Internet resources for History

The history of Chinese bookbinding has always suffered
owing to a lack of material evidence. This site, by
combining textual descriptions with diagrams illustrating
binding techniques and photographs of the actual objects,
aims to give a comprehensive introduction to the different
kinds of Chinese bookbinding contained in the Dunhuang
collection of the British Library. Site contents: Some
characteristics of the Dunhuang booklets; Butterfly
binding (hudie zhuang); Stitched binding (xian zhuang);
The Chinese pothi (fanjia zhuang); Whirlwind binding
(xuanfeng zhuang); Concertina binding (jingzhe zhuang);
Wrapped-back binding (baobei zhuang); Bibliography.

The HKUL Digital Initiatives have implemented digitization
projects that are now providing open online access to local
collections originally in print format. These include Basic
Law Drafting History Online, Beijing Historical Geography
Database, China through Western Eyes, Historical Laws of
Hong Kong Online, Hong Kong and the West until 1860, Hong
Kong Government Reports Online (1853-1941) and Hong Kong
Journals Online.

A Digital Archive of Documents & Photographs from
American Missionaries Who Witnessed the Rape of
Nanking. The project is from the Special
Collections of the Yale Divinity School Library.

The North China Herald is the prime printed source for the
history of the foreign presence in China from around 1850 to
1940s. No other newspaper existed over such an extended
period, and covers it in such incredible depth and variety.
The fully text-searchable North China Herald Online will be
one of the primary resources on a period which continues to
shape much of China’s world and worldview.

The PRC History Group is a network of scholars with
interests in the history of the People Republic of China. It
manages H-PRC, an H-Net channel that hosts scholarly
discussions in addition to distributing news and
announcements of interest to PRC historians. The Group also
distributes and archives Chinese-language journals as well
as the Group’s own English-language PRC History Review,
which contains research articles and roundtable discussions
on recent scholarship in PRC history.

The Tibetan and Himalayan Library (THL) is a publisher of
websites, information services, and networking facilities
relating to the Tibetan plateau and southern Himalayan
regions. THL promotes the integration of knowledge and
community across the divides of academic disciplines, the
historical and the contemporary, the religious and the
secular, the global and the local. Data includes text,
audio-video, images, maps, immersive objects, reference
works, and interpretative essays.

The Sin Kuo Min Press, later entitled Sin Kok Min Jit Pao,
is one of the most influential official newspapers and
journals published by the Kuomintang in cities where many
Overseas Chinese were residing. It is an invaluable
historical source for the study of modern Chinese revolution
and Chinese Overseas during that period of time. This
project presents a collections from 1919 to 1933.

After World War II ended, Allied forces established the
International Military Tribunal for the Far East, known
informally as the Tokyo War Crimes trial, to prosecute the
Japanese officials involved with launching the war. The
trial took place from April 1946 to November 1948 and
resulted in death sentences for seven of the defendants
and prison terms for the remaining war criminals. The
Tokyo War Crimes Trial is a massive digital exhibition of
historical documents related to the trial, posted by the
Virginia Law Library. At the heart of the collection is a
treasure trove of more than 20,500 original documents
donated to the Law School in 1978 by the family of Frank
Stacy Tavenner, a 1927 graduate of the University of
Virginia School of Law, who was the assistant chief
prosecutor of the Tokyo War Crimes trial.

This project focuses on the Lienü zhuan (Categorized
Biographies of Women) of Liu Xiang (77-6 B.C.), the
earliest extant book in the Chinese tradition solely
devoted to the moral education of women. The book consists
of biographical accounts of female role models in early
China and became the standard textbook for women’s
education for the next two millennia. This digital archive
serves as a publicly accessible tool for scholarly
exploration of early woodblock editions of the Lienü zhuan
held by the National Library of China, as well as other
early Chinese sources offered here in Chinese and English
translation.

The Trans-Asia Photography Review is an international
refereed journal devoted to the discussion and research of
historic and contemporary photography from Asia. The journal
aims to bring together the diverse perspectives of curators,
historians, photographers, anthropologists, art historians
and various others in order to investigate as fully as
possible the still nascent field of Asian photography.

Fritz Weiss – a German consul to China – lived and
travelled in China from 1899 to 1917, with diplomatic
postings in various cities such as Chengdu (Sichuan) and
Kunming (Yunnan). From 1911 he was accompanied by his
wife, Hedwig Weiss-Sonnenburg. This exhibition reveals
impressions from the time in which the Weisses were in
China, during the years of upheaval between the end of the
Qing dynasty and the beginning of the First World War. The
pictures were taken by Fritz and Hedwig Weiss during their
travels by ship and on land, in cities and in secluded
minority territories, as well as in their daily lives.

It is the virtual home of the University of California, San
Diego Modern Chinese History program. It is a useful
resource of a wide variety of materials, ranging from book
reviews to information about visiting Chinese archives. The
site stopped updating itself in 2010.

Following the successful completion in August 2002 of a
project funded by the Research Support Libraries Programme,
there now exists a UK Union Catalogue of Chinese Books
containing records from the British Library, Cambridge,
Durham, Edinburgh, Leeds, Oxford and SOAS. Particular
attention has been paid to the development of a simple and
intuitive search interface, enabling readers to gain rapid
access to the required information through the entry of
minimal search terms.

The Chinatown of Victoria, British Columbia, is a
major historical gateway to the Chinese in Canada. It
was once the major entry port for Asian immigration
to British North America, and later to Canada. From
the late 1850s to the 1860s, it was the primary
springboard for several thousand Chinese gold miners
heading to the Fraser River valley and the Cariboo;
and, in the 1880s it was the main entry point for the
estimated 15,000 Chinese builders of the Canadian
Pacific Railway. It is the oldest Chinatown in
Canadian history, and the earliest settlement of
Chinese people in the Canadian “land of promises.”

The website is created and maintained by the
University of Victor as a major gateway to the past
and present of Chinese Canadians. It features
selected photos, maps, archives, family documents,
oral histories and other data for researchers and
interested members of the public alike.

Dr. Joseph Needham was sent by the British Council to
Southwest China in February 1943, to aid the anti-Japanese
war effort there. He stayed until April 1946, by when he
had travelled extensively throughout Sichuan, Yunnan, and
other parts of South, Southwest and Northwest China that
was
not under Japanese occupation. He took over 1,000
photographs during the period, which have been digitized
and
made available online by the Needham Research Institute.

Wen shi zhe xue bao, an academic journal published by the
National Taiwan University , focuses on the study of
Chinese
literature, arts, history, philosophy, archaeology and so
on. The journal publishes two issues every year in May and
November. Full text articles of the latest issues are now
available online for free at
(http://homepage.ntu.edu.tw/~bcla/index_ebook.htm), while
the table of contents of each issue can be browsed at
(http://homepage.ntu.edu.tw/~bcla/content.htm).

Xanadu: Encounters with China is a special exhibition of the
National Library of Australia to feature the Library's maps,
pictures, rare booksand its other Asian collection.

Yizhige is an e-book portal of Chinese classic literatures
that makes accessible contents of classic books and supports
full-text search across the classic titles.