This index to the Records of the Department of State relating to internal affairs of China, 1910-1929, collection provides the dates each reel covers. Government Information MAY NOT hold all of these reels. The record in the library catalog describes the extent of our holdings. For help, or to make an appointment to view a reel, email rad@colorado.edu
On the 227 rolls of this microfilm publication are reproduced the records from the decimal file of the Department of State, 1910-29, that relate to internal affairs of China. The records, consisting of bound volumes and unbound documents, are chiefly instructions to and dispatches from diplomatic and consular officials. The despatches are often accompanied by enclosures such as diplomatic notes exchanged, pamphlets, pictures, and newspaper clippings. The records also include notes between the Department of State and foreign diplomatic representatives in the United States, memoranda prepared by officials of the Department, and correspondence with officials of other Government departments and with private firms and persons. The summaries of Lists of Documents or "purport sheets" reproduced on Rolls 1-6 give brief abstracts of the documents and serve as a finding aid to the documents themselves. 'The arrangement of entries on these lists generally corresponds to the arrangement of the documents in the file.
Under the decimal classification system of filing adopted by the State Department in 1910, Class 8 indicates Internal Affairs of States. The country number assigned to China is 93; thus the documents reproduced in this microcopy bear the file number 893 and relate to internal affairs of China. A decimal point is used after the first three digits, followed by a number that represents a specific subtopic. This number, in turn, may be followed by a slant mark (/). The numbers that follow the slant mark are assigned to individual documents as they are accumulated on a specific subject. For example, a decimal file number taken from a document reproduced in this microcopy is 893.516/15. The three-digit number 516 signifies that the subtopic is banks and banking, and the number following the slant mark indicates that this is the 15th document received on this subtopic. The documents under one subject classification are generally in chronological order, coinciding with the document number assigned (which follows the slant mark). There are instances, however, when a document file number was not assigned until a date considerably later than the one on which the document was received.
Cross-reference sheets referring to related records under other subject classifications in the decimal file have been reproduced as they occur, and appropriate cross-reference notations appear in the Lists of Documents. Other cross-reference notations are to documents in the "numerical file," a system used for the central files of the Department of State for the period 1906-10. The checkmarks that appear by most entries in the left-hand column of the Lists of Documents indicate that the papers are in the file; those without marks, it is believed, were not among the records when they were received from the Department of State.
Some of the documents that have been checked in the Lists of Documents do not appear in this microcopy. The file contains security classified documents 'and communications received from and classified by foreign governments and Federal agencies, in addition to those classified by the Department of State. The documents that have not been declassified are not available as part of this microcopy. The National Archives and Records Service does not have authority to make reproductions of such documents available to searchers.
The records reproduced in this microcopy are part of the records in the National Archives designated as Record Group 59 General Records of the Department of State. Among the records in the same record group, in Class 7 of the Department of State decimal file, 1910-29, are two series regarding Chinese affairs that are closely related to the records reproduced in this microcopy. One concerns political relations between the United States and China (Microcopy 339), and the other is political relations between China and Other States (Microcopy 341).
The spreadsheet attached below contains a reel-by-reel description of the complete collection.