Société Asiatique

Material concerned with the interaction of the Société Asiatique and the Royal Asiatic Society.

The Société Asiatique is a French learned society dedicated to the study of Asia. It was founded in 1822 with the mission of developing and diffusing knowledge of Asia. Its boundaries of geographic interest are broad, ranging from the Maghreb to the Far East. The society publishes the Journal Asiatique.

The Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland was founded by the eminent Sanskrit scholar Sir Henry Thomas Colebrooke on the 15th March 1823. It received its Royal Charter from King George IV on the 11th August 1824 'for the investigation of subjects connected with and for the encouragement of science, literature and the arts in relation to Asia'. It continues as a forum for those who are interested in the languages, cultures and history of Asia to meet and exchange ideas.

The American Oriental Society, founded in 1842, is the oldest learned society in the United States devoted to a particular field of scholarship. The Society's aims are the encouragement of basic research in the languages and literatures of the Near East and Asia has always been central in its tradition, which has come to include such subjects as philology, literary criticism, textual criticism, paleography, epigraphy, linguistics, biography, archaeology, and the history of the intellectual and imaginative aspects of Eastern civilizations, especially of philosophy, religion, folklore and art.

The material was divided into series thus:

• OS27/1 - Agreement between the Société Asiatique and the Royal Asiatic Society
• OS27/2 - Agreement between the Société Asiatique and the American Oriental Society
• OS27/3 - Joint Session of the Royal Asiatic Society, Société Asiatique, the American Oriental Society and the Scuola Orientale - R. Universita di Roma
• OS27/4 - Second Session of La Fédération des Sociétés Orientales
• OS27/5 - Centenary Celebrations of the Société Asiatique
• OS27/6 - Bicentenary Celebrations of the Société Asiatique
• OS27/7 - Photographs of letters between the Société Asiatique and Royal Asiatic Society

Open. Please contact the archivist using the email address given here. The archive is open on Tuesdays and Fridays 10-5, and Thursdays 2-5. Access is to any researcher without appointment but it will help if an appointment is made via phone or email. Please bring photo ID.

The material is part of the institutional records of the Society from its dealings with other organisations.

This material was catalogued by Nancy Charley, RAS Archivist, in 2019 and updated in 2023.

Digital photography (without flash) for research purposes may be permitted upon completion of a copyright declaration form, and with respect to current UK copyright law.

These papers were sent and received by the Royal Asiatic Society in the course of its business.

The Society has within its collections, published material from the Société Asiatique. Details can be found here .