The Diplomatic Archives include records from the following agencies, presented here with their respective dates: the Foreign Office, during the late Qing dynasty (1861-1900), the Ministry of External Affairs (1901-1911), the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Northern Government (1912-1928), and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of China (1928-). These are the most valuable and frequently utilized source materials in the IMH Archives.

The Economic Archives constitute the largest single set of materials in the Archive, and include the records of the Commerce Ministry (1903-1906), the Ministry of Agriculture & Commerce (1913-1927), the Economic Ministry (1938-) and documents from various economic offices written after the Kuomintang Government retreated to Taiwan. These are the most important primary source materials on the economic development of China and Taiwan in the twentieth century.

Individually donated records cover areas in politics, economics, scholarship and culture, such as the papers of Chia-hua Chu and Kwoh-ting Li, etc. These personal records are of great historical value and are essential to the study of the development of modern China and Taiwan after World War II.

The collection includes maps of China, maps of China’s provinces, maps of waterways, and maps of the world, among others. Most of these maps were made in the 1930s. The Archives also holds numerous other maps, for example diplomatic boundary maps and mining maps that were attached to the Diplomatic and Economic Records. Some of these maps are extremely valuable originals drawn by hand.

With the progress of information technology, digitizing the archives and building a completed repository offer the user to browse and catalog the database online. The usage of the archives is more conconvenient and manifold. We renew the content of the database subsequent to the yearly archives arrangement.