This page provides links to the updated Harvard syllabus for reading Qing documents, Introduction to Ch'ing Documents, and related materials.

Section One contains the materials found in Part One, "Reading Documents: The Rebellion of Chung Jen-Chieh", which is the work of Philip A. Kuhn and John K. Fairbank, with the assistance of Beatrice S. Bartlett and Chiang Yung-chen. It was published originally in 1993 by the Harvard-Yenching Institute and replaced the older Ch'ing Documents: An Introductory Syllabus compiled by John K. Fairbank, which went through different published editions in 1952, 1959, and 1965; the 1965 edition was reprinted in 1970. In addition, new materials about the rebellion (Documents I.15-20) have been added to those that appeared in the original 1993 publication.

The materials found in Section Two include all the documents found in Part Two of Introduction to Ch'ing Documents, called Using Archives - produced by Ju Deyuan and Philip A. Kuhn, with the assistance of Ch'en Hsi-yuan, Peter Wan, and Wang Xiangyun, and published originally in 1996. In addition, this part of the site contains additional documentary sources (Documents II.11-19) not found in that volume. New materials continue to be added on an irregular basis, the most recent having been added in Fall 2020.

The observant reader will note that the contents here vary in places from those in the original published versions of these materials. Updates and editorial changes to the glossaries and introductory information contained in the online version of all these materials have been made by Mark Elliott and Michael Szonyi, and by students in the "Qing Docs" seminar at Harvard University.  Significant additional work has been carried out by Vincent Leung, Tarryn Chun, and Chao Lang. Suggestions for further improvements are always welcome. Authorized users may make changes to most content directly by using the wiki toolkit.

The materials here are reproduced by kind courtesy of the Harvard-Yenching Institute, the First Historical Archives, Beijing, and the National Palace Museum, Taipei. Unauthorized reproduction, circulation, or distribution of these materials is prohibited.