Asian History

Indonesia through Primary Sources

This is a brief guide to the material available to Boston College faculty and students on subjects in Asian in history (understood including central, south, east, and south-east Asia).

What's on this Page by Type

Broad Digital Collections

JSTOR Images
A database of more than 1.3 million digital images. It covers many time periods and cultures and represent architecture, painting, sculpture, photography, decorative arts, etc. Users are required to create a personal account to access this database off campus.

Europeana
Interface in English or other, major European languages. Content in multiple languages.
Europe-wide unified search of digitized collections. Images, audio, texts, and more. Funded by the EU. Covers more than 1,000 years of history. Strongest for 1500 to 2000.
Open Access.

Gallica
The French National Library's digital collection of more than 8 million items, Gallica provides access to books, manuscripts, maps, images (e.g., photographs, drawings, paintings, etc.), music (e.g., scores and recordings), legal texts, newspapers, and more. Covering more than a The collection centers on France and extends into the reaches of the Empire.

Google Arts & Culture
Collections of art from famous museums and architecture. Digital facsimiles of photos, videos, manuscripts from across more than a millennium of history are also included. Includes material from Indonesian National Museums and other repositories.

HathiTrust
A digital repository for the nation's research libraries, HathiTrust brings together the digitized book and serial collections of major universities and other partner institutions, a significant portion of which is in the public domain and available full text. Boston College's status as a partner makes it possible for members of the Boston College community to download any of the out-of-copyright items as PDFs.

Library of Congress Digital Collections
Digitized primary sources from the Library of Congress, includes manuscripts, books, photos, maps, audio recordings, and more!

World Digital Library
The World Digital Library is a Library of Congress project sponsored by UNESCO. Items in this digital library, including books, manuscripts, photographs, maps and sound recordings, are individually described and searchable in seven languages. Most countries and regions around the world are represented.

Digital Collections from Indonesia

Google Arts & Culture
Collections of art from famous museums and architecture. Digital facsimiles of photos, videos, manuscripts from across more than a millennium of history are also included.

Digital Dutch Collections with Indonesian Content

Dutch National Archives | Nationaal Archief
Interface in Dutch or English. Content predominately in Dutch.
These national collections include over 370,000 books, photographs, drawings, maps, and more from the 12th to the 21st centuries. Focuses include documents related to Dutch involvement in the slave trade (particularly to Suriname) and photographs.
Open Access.
The Memory
Almost 800,000 objects from 134 collections of 92 institutions located across the Netherlands. Topics include History and society; Art and culture; Geography and environment; Communication and media. Includes maps, newspapers, cartoons, photographs, books, film, advertising, and more. Includes archeological finds and contemporary material.
Rijksmuseum
The Rijksmuseum is a Dutch national museum dedicated to arts and history in Amsterdam.

Archeology and Premodern History

Photography (Kern Institute): Images from South Asia
More than 20,000 facsimiles of photographs and slides from the Kern Institute with the University of Leiden. Documents cover multiple periods of South and South East Asian (including India, Indonesia, and Pakistan) history, covering more than 2 millenia of history.

Data and Statistics

Statistics Indonesia (BPS or Badan Pusat Statistik, the Central Bureau of Statistics)
Established in 1960, the institute is directly responsible to the President of Indonesia. Its functions include providing data to other governmental institutes as well as to the public and conducting statistical surveys to publish periodic statistics on the economy, social change and development. Statistics Indonesia also assists data processing divisions in other public offices to support and to promote standard statistical methods.
World Bank Data
The World Bank offers World Development Indicators, Global Development Finance, Education Statistics, Health Nutrition and Population Statistics, Africa Development Indicators, Global Economic Monitor and Millennium Development Goals and much more with mapping and graphing tools

To access additional data sets, visit our Historical Data & Statistics page.

Law and Government Docs

Hein Online
Includes World Constitutions Illustrated with a collection for Indonesian fundamental laws. Also includes material on international treatise, United Nations material, and other commentaries on law in Indonesia.

Indonesian Government Documents
More than 11,000 Government documents and reports from 17th to 20th centuries in Indonesian, English, and Dutch through Hathi Trust. A limited amount available full text.

Law Library Microform Consortium (LLMC)
Includes federal legislative, administrative and judicial materials from the collections of government and academic law libraries. To find material on Indonesia, go to Home -> Other Countries -> Indonesia. Includes material from the 17th to the 20th centuries.

Wilson Center Digital Archive
Includes material on the 1955 Bandung Conference and more.

Maps

American Geographical Society Library Digital Map Collection
Contains over 14000 maps, ranging from early maps of Asia to historical maps of Wisconsin and Milwaukee, and other American cities, states, and national parks. Includes more than 400 maps of Indonesia from the 19th and 20th centuries.
Australian National Library: Collections
Includes a large online collection hosted in or linked though the library. Particularly strong in Australian history and then Pacific history. Online collections strongest in the Early Modern and Modern eras.
Biblioteca Digital Hispánica: Indonesia Maps
More than 15 books and 170 maps looking at Indonesia in the Spanish Digital Library. Interface in English and documents predominately in Spanish.
David Rumsey Map Collection
Over 95,000 Collection Maps and related images with global coverage from the 13th to the 21st centuries with excellent search capacities. Focuses on 16th–21st century maps of North and and South America, as well as maps of the world, Asia, Africa, Europe, and Oceania. The collection includes atlases, globes, school geographies, maritime charts, and a variety of separate maps including pocket, wall, children's and manuscript maps.

more... less...

Host: Stanford University

For access to more maps, visit out Historical Maps page.

Music and Folktales

Panji Tales Manuscripts
Digital copies of Panji manuscripts from Leiden University Libraries and will ultimately contain all of them, totaling over 260. It will contain manuscripts written on palm leaves and on paper, both old and new, in eight languages: Javanese-Balinese, Javanese, Malay, Balinese, Sasak, Buginese, Acehnese, and Sundanese.
South East Asian Pop Music KITLV
This sub collection is actually a jukebox filled with Indonesian pop music. The original analogue vinyl records have been digitized. Thousands of records are now online available with a single click. They include recordings from the nostalgic Keroncong songs of the Dutch East Indies, like 'Bengawan Solo' sung by Rudi van Dalm, to the old-fashioned folk music modernized by adding electric guitars, keyboards and drums as in the so-called 'Pop Keroncong' sung by Koes Plus.

Photographs

Images from Indonesia at the University of Michigan
The University of Michigan database of images from Indonesia includes more than 500 documents predominately from the late 1990s.
Photographs of Indonesia (NYPL)
The photographs were taken chiefly by scholar Claire Holt (1901-1970) during her visits to Indonesia in 1930-38, 1955-57 and 1969 to visually document the plastic and performing arts for her research.
Southeast Asian & Caribbean Images (KITLV)
The biggest part of the image collection consists of photographs. Around 1890 the KITLV started collecting photographs for the purpose of documenting the image of the Dutch East and West Indies in all their facets, such as landscapes, town views, architecture, and life under indigenous and Dutch rule and so forth.
SouthEast Asian Images & Texts at UWDC
This collection contains digitized images, including photographs and slides, that librarians, scholars, and other subject specialists have deemed important to these fields of study will be added to the collection on an ongoing basis. Photographs from the late 19th and 20th centuries. Texts (includes letters, interviews, gazettes, some government reports) from the 20th century.

Colonial Images

Indonesia independent - Photographs 1947-1953 > The Digital Collection
More than 4,500 images depicting Indonesia under Dutch control between the 1940s and 1950s. Images focus on daily life, environment, and more.
Southeast Asian & Caribbean Images (KITLV)
The biggest part of the image collection consists of photographs. Around 1890 the KITLV started collecting photographs for the purpose of documenting the image of the Dutch East and West Indies in all their facets, such as landscapes, town views, architecture, and life under indigenous and Dutch rule and so forth.

Borders and Migration

Border and Migration Studies Online
This global collection of documents, video and images addresses border control and disputes, refugees, undocumented migration, human trafficking and more in regions around the world. Materials in the collection cover the 19th century to present day. Border and Immigration Studies Online is cross-searchable with Human Rights Studies Online.

Communities of Interest

The Chinese-Indonesian Community
A selection of more than 200 facsimiles of materials belonging to temples and private collections in four cities: Jakarta/Tangerang, Bandung, Solo, and Pontianak, where the Confucian communities during the period of 1900s to 1940s were vibrant.

Human Rights

Amnesty International Library
Interface and content in English (and other languages).
Access to AI's more recent country and research reports beginning in 1961 and moving to the present.
Open Access.
Human Rights Watch Reports
Interface and content in English (and other languages).
HRW's reports from 1987 forward. Can search by country, year, keyword, and topic.
Open Access.

Human Rights Studies Online
Human Rights Studies Online provides documentation, analysis, and interpretation of major human rights violations and atrocity crimes worldwide. The collection includes text and video that give voice to the countless victims of human rights crimes in the 20th and early 21st centuries committed during the Holocaust, and in Armenia, Cambodia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Rwanda, Darfur, and other locations.
BC login necessary.

International Organizations

OECD iLibrary
Includes key OECD publications such as: Financial Market Trends, Higher Education Management and Policy, Nuclear Law Bulletin, OECD Economic Outlook, OECD Economic Studies, OECD Economic Surveys, OECD Journal of Competition Law & Policy, and OECD Papers. Cover from 1990s onward.
United Nations Documents
ODS is the UN's Official Document System. You can search for UN documents by keywords, then narrow your search.

Organizational Documents

IFLA Library
Launched in summer 2013 with the IFLA World Library and Information Congress papers, this collection will continue to grow with the addition of existing and new resources. Focuses on 2010s and later.

Scholarship in Indonesia

neliti: Indonesia's Research Repository
Draws on hundreds of journals and other research produced in and about Indonesia. Strongest after 2000.

US on Indonesia

CIA World Factbook
The CIA World Factbook is an easy-to-use, authoritative resource that provides maps and quick-reference facts and statistics (e.g. geography, government, people, economy, energy, etc.) for nations and regions.

Digital National Security Archive
Declassified documents on the most critical world events, countries, and U.S. policy decisions from post World War II through the 21st century
Hein Online
HeinOnline is an image-based legal research database with over 50 million pages of legal information in fully-searchable PDF format, comprising over 30 separate collections including Law Journal Library, Legal Classics, U.S. Supreme Court Library, U.S. Federal Legislative History Library, U.S. Congressional Documents, Treaties and Agreements Library and many others. Additional titles and years are added regularly.

For more resources on U.S. Foreign Policy, see the associated Research Guide.

For Additional Help

For additional recommendations, contact your History Liaison, Erin, at erinkate.scheopner@bc.edu or schedule an appointment.

O'Neill Library

Bapst Library

Burns Library

Educational Resource Center

Law Library

Social Work Library

Theology & Ministry Library

O'Connor Library

Institute for Advanced Jesuit Studies

Asian History

Indonesia through Primary Sources

What's on this Page by Type

Broad Digital Collections

Digital Collections from Indonesia

Digital Dutch Collections with Indonesian Content

Archeology and Premodern History

Data and Statistics

Law and Government Docs

Maps

Music and Folktales

Photographs

Colonial Images

Borders and Migration

Communities of Interest

Human Rights

International Organizations

Organizational Documents

Scholarship in Indonesia

US on Indonesia

For Additional Help