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Course: History 1, China (2025): Finding primary sources

Why use primary sources?

Primary sources provide a window into the past—unfiltered access to the record of artistic, social, scientific and political thought and achievement during the specific period under study, produced by people who lived during that period.

Coming into close contact with these unique, often profoundly personal, documents and objects can provides a very real sense of what it was like to be alive during a long-past era.

Finding primary sources

We have a collection of books in the library that have primary sources about China. Have a browse through them and copy any documents that will be useful.

Citing your primary source

Use Noodletools to cite all your sources. As with your Mexico paper, start a new bibliography to keep track of all your sources. You will be using Advanced Chicago/Turabian again.

As your source is one of many collected together in a book:

  • Use the 'Anthology/Collection' citation, under the Nonperiodicals heading.
  • Once you have clicked on that, choose the type of source you're citing, from the next drop down menu.
  • You will cite both the source itself and the book it's in - The Search for Modern China: A Documentary Collection.

Here is an example of a Chicago style citation from The Search for Modern China:

"Report on the North China Famine, 1922: Severity of Famine." In The Search for Modern China: A Documentary Collection, edited by Pei-Kai Cheng, Michael Lestz, and Jonathan D. Spence, 247-50. New York: Norton, 1999. Excerpt from "The North China Famine of 1920-1922 with Special Reference to the West Chihli Area." The Peking United International Relief Committee, 1922, 11-15.

What is a primary source?

Primary sources are the raw materials of history — original documents and objects which were created at the time of the event you are studying. They are different from secondary sources, accounts or interpretations of events created by someone without firsthand experience. Primary sources are created:

  • by someone who was present at or involved in the event
  • at the time of the event OR later in a memoir

Examples are:

  • letters
  • manuscripts
  • diaries
  • newspapers
  • speeches
  • memoirs
  • government documents
  • photographs
  • audio recordings
  • videos or films
  • artifacts such as paintings or buildings

A primary source is not necessarily your main source!