Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland

The Royal Asiatic Society stands in a quiet corner of London’s Camden borough. Founded in 1823 and granted its royal charter the following year, it is Britain’s oldest learned society devoted to Asian studies. Its rooms hold one of the world’s finest collections of books and manuscripts from the 12th century to today. Fellows elected to the society include scholars such as Michael D. Willis, Leonard Lewisohn and William Radice. The society still hosts regular lectures and keeps a digital library for members and visiting researchers. The society’s value lies in its long record of advancing scholarship on every part of Asia and parts of North Africa. It began as the British counterpart to the Asiatic Society of Calcutta, founded in 1784 by Sir William Jones. Among its early leaders were Henry Thomas Colebrooke and Sir George Staunton, both noted linguists and colonial administrators. After the Second World War the society shifted to a politically neutral focus on academic research across the continent. Its journal, published four times a year, remains a leading venue for peer-reviewed essays on Asian history, literature and culture. Visitors find oak-panelled meeting rooms and a dedicated reading room lined with shelves of Asian texts. The society’s offices also contain the Oriental Translation Fund collections, begun in 1828, which preserve Victorian-era translations and specialised monographs. Portraits of past presidents and fellows hang on the walls, reminding visitors of the long line of scholars who have shaped the society’s work.