Asian History

Primary sources are a moving target because what constitutes a primary source very much depends on your research.  

Use Library Search for "personal narratives" in book form. For example, "cultural revolution" "personal narratives" would search the subject headings and titles and return some suggested books or video that fit.  Try other subjects, but stay broad in your search-- chinese civil war, for instance, or sino-japanese war.  Because the translated language can often result in different spellings, pay attention to the various ways that your search terms may be spelled!  For instance: for research on Chairman Mao, his name can be spelled Mao Zedong or Mao Tse-Tung.

Other suggestions if you are having trouble identifying primary sources:

1. Pay attention to the articles and books that you find on your subject.  If they are using historical sources to write what they write, they will cite the primary sources in their citation list.  
2. Check the Web to see if there are translated sources you can use-- for instance, for government documents, speeches, interviews, etc.
3. Newspapers reporting on a contemporary event are considered primary sources.  This may be complicated if the newspaper is in a language other than English.  
4. Ask for help from your professor or your librarian!

Examples of Primary Sources:

Here are various primary source collections of possible interest (below). If you are looking for something specific, try searching for it on the web.  For instance, if you would like the text of a speech made by Chairman Mao, go to your favored search engine, and try a search like this: chairman mao and speech and script. The results will be actual video of him making speeches as well as links to speech scripts. If you know the title of a named object, always put the named object in quotes to keep the words as a phrase. This is a great way to find government documents of all sorts, speeches, interviews, and even contemporary news stories if someone has scanned said stories and placed them on the web. Please do ask for help if you can't find what you are looking for!

Atomic Bomb: Decision contains full text of most of the important documents surrounding the decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and later Nagasaki.

China's Cultural Revolution from the Wilson Center.

Chinese Civil War Digital Archive from the Wilson Center.

Chinese comfort women : testimonies from Imperial Japan's sex slaves - Ebook from SMC

Chinese Propaganda Poster Pages - From 1949 to the present. Hosted by the International Institute of Social History. Originally created by Stefan Landsberger, a professor at the University of Amsterdam.

The Collected Wartime Messages of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek 1937-1940 from the Internet Archive.  For other wartime speeches, see The Voice of China, as well as All we are and all we have also at the Internet Archive

Echoes of Chongqing: women in wartime China - Ebook from SMC.  Oral histories from women.

Enemy of the People: Visual Depictions of Chiang Kai-Shek offers posters, cartoons, and other images collected from Arts and Humanities Research Council (UK).  

Foreign Relations of the United States - All the volumes before 1960 have been digitized from the University of Wisconsin. "The Foreign Relations of the United States series is the official documentary historical record of major U.S. foreign policy decisions that have been declassified and edited for publication. The series is produced by the State Department's Office of the Historian and printed volumes are available from the Government Printing Office." For volumes between 1960-1970, please use the State Department's site, which has an ongoing directive to digitize these volumes.

My Lai Courts Martial 1970 - Background material (maps, biographies, etc.) and excerpts from trial transcripts.

Notes taken by our repatriated sisters, Sister Mary Joanne and Sister Jerome Marie arriving home from war torn China on the Gripsholm, December 1, 1943. A Catholic sisters viewpoint from the Chinese 1941 war. From Internet Archive.

Robert Henry Chandless Photographs - Searchable collection of over 200 photographs of China in the early 1900's. From the University of Washington Libraries, Digital Collections.

Tiananmen Square, 1989: Declassified History - Full text documents from the National Security Archive. It has additional information from the NSA here.

Vietnam War Declassification Project - Contains declassified primary documents from the National Security Advisor files. Examples include cables from Kissinger about the evacuation of Saigon, the Pentagon meeting of Richard Nixon relating to the returning of prisoners of war, and President Ford's meeting with congressmen about foreign aid.