Education About Asia: Online Archives

Web Gleanings: Asia in the Twentieth Century

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illustration of tokyo station
Tokyo Station, ca. 1920. http://www.oldtokyo.com/tokyoeki.html

ASIA

Title: Internet Modern History Sourcebook: Asia Since 1900

URL: http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/modsbook52.html

This is part of a valuable series of original source documents. In particular, this site has documents pertaining to Asia in the twentieth-century. Also accessible through this page are links to the Internet East Asian History Sourcebook, which has many pre-twentieth­century items. There are also a large number of documents from the twentieth century, such as those about East Asian countries after World War II.

Title: AskAsia Instructional Resources

URL: http://www.askasia.orgiteachers/Instructional_Resources/index.htm

Students and teachers will find a wealth of information on this site that has lesson plans, readings, maps, photos, drawings, and other materials. It is easy to navigate the sub-pages with links organized by country, by theme, and by grade level.

Title: Asia for Educators

URL: http://afe.easia.columbia.edu

Although this site is not focused solely on twentieth-century Asia, because of the clear organization of the site through timelines and thematic sub-pages, one will find abundant information on Asia in the twentieth century. There is also a special section on Contempor­ary Japan that contains video clips or transcripts on a variety of topics.

Title: ExEAS—Expanding East Asian Studies

URL: http://www.exeas.org/

This relatively new site at Columbia University is funded by a grant from the Freeman Foundation, so one will see some links that say “forthcoming.” However, do not let this deter you from visiting this site, which is replete with useful and bountiful information for teach­ers. There are materials for teachers arranged by theme. Each of these resources is treated as a teaching unit and includes lists of suggested readings for teachers and students. In addition, there are actual sample syllabi from a large number of courses (again arranged by theme) given in many universities.

Title The East Asian Collection & Southeast Asian Images and Texts

URL: http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/EastAsia/

URL: http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/SEAiT/

These two sites from the University of Wisconsin offer a prodigious number of digital images of East Asia (mostly China in the 1930s) and Southeast Asia (mostly Laos and the Philippines in the twentieth cen­tury.) In the browsing mode of each of the sub-collections are brief and full descriptions of the photos; the full description has technical details as well as the time and place of the photo.

SOUTH ASIA

Title: India and Pakistan

URL: http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/9708/India97/index.html

This special presentation from CNN-Interactive explores the fifty-year history of independence of both India and Pakistan. In addition to tracing the timelines from 1947-1997 for each country, there are numerous multimedia offerings on life in these countries and pertinent articles and book excerpts.

CHINA

Title: The Cultural Revolution as History

URL: http://orpheus.ucsd.edu/chinesehistory/cr/cultrev.htm

There are twenty hook reviews and historiographical essays written by PhD candidates in East Asian history at UC San Diego in 2002. The majority of the hooks being reviewed were written in the 1980s. The essays are fairly lengthy and detailed; each has reference lists at the end of the articles.

Title: Visual Art as Cultural Memory in Modern China

URL: http://kaladarshan.arts.ohio-state.edu/exhib/poster/exhibintro.html

This is a visually stunning site. Click on the link “Online Exhibition” at the top of the introductory page and then view over seventy posters dating from 1963 to 1979. Not only are the posters vivid and striking, but in addition there are descriptions and analyses that illuminate not only the art but also the era.

Title: China and the United States: From Hostility to Engagement

URL: http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB19/

In 1999 a senior fellow at the National Security Archive, Jeffrey RieheIson, put together a small collection of declassified documents (through the Freedom of Information Act) that will fascinate those who are interested in the relationship between China and the US. Simply reading the transcript of the jovial conversation between Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger, Mao Zedong, and Zhou Enlai (Document #5) is worth the visit to this site.

Title: CNN: Tianantnen Revisited

URL: http://edition.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2001/tiananmen/

The history and the memories of the events in 1989 at Tiananmen Square are examined through video clips, audio interviews, and articles from a variety of sources including Time magazine and Asiaweek.com. There are also profiles of the leadership in China at the time and information on the student organizers.

EAST TIMOR

Title: Out of the Ashes: Destruction and Reconstruction of East Timor

URL: http://epress.anu.edu.au/oota/frames.php

Out of the Ashes is a compilation of articles by various authors published by the Australian National University E Press. The entire text is presented on this Web site. It begins with the history of Timor and then focuses on power and policies that affected the independence of East Timor in the late twentieth century.

INDIA

Title: Mahatma Gandhi Research & Media Service

URL: http://www. gandhiserve.org/

This is a site that is not visually attractive or easy to navigate, but there are so many materials about Gandhi that make the site quite worth­while. For example, on the right side of the home page under “Image” is a link to the Photo Library where there are more than 1.000 photos available, (Since the photos are for sale, there is a watermark on each photo. However, the marks do not obscure the overall image.) In the “Writings” section, there is a link to “Writings Online” that is a huge list of links to articles, by and about Gandhi, as well as innumerable e-texts of complete books about Gandhi. In the Audio section one can listen to clips of Gandhi speaking in English and Hindi.

JAPAN

Title: Historical Statistics of Japan

URL: http//www.stat.go.jp/englishi/data/chouki/index.htm

For those who enjoy statistical tables, this is a site to be relished. Available in Excel format are 135 years of statistics and 836 tables in 31 fields. These statistics have been collected by the Statistics Bureau of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communication. Included in the 31 subject fields are Transport, Environment, Education, and Prices.

Title: Contemporary Okinawa

URL: http://www.niraikanai.wwma.net/index2.html

Perhaps the section of this site that will hold the most interest for the study of twentieth century Japan is the “archive” section. In this archive are many documents pertaining to the postwar period including those about relations between the US and Japan. There are also other documents about Okinawa in the latter part of the twentieth century.

Title: Birth of the Constitution of Japan

URL: http://www.ndl.go.jp/consitution/e/index.html

The National Diet Library has produced this site in Japanese and English. Here are the “major events and important documents involved in the framing and enactment of Japan’s Constitution.” There are brief biographies of the important figures, both Japanese and American, as well as live sets of documents dealing with the entire time frame from the early efforts to the eventual enactment of the Constitution. In addition, there is a section, “Main Issues,” that has six sub-areas of discussion with links to original documents and commentaries.

KOREA

Title: The Korean War

URL: http://school.discovery.com/lessonplans/programs/koreanwar/

This is a lesson plan from the discovery.com Web site aimed at grade level 9-12 students. The lesson is laid out in typical fashion and includes a link to a site with interesting recollections from Korean War veterans that have been assembled on the Korean War Project site.

Title: The Korea Society

URL: http://koreasociety.org/index.htm

There are several “Online Publications”-links located on the left side of the home page—that will help students understand life and events in Korea in the twentieth century. Teachers can also explore the more than 100-page resource guide for K-12 teachers.

TIBET

Title: Tibet Visual History

URL: http://www.visualtibet.org/hms/home.php?publiclogin=1

Unfortunately, many of the links are broken and one cannot access full-page photos. However, even with just the 400 available thumbnail prints, a fascinating glimpse of Tibet emerges. [Click on the link “See All Images.”]

VIETNAM

Title: Vietnam War Index

URL: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/vietnam.html

This is a site meant for students. It provides brief biographical infor­mation on the important figures of the era as well as short articles on the important events of the Vietnam War. There are also links to more than thirty-five Web sites that deal with the war.