Albert Heard, the head of a prominent American trading house in China, once remarked that "Business is too important and interesting not to be chronicled somehow." As it turns out, his own firm, Augustine Heard & Co., chronicled its own activities extensively via a massive collection of descriptive letters and diaries. The company archives are part of the Baker Library collection at the Harvard...

Posted by the National Bureau of Statistics of China, this Website provides economic, agricultural, and census data for China. Included here are versions of the China Statistical Yearbook for 1998 and 1999, a copy of the Statistics Law of the People's Republic of China, statistical abstracts and supplemental tables of the First National Agricultural Census in China conducted in 1997, monthly...

The world is a richer place for the efforts of those who have sought to document the various social and cultural transformations that have taken place around the globe during the twentieth century. One must only think of A.J. Liebling’s dispatches from Europe during the World War II or Robert Capa’s images of the Spanish Civil War to be reminded of the importance of such materials. This website...

The University of Wisconsin Digital Collections initiative continues to surprise and delight visitors to their collections. Their latest offering is certainly no different; it includes historical images that present a visual archive of 20th century East Asian cultural heritage. The collection is actually comprised of two subcollections, namely the Holmes Welch Collection and the China in the 30s...