Farrukh Husain will be in conversation with Victoria Schofield discussing his acclaimed account of the first Afghan war entitled ‘Afghanistan in the Age of Empires’ detailing the role of Afghan women in combat, the respective merits of Afghan and British weaponry and how and why the Kabul uprising occurred on the anniversary of the battle…
When 21 Sikh soldiers stood against 10,000 men: the battle of Saragarhi In the late 19th century, tensions were heightened between Britain and Russia as the nations battled over territories in central Asia. British forces held vulnerable posts on the colonial border between British India and Afghanistan, threatened by both Russian forces and Afghan tribes.…
The Indo-Persian educated became the pioneers of what is termed “Invisible Occidentalism”, also called “Orientalism in reverse,” as they explored vistas of knowledge concerning the West. The cultural interaction with the agents of the new regime fostered new modes of thought and reshaped the mental landscape and sensibilities of the traditional intelligentsia. Some of them…
FRIENDS OF THE ROYAL ASIATIC SOCIETY, HONG KONG BRANCH Lecture and lunch Saturday, 22nd September A Faithful Record of the Lisbon Maru Incident Speaker: Major (Ret’d) Brian Finch Time: 2:30 p.m. Venue: Royal Asiatic Society, 14 Stephenson Way, London NW1 2HD Cost: £8 per member or guest, to include refreshments Lunch: An…
Sir Aurel Stein’s life and work has been extensively examined in books and biographies. He was a prolific letter writer but surprisingly none of his biographers have commented on the correspondence with Colonel Reginald Schomberg during the last decade of his life. The two men met each other in Oxford and later at the British…
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The Mughal Madonna: Representations of the Virgin in Jahangiri-era Architecture Dr Mehreen Chida-Razvi (Research Associate, Department of History of Art & Archaeology, SOAS) From the arrival of Jesuit missionaries to the court of the Mughal emperor, Akbar (r.1556-1605), Christian imagery was depicted by Mughal artists in works on paper. Both Akbar and his son, Prince…
The Royal Asiatic Society was founded in 1823, inspired by the model of Sir William Jones’s Asiatic Society of Bengal. From its earliest days, one of the chief ways the Society sought to promote research and interest into the histories and cultures of Asia was by establishing and making available its historic collection of…
PETER HIBBARD MBE More Than a Stuffed Bird Show - The RAS Legacy in Shanghai - In 1857 the founding fathers of the North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (NCBRAS) in Shanghai foretold that the city was destined to be the greatest and most influential city in the Far East. With some…