2,100 images. In general, the images depict Filipinos, buildings, dwellings, and monuments in and around Manila, Filipino political and military leaders, members of American commissions and military units based in the Philippines, and numerous landscape scenes, particularly on Mindanao and in Lanao Province.
Virtual Vietnam Archive - Texas Tech
The Virtual Vietnam Archive currently contains 7 million pages of scanned materials. Types of material include documents, photographs, slides, negatives, oral histories, artifacts, moving images, sound recordings, maps, and collection finding aids. All non-copyrighted and digitized materials are available for users to download.
Online Burma/Myanmar Library
Classified and annotated links to more than 60,000 full-text documents on Burma/Myanmar.
National Library Online - Singapore
Digitised collections of heritage books, manuscripts, music, photographs, newspapers & more.
Thai Newspaper Collection - Kyoto
Digital Collection of three Newspapers published in Thailand during World War II.