Databases

China: Trade, Politics and Culture provides multiple perspectives – from politicians, diplomats, missionaries, business people and tourists, and documents many of the key events that happened in this period. 

It is based on substantial collections of unique manuscript materials held at the library of the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) and the British Library in London, supplemented by additional sources from Cambridge University Library, the Church Missionary Society Archive, the Council for World Missions Library, Duke University, the National Archives at Kew, the Alexander Turnbull Library at the National Library of New Zealand and Yale Divinity Library. In addition the collections have included a range of rare printed materials including missionary periodicals, atlases and books which help to contextualize the other sources.

The scope of the collections includes a wide variety of original source material detailing China's interaction with the West from Macartney's first Embassy to China in 1793, through to the Nixon/Heath visits to China in 1972-74, including:

• the 1792-1794 Macartney Embassy
• the 1816 Amherst Embassy
• the settling of Penang
• the Opium Wars
• the opening of Hong Kong
• the Taiping Rebellion
• Missions in China, 1869-1970
• the Japanese seizure of Taiwan
• the 'opening of Korea'
• the Sino-French and territorial struggles with Germany, Britain, America and Japan
• the Boxer War
• the Russo-Japanese war
• the 1911 Revolution
• the Republican and Nationalist governments of Sun Yat sen and Jiang Jieshi
• the Warlord period
• the Sino-Japanese war
• the Rape of Nanjing
• the Communist Revolution led by Mao
• the Korean War
• the Great Leap Forward
• the 1972 Nixon visit to China
• Rolls-Royce's negotiations regarding the delivery of jet engines to China, 1973-1975
• the Douglas-Home and Heath visits to China, 1973-74

This electronic resource also includes images, antiquarian maps and biographical information.