Fellows of the Society and guests. At each AnniversaryGeneral Meeting we commemorate the inauguration ofthe Society in 1823 and reaffirm our founders’commitment to the encouragement of research and thedissemination of learning in relation to Asia. Inhis address at the first meeting, Henry Colebrookedeclared that Britain owed a “debt of gratitude” toAsia and had a duty to repay its “obligation” by“promoting an interchange of benefits”. It was atime of vigorous British expansion in Asia; but itwas also a time of woeful indifference in Britain toAsian societies and cultures. In those daysuniversities did little to make good such neglect.Indeed, lamenting the ignorance of Asia in Britishpublic life, another founder-member of the Society,Sir George Staunton, would later emphasise itseducational function. It was, he said “the provinceof the Royal Asiatic Society . . . to bring togetherinto one focus those who are able to impart thisknowledge, and those who are desirous to receiveit”. Clearly the RAS was established to meet anational need, as were other learned societies ofthe same era, such as the Royal Astronomical Societyformed three years earlier, the Zoological Societyof London formed three years later and the RoyalGeographical Society which came into being in1830.