Asia and the West -- Nineteenth century collections online

This archive will enable students and scholars to examine a selection of records that constitute a political and social history of Western interaction with a number of Asian countries during the nineteenth century. Most of the manuscript collections in this archive consist of the British Foreign Office and United States consular and diplomatic records. These records were generally maintained in the local consular or diplomatic posts and reflect the day-to-day accounting of the activities of the indigenous populations and their national governments, the expansion of trade, and the exercise of extraterritorial rights and treaty provisions. In addition, a selection of missionary correspondence and journals has been included, as missionaries usually provided some of the earliest contact in various Asian locales with Western ideals.