Société asiatique
The Société asiatique (“Asian Society”) is a French scholarly society devoted to the study of Asia .
The company was founded in 1822 with the aim of developing and disseminating knowledge of Asia. Geographically, their interests span a wide area, from the Maghreb to the Far East .
After a polemic about translation methods in the years 1826 to 1829, triggered by two articles by Friedrich Eduard Schulz , society was split into two factions: on the one hand, the supporters of scientifically exact methods such as Julius von Klaproth , Jean-Pierre Abel-Rémusat , Eugène Burnouf and Julius von Mohl , on the other hand the »florists« or »philologists and poets« of the romantic literary tradition around Antoine-Isaac Silvestre de Sacy , Antoine-Léonard de Chézy , Alexandre Langlois , Garcin de Tassy and Jean Baptiste André Grangeret de Lagrange . Finally, the first-mentioned group prevailed.
The society publishes the Journal asiatique ( ISSN 0021-762X ), which has been published without interruption since 1822. The Society currently has around 700 members in France and other countries. Their library contains over 90,000 volumes.
Following the example of this society, the German Oriental Society was founded in 1845 with its seat in Leipzig .
literature
- Douglas T. McGetchin: Wilting Florists. The Turbulent Early Decades of the Societe Asiatique, 1822-1860 . In: Journal of the History of Ideas , Vol. 64 (2003), Issue 4, pp. 565-580, ISSN 0022-5037