HIS 194C: Hong Kong History

Primary sources

OVERVIEW

A Special Collections and Archives is a great resource for interacting with primary documents. Not all subjects are represented in their collections, however. So, Libraries turn to digital collections to expand their offerings, those available as open access databases--free to the public--and many others that are only available for student and faculty use.

Primary Source Databases differ in their offerings, for example:

by source-type such as Newspapers, Photography or images, Magazines, etc.
by theme such as Labor, Colonialism, or Early American History, etc.
A special topic, such as U.S. Declassified Documents, African American Communities, etc.

PRIMARY SOURCE DATABASES TO TRY:

Gwulo: Old Hong Kong This link opens in a new window
Here you'll find over 50,000 pages about old Hong Kong to explore, including over 30,000 photos. The content is added by a friendly community of people who enjoy sharing what we know about Hong Kong's history, and you are very welcome to join us.
Hong Kong Heritage Project This link opens in a new window
This collection includes paper records, filmed oral history interviews and photographs, amongst other audio-visual recordings on Kadoorie business history as well as the wider social and economic development of Hong Kong and Shanghai from 1884 to 1980.

Hong Kong Memory
Includes 120 interviews and oral histories completed between 2008 and 2013 by Hong Kong Memory.
Historical Photographs of China
The photographs presented here cover over a century of modern China's history, and a very wide range of places, communities and themes.
Telling stories: Linguistic diversity in Hong Kong
This website seeks to highlight this linguistic and cultural diversity through a database of speech samples and translations of the many languages and varieties that have been historically spoken or are in use in present-day Hong Kong.

Newspapers

Old Hong Kong Newspapers This link opens in a new window
This Collection is a selective collection of major old Hong Kong Newspapers published from early Hong Kong to nowadays, aiming at preserving historical news reporting of Hong Kong for reference and research.
Chinese Historical Newspapers This link opens in a new window
From Proquest Historical Newspapers, a collection containing the content of 22 Chinese newspapers. Date coverage varies by individual newspaper title, approximately 1832 - 1953.
News and Newspapers from ProQuest This link opens in a new window
This meta search database lets you search newspapers from around the world, including major newspapers like the New York Times and Los Angeles Times.

Library Databases with some relevance to this courses

China: Trade, Politics and Culture, 1793-1980 This link opens in a new window
A wide variety of primary 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. It provides multiple perspectives – from politicians, diplomats, missionaries, business people and tourists – and documents many of the key events that happened in this period.
U.K. Parliamentary Papers This link opens in a new window
This database provides complete online coverage of the sessional papers of the British House of Commons and the 19th Century House of Lords. It includes detailed primary source for the history of Britain, its colonies, and the wider world.
Chinese Civil War and U.S.-China relations: Records of the U.S. State Department's Office of Chinese Affairs, 1945-1955 This link opens in a new window
An Archives Unbound collection. Comprehensive documentation examines the political background of the civil war, the failed efforts of American mediation, and the ramifications of Communist victory.
U.S. Declassified Documents Online This link opens in a new window
Includes a broad range of previously classified federal records spanning the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The collection brings together documents from all the presidential libraries and numerous executive agencies in a single database.
HathiTrust Digital Library This link opens in a new window
Digitized books and other publications. Those no longer under copyright are available to view.

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Land Acknowledgement

The land on which we gather is the unceded territory of the Awaswas-speaking Uypi Tribe. The Amah Mutsun Tribal Band, comprised of the descendants of indigenous people taken to missions Santa Cruz and San Juan Bautista during Spanish colonization of the Central Coast, is today working hard to restore traditional stewardship practices on these lands and heal from historical trauma.

The land acknowledgement used at UC Santa Cruz was developed in partnership with the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band Chairman and the Amah Mutsun Relearning Program at the UCSC Arboretum.

University Library

HIS 194C: Hong Kong History

Primary sources

Land Acknowledgement