Citation and Annotation Support is at the bottom of the page.

PRIMARY SOURCES are found within books, databases, and scholarly websites. When citing primary sources, you may need to be in Advanced citation level,  depending on the source type.  Remember, your primary source needs to help answer your question.  Search Tips Document

Recommended Resources

Databases: **Using the Databases and eBooks from Home or on your personal computer? View the Digital Resources Logins and Passwords page. You'll need to sign in with your @apps to view.

**Databases will export the correct MLA9 citation RIGHT INTO YOUR NOODLETOOLS! "Wait, what? That's awesome!" 

World History the Modern Era from ABC-Clio - Shorter, hyperlinked original entries that are targeted for high school readers. Great for pre-searching! Includes primary sources, where available. "Chinese Revolution of 1911" is a good overview article to begin with. The left side of the article will suggest relevant primary sources and additional content articles. Another is the May Fourth Manifesto (primary source) and many search results for Yuan Shikai. Using the Advanced Search allows you to search specifically for primary source documents.

World History in Context Database -  A comprehensive history database that gathers published information from reference books, magazines and news publications, academic journals and includes primary sources like videos, images, and audio. The topics "China, 1912-1949" and Chiang Kai-shek allow you to browse the overview articles (scroll down) as well as relevant academic journals, images, reference articles, etc. Conduct a specific search OR browse the topics.

KCLS.org/Students: Lots of options here!! Click on the link here first and then follow "Middle, High School and College Students > Need Sources for Your Paper or Project?  > Scroll to Britannica Library (Basic pre-search entries), Gale Academic OneFile (more academic), or Gale eBooks: Here are results from a "China History" search (use OverDrive/Kindle to read), and more. To get additional databases, click on "Databases" on the left navigation after you've signed in. Login with your 417+student number and the last four digits of your student number once you have landed on a resource you want to use. 

Gale in Context High School - This general information database contains both current and historical information. Conduct a specific search or browse the Topics List > China for mostly current articles. However, there are relevant historical articles as well. The Advanced Search allows you to filter for primary sources.

JStor: Scholarly journal articles with a post-high school reading level

We have some titles on China History in our eBook services too!

eBooks in Gale Virtual Reference Library (Reference articles in comprehensive books). Of particular interest is from the Sun Yat-Sen from the Ency of World Biography and Nationalist Government, 1927-1949 from the Ency of Modern China. 

Print Books:

Use the library catalog (through Clever> Follett) to locate print books on your research topic.  Check the table for a few suggestions of the types of books you'll find here in the library.

"Revolution and Republic" Chapter 6 from the History of China (poorly saved to GDoc, sorry!): 

The Birth of a Republic by Hanchao Lu a photographic history of China's 1911 Revolution and Beyond (We also have this in print, but the link goes to Google Books).

Free Web Recommendations:

Adding site:edu to your search terms will provide only university (or other education) sites in your results list. Or, use Google Scholar to search for your free web resources. Enhance your search to get more scholarly results!

New!! Alpha History: Chinese Revolution: Primary Documents!  This collection of Chinese Revolution documents contains primary sources from the Hundred Days’ Reforms in 1898 to the death of Mao Zedong in 1976.

Asia for Educators: Primary Sources! This site, hosted by Columbia University, has links to speeches by Chiang Kai-shek and other documents during the period of 1900-1950. Follow the links below the China column.

Asia for Educators: Our Final Awakening -  Written by Chen Duxiu (1879-1942), who was one of the leading intellectuals of the May Fourth Movement. "Beginning around 1917, Chinese intellectuals began to engage each other in serious discussion and debate on culture, history, philosophy, and related subjects..."

"I Will Never Forget": Voices of Survivors of the Nanjing Atrocities: Great example of a primary source. Update: The recordings moved and now the transcripts are here. 

China's Reality Check on the Long March: Interview of survivor in the L.A. Times - Find better, or delete. This one is an interview of his son and more of a summary. In the meantime, students can look at the section on the Long March on Asia for Educators. 

Nanjing Testimony Filming: Watch videos of the Nanjing survivors testimonies. From USC.

1944 Interview with Mr. Mao Tze-tung about the relationship between the KMT and the CCP, made available by the National Archives of the U.K. 

Diary of Wilhelmina Vaultrin, American missionary in China 1937-1940: Made available by Yale, this is an example of a treasure of a primary source. Not organized by topic though, so more time-consuming to locate a reflection that might help answer your question. The link loads a pdf, scanned from the original document.

Chinese Posters: This site is maintained by the Chinese Poster Foundation and Leiden University, Netherlands. The collection of historical propaganda posters provides wonderful insight into our time period of study, among others in Chinese history. Thank you to Caden Ho, Class of 2027, for this recommendation. 

New! The Library of Congress maintains PRIMARY SOURCE collections, even on other countries such as China. See the photos and documents with the search "Chiang Kai-Shek," as an example.

New!  Libraries often collect resources, like we do! This collection of Chiang Kai-Shek primary sources is curated by Christopher Newport Univ.

Google Books search results, using the search "China Revolution Republic"  You can be more specific with your key terms.

Google Scholar Results, using the same search as above.

Searching for an online image's history? Try a Google Reverse Image search: go to images.google.com, click the camera icon, and either paste in the URL for an image you've seen online or drag an image from another window into the search box..

Citations and Annotations

Databases will create correct citations for you, that you can copy/paste into NT. Two main understandings for citing your sources: WHAT is it and HOW did YOU access it?

 More Sharing Directions: Share your WCs with the Library within the Noodletools App. Click in the blank column below "Sharing" when viewing your list of projects.  Click Share with a Teacher's Inbox and then the "+Share." Start typing in your teacher's name, select the correct inbox and click "Done." 

Annotations can be completed in the Annotation field below your citation.

 Here are two (DRAFT) examples:

"The Kuomintang." Gale World History Online Collection, Gale, 2023. Gale In Context: World History, link.gale.com/apps/doc/SFHJXR645159061/WHIC?u=inglemoor&sid=bookmark-WHIC&xid=e38fd34b. Accessed 14 Apr. 2026.

This overview article on the Kuomintang is part of the Gale unauthored online collection of articles. Gale, a long-time publisher of academic materials in both print and digital, published this article in the World History in Context database (Origin). The article explains the Kuomintang's guiding principles of nationalism, democracy, and people's livelihood and how their influence changed over the years under a changing leadership (Value).

Dillon, Michael. "May Fourth Movement, Communists and Nationalists 1917-24." China : a Modern History. 2nd ed., I.B. Tauris, 2021. 

Michael Dillon is a historian and writer, and currently a Professor of History and Affiliate of the Lau China Institute at King's College in London. He was previously the Director of the Centre for Contemporary Chinese Studies at Durham University and Visiting Professor at Tsinghua University in Beijing (Origin). This book, especially the chapter "May Fourth Movement, Communists and Nationalists (1917-24)" analyzes the changing political environment and the birth and early development of the Communist party (Value).