Guides: History: History of Asia and Oceania

Resources for the History of Asia & Oceania

Books on the History of Asia and Oceania will be located on the 6th Floor of the University Library:

History of Central Asia: DS327-329.4 (6th Floor)
History of South Asia: DS331-498 (6th Floor)
History of Southeast Asia: DS520-689 (6th Floor)
- Vietnam: DS556-559.9 (6th Floor)
History of China: DS701-799.9 (6th Floor)
History of Japan: DS801-897 (6th Floor)
History of Korea: DS901-937 (6th Floor)
History of Oceania: DU1-950 (6th Floor)
- Australia: DU80-398 (6th Floor)
- New Zealand: DU400-470 (6th Floor)

Ebook Central
ProQuest Ebook Central (formerly ebrary and EBL) is a multidisciplinary collection of ebooks from numerous academic publishers. Visit the help page. NOTE: Titles can be dropped by the publisher without prior notice.
EBSCO eBooks
This collection includes over 8,000 ebooks covering a range of academic topics. Watch a how-to video.
Gale Ebooks
The GVRL collection includes encyclopedias and other reference works supporting a wide range of academic disciplines.
Humanities Ebook (ACLS)
The Humanities Ebook collection includes nearly 4000 ebooks. Subject focus is the humanities disciplines and area studies.

Archives Unbound
Content includes primary sources regarding African American studies; American Indian studies; Asian studies; British history; Holocaust studies; LGBT studies; Latin American and Caribbean studies; Middle East studies; political science; religious studies; and women’s studies.
Global Newsstream (US & International Newspapers)
Full text access to hundreds of U.S. and international newspapers, including The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The Times of London, and Wall Street Journal.
Times (London) Digital Archive (1785-2014)
Complete digital edition of The Times (London) newspaper. Use keyword searching and hit-term highlighting to retrieve full facsimile images of a specific article or a complete page. To search full-text, change drop-down box from keyword to "text." The entire newspaper is captured, with all articles, advertisements and illustrations/photos divided into categories to facilitate searching. Funded by the History Department.
New York Times Historical (1851-2020)
The New York Times (1851-2020) offers full page and article images with searchable full text.

History of Asia

Indus Valley Civilization
This site contains material on the civilizations of the Indus Valley, including articles by scholars and links to the digital collections of museums with artifacts (look under “Resources” at this website).
Centre of South Asian Studies
This is a searchable database at Cambridge University of oral histories involving many key figures in 20 th-century Indian history.
Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi
This database, maintained by the GandhiServe charitable foundation, includes Gandhi’s published works, organized chronologically.
Digital South Asia Library
The highlights here (in a collection hosted by the University of Chicago) include an 1898 archaeological survey of India, and several different versions of the Imperial Gazetteer of India (compiled in the early 20 th century)
Medical History of British India
A production of the National Library of Scotland, this collection consists of official publications varying from short reports to multi-volume histories related to disease, public health and medical research circa 1850 to 1920.
Privy Council Decisions
This is a set of court records pertaining to the British empire in the 19 th and 20 th century India.
South Asian Digital Archive
This digital archive contains oral histories, newspaper clippings and other materials that document the experience of South Asian Americans.
National Archives of India Digital Collections
Curated digital collections pertaining to Indian history (both from the colonial period and post-independence), including cartographic records, government documents, about defense, education and health, politics, and education, etc.
Kabul Times
This archive (through the University of Nebraska-Omaha) contains the digitized issues of The Kabul Times, an English-language newspaper published in Afghanistan by the Afghan government, from 1962 to 1983.
East Asia Collection (Wason) - Korea
This website, maintained by Cornell University, lists a wide range of free online databases (largely in Korean) with primary sources from the Chosun Dynastry, digitized old books and documents from the Royal Jangseogak Archives.
Korean Independence Outbreak Movement
This archive from Columbia University’s holdings documents the early 1919 demonstrations against Japanese rule in Korea and includes English-language pamphlets.
Southeast Asia Visions
This amazing digitization project includes at least 350 travel accounts and guidebooks written by French and English-speaking travelers to Southeast Asia in the late 19 th and early 20 th centuries.
Southeast Asian Images and Texts
Part of a larger digital project at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, this collection of texts is focused on the American involvement in Laos from the 1950s through 1970s.
Newspaper SG (Archive of Singapore's Newspapers)
This is a fabulous digitized archive of newspapers from Singapore (maintained by the Singapore national government) including some titles (e.g. The Singapore Free Press and Mercantile Advertiser) that are digitized back to the 1830s.
Asia for Educators
Primary source documents from Asia, all with 'DBQs' (document-based questions). Search by time period (4000 BCE to the 21st century) or region (China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, and Southeast Asia). A project of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute at Columbia University.
The Avalon Project: Indochina - Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos
Documents in law, history, and diplomacy related to Indochina, covering the time period from 1950 to the Gulf of Tonkin Incident in 1964.
China Historical Geographic Information System (CHGIS)
CHGIS provides scholars and researchers a database of administrative units and populated areas in China from the unification (222 B.C.E.) through the end of the dynastic period (1911 C.E.). With access to this wealth of statistical information, users of CHGIS can easily search and track the changes to all recorded geographical entities in Chinese history. They can compare such evolutions to current geographic formations.
East Asian History Sourcebook
A subset of texts derived from the three major online Sourcebooks from Fordham University's History Sourcebook project: Internet Ancient History, Internet Medieval History, and Internet Modern History. Along with added texts and related web resources.
Indian History Sourcebook
A subset of texts derived from the three major online Sourcebooks from Fordham University's History Sourcebook project: Internet Ancient History, Internet Medieval History, and Internet Modern History. Along with added texts and related web resources. Topics covered include Indus Valley cultures, the Vedic Age, the formation of religious traditions, Medieval India, Greek and Chinese sources on India, Muslim era India, the Western intrusion, Indian nationalism, India since independence, Pakistan since independence, Bangladesh, Burma, Sri Lanka, and Indian genders and sexualities.
International Dunhuang Project: The Silk Road Online
The cave library in Dunhuang—an oasis town on the Silk Road in western China—remained sealed and secluded for over a millennium until 1900. The International Dunhuang Project provides access to the wealth of manuscripts, documents, paintings, and artifacts that have been excavated from the cave, complete with cataloging and contextual information.
Silk Road Narratives
A collection of historical texts, interactive maps, and other resources exploring cultural interaction across Eurasia from the beginning of the Common Era (A. D.) to the Seventeenth Century. A project of the Simpson Center for the Humanities at the University of Washington.

History of Oceania

Australian Newspaper Archive
This is an open database of Australian newspapers going back to the early 1800s.
Australia Left Review
This is an archive (hosted by the University of Wollongong Australia) of Australia Left Review, a monthly journal published between 1966 and 1993 by the Communist Party of Australia, and is particularly useful as a history of left-wing politics, industrial relations, human rights and the environment in Australia during that period.
Koori History Website
This contains resources (including documents, newspaper articles, video and audio clips) on the struggles of Black Indigenous Australians, dating back to the early 20 th century.

Acknowledgement

This page includes resources from the "Asian History Primary Sources" guide by Texas Tech University