Henry Barlow - The Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society: The Past and the Future

Become a Fellow of the Society: https://royalasiaticsociety.org/membe...

The talk will describe the foundation of MBRAS in 1874 and its history since that date, referring to the various eminent colonial and post-colonial scholars who have contributed to the Journal from the date of its first publication in 1878 to today (the only gap being the WWII years.)

The Society has changed its name on several occasions. It moved from Singapore to Malaysia in the late 1960s thanks to Mubin Sheppard. The future of the Society now depends not so much on membership subscriptions as on royalties from our participation in MUSE, through John Hopkins University, and JSTOR in USA. All the back numbers of our Journal are online, and our policy is to put online all our Monographs and Reprints, many of which are out of stock and not readily available.

It is hard to tell where the internet era will lead us, but we have survived various vicissitudes in the last 150 years, and are confident we are well placed to flourish for the next 150 years.