University of Bristol launches Visualising China
The University of Bristol has launched Visualising China, an online source of 8,000 digitised historical photographs of China covering the period 1870-1950.
The site offers free open access to major online collections, including previously unseen and private collections and a selected Google Books library of China-related publications.
“The resource brings Chinese history since the 1850s to life and informs our understanding of modern China,” said Robert Bickers, professor of history and director of the University’s Historic Pictures of China unit.
“Likely users of the site include family history researchers and historians around the world, not least in China, where photographic documentation is not always easily available.’
Users may submit comments or annotations to the image entries, organise images on to their own workbenches, download low-resolution images, and explore the collections by word searches, date ranges, photographer, people depicted, maps and classification terms.
The archive includes rare photographs by the Chinese ambassador to the USSR during World War Two, Fu Bingchang, and rare shots of the nationalist leader of China Chiang Kai-Shek.