Yale University Library Research Guides: Southeast Asia Collection: Manuscripts & Archives

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Important Note: Most Manuscripts and Archives collections are stored at the off-site Library Shelving Facility (LSF) in Hamden. You should place requests at least 2 business days in advance of your visit to our reading room to ensure that your materials are available when you arrive. There are no deliveries from LSF on weekends.

The Yale Finding Aid Database (YFAD) serves as the central place to search finding aids for archives and manuscript collections held by many Yale special collections repositories, including Manuscripts and Archives in Sterling Memorial Library.

Finding aids are tools that describe in varying levels of detail the contents of archival and manuscript collections. By linking collection contents to information about the containers that house those contents, finding aids are a key component of access for researchers who wish to request and use those collections. Finally, because it is important to understand the context of the accumulations of materials that typically comprise an archival or manuscript collection, finding aids provide information about collection creators--individuals, families, and organizations--and the functions and activities that caused the materials in the collection to be created, accumulated, maintained, and used over time.

Manuscripts and Archives

Manuscripts & Archives is a major center for historical inquiry and a teaching laboratory for Yale faculty and students. It also serves as the documentary memory of Yale University. The resources held by the department include over 1700 collections of personal and family papers and organizational records, the Yale University Archives, Yale publications, and over 10,000 hours of video testimonies from Holocaust survivors, liberators, and witnesses in the Fortunoff Video Archive.

Highlighted Collections

Allen R. Maxwell Papers MS 2017
The papers document the professional career and research interests of anthropologist Allen R. Maxwell. His research ethnographic data includes fieldnotes, genealogies, and visual materials from Brunei and Sarawak, a lexicon of the Kadayan dialect of Brunei Malay, and compilations of the Malay texts Sya'ir Awang Simawn and Cetera Syekh Othman.
Dan Beach Bradley and Cornelius Beach Bradley Papers MS 97
Professional papers of Dan Beach Bradley and his son, Cornelius Beach Bradley, both missionaries to Thailand (then Siam) in the nineteenth century. The papers of Dan Beach Bradley consist of four manuscript volumes of a Siamo-English dictionary, articles and notes on the history and culture of Siam, including a list (copy) by the king of Siam of his 61 children in 1852, as well as copies of essays on the Siamese language in both English and Siamese by the king. A number of unidentified papers in Siamese, collected by Dan B. Bradley, are also included. The Cornelius Beach Bradley papers consist chiefly of manuscripts on the Siamese language and rubbings of inscriptions on stone tablets accompanied by correspondence and notes on their translation. Other reprints relate to the origin of Siamese alphabetic writing and an analysis of the language.
Harold C. Conklin Papers MS 1956
The papers comprise personal and professional correspondence, maps, and topical files, documenting the research of Conklin and others, particularly in the area of language in the Philippines. Maps were created in part by the American Geographical Society and the Army Map Service. The Topical Files include professional events and organizations in which Conklin participated; research materials of colleagues Leonard Bloomfield, Frederick Russell Eggan, and Robert B. Fox; and materials relating to the Tasaday Controversy. (The Tasaday, an indigenous people of Mindanao, a Philippine island, were considered in the 1970s-1980s to be the last vestiges of a stone age culture. The validity of this claim was questioned by anthropologists and journalists.)
John Fee Embree Papers MS 976
Miscellaneous papers of John Fee Embree, sociologist and director of Southeast Asia Studies at Yale University, 1950. Two journals of trips to the Far East, 1926 and 1947-1948, the latter accompanied by numerous photographs, postcards, wood cuts, and other illustrations are included. Also in the papers are correspondence and mimeographed memoranda of the American Council of Learned Societies, the Social Science Research Council and the Far Eastern Association, 1948-1951, on the advancement of Asian studies in the United States. There are also documents, reports and lecture outlines from the School of Naval Administration, Hoover Institute, 1945-1946, on the Far East and countries in the South Pacific, and manuscripts by Embree on East Asia and the Japanese in America.
Maurice Durand Papers MS 1728
The collection consists of publications, transliterations, photographs, research notes, and microfilm created, assembled, or used by Maurice Durand during his academic and administrative career. The material relates to Asia, primarily Vietnam, in the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries. Much of Durand's own research notes concern Vietnamese literature and Vietnamese and Indochinese linguistics. Durand was a well-known scholar of Han and Nom. Han is Chinese language texts written using Chinese characters. Nom is Vietnamese language texts written using Chinese characters. Many texts of the period in which Durand specialized are written in a mixture of Han and Nom.
Raymond Kennedy Papers MS 1046
Papers accumulated by Yale Sociology professor Raymond Kennedy and relating to his research in Southeast Asia. Collection primarily comprises writings, maps, photographs, field trip notes, and other research materials documenting Kennedy's work in Southeast Asia, particularly in Indonesia. Among the writings, some of which are in Dutch and Indonesian, are articles and speeches by Kennedy, memoranda written for the U.S. State Department, and writings by others about Southeast Asia. The collection also includes notes and drafts for Kennedy's unpublished four-volume work, Peoples and Cultures of Indonesia, and notes, photographs, recordings, and maps from the Indonesian field trip during which he was killed. Finally, teaching materials from Kennedy's work with the Staff Officers School for Strategic Studies during the Second World War and from other schools are included.
South and Southeast Asian Broadside Collection MS 2003
This collection primarily consists of late nineteenth to early twentieth century newspaper broadsides focused on Siam and Dutch, British, and French colonial empires in South and Southeast Asia. Sources for the broadsides are primarily The Illustrated London News , Le Petit Parisien , and Le Petit Journal. Recurring topics include the European travels of Siam’s King Chulalongkorn and his diplomats, various wars in the regions - the French-Indochina wars, Selangor Civil War, Perak War, Achenese War, Anglo-Afghan wars – and depictions of sociocultural and ecological life throughout South and Southeast Asia. The collection also includes a series of early twentieth century journal articles on Annam, Borneo, Burma, Indochina, Malaya, New Guinea, Siam, and Singapore.

Southeast Asia Collection: Manuscripts & Archives

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Manuscripts and Archives

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