Area Studies: China and Southeast Asia

Area Studies: China and Southeast Asia is a collection of digitized primary sources documenting, from a Western perspective, the political, social, and cultural history of China and neighboring countries from the from the mid-18th century to the late 20th century. The collection includes records of traders, travelers, missionaries and diplomats. Highlights include:

• Correspondence from the Macartney Embassy, the first British diplomatic mission to China, 1792-94
• Papers of John Backhouse, chief clerk at the British consulate in Hong Kong in the 1840s and 1850s
• China Inland Mission papers, 1865-1951
• Papers of G. E. Morrison (1862-1920), Australian journalist in China
• Papers of J. A. Thomas (1862-1940), American tobacco entrepreneur and Sinologist
• UK Foreign Office files relating to the opium trade and the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs from the period 1945 to 1948.
• Diaries, notebooks and published writings of Rewi Alley (1897-1987), New Zealand educator and industrial organizer in communist China
• British government records covering economic development in China, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan, 1950-80

Documents may include views or terminology now considered outdated, biased, or offensive.