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Joseph Edkins was a British Protestant missionary who spent 57 years in China. He was a Sinologue, specialising in Chinese religions. He was also a linguist, a translator, and a philologist ad was author of many books about the Chinese language and the Chinese religions especially Buddhism. Born in Gloucestershire he became a Protestant minister and was sent by the London Missionary Society, to Shanghai. He worked in the London Missionary Society Press and undertook the translation of many western scientific works into Chinese. He was an active member of the North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society.

He returned to England in 1858 and was married to Jane Rowbotham Stobbs. They returned to Shanghai. In 1860 the Edkins family moved to Yantai, Shandong, and in 1861 to Tianjin. After his first wife's death he married Janet Wood White i 1863 and they moved to Beijing. He travelled to England in 1873 but was back in China by 1876.
In 1880 he resigned from the London Missionary Society to become a translator for the Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs. He was widowed a second time in 1877 and married Johanna Schmidt in 1881. He was appointed to edit and translate a series of Western scientific works into Chinese, resulting in 16 Primers for Western Knowledge (西學啟蒙十六種) published in 1898, which comprised textbooks about zoology, botany, chemistry, geography, physiology, logic and other subjects. In 1903 he survived typhoid and was still writing at the age of 81. He died in Shanghai on Easter Sunday, 1905.

John Edye was a shipwright and navy man who worked as Master Shipwright at the Royal Navy Dockyard at Trincomali (modern Trincomalee, Sri Lanka) for five years coinciding with 1829. He then worked at the Chatham Dockyard by at least 1832 before moving to the Department of the Surveyor of the Navy in 1834. Edye was made Chief Clerk at the Surveyor of the Navy's office and worked with Surveyor William Symonds on his many new designs for the Royal Navy's sailing fleet.

Edye's experience in Southern India gave him an expertise and interest in the region's maritime context which continued even after he returned to Britain. He contributed papers reporting on the state of Southern India's ships, ports and natural products to the Royal Asiatic Society's journals in 1834 and 1835, and was approved as a member of the society in 1835 before retiring from the Society's affairs in 1843.

Charles Elliott was born in London in 1776. He married Alicia Boileau in Calcutta in 1802 whilst working for the East india Company. He returned to London, living in Portland Place and was a member of the Royal Asiatic Society. He died in 1856. One of his sons, Rev Charles Boileau Elliott, became a well-known travel writer.

David Erskine was educated at Harrow, and joined the army (51st King's Own Light Infantry) as an ensign in 1835 seeing service in India, Malta and Australia. He was appointed Visiting Magistrate in Cleveland, Tasmania in June 1839, at Green Ponds from November 1840 to March 1843, and then moved to Hobart.

He was promoted to Captain in 1845 and left Tasmania in 1846 for India. He was promoted to Major in 1855 and in 1858 he left the army by selling his commission. He next became Colonial Secretary of Natal colony until 1875. He was Resident Magistrate in Walvis Bay, Damaraland (Namibia), from 1878-1880. After retirement he returned to England with his family and was employed ordering the Natal archives. He died in 1903.

Sir Charles Forbes was educated at Aberdeen University before going to India as head of the first mercantile house, Forbes and Co. of Bombay. He not only conducted business but was also involved in community projects such as ensuring fresh water for the local inhabitants. On leaving India he returned to England where he served as MP for Beverley, Yorkshire, from 1812-1818, and then for Malmesbury, Wiltshire, from 1818-1832. He supported Catholic emancipation and votes for women.

He married Elizabeth Cotgrave (d.1861) in 1811. Forbes died in 1849. His eldest son, John, had predeceased his father. The title Forbes had inherited from his uncle was, in turn, inherited by his second son, Charles. His daughter, Elizabeth, married General, Lord James Hay, second son of the seventh Marquess of Tweeddale.

Emil Forchhammer was a German-born Swiss Professor of Pali at Rangoon College, Myanmar. He collected and copied Pali and Talaing manuscripts which he deposited in the Bernard Free Library in Rangoon (now the National Library of Myanmar). He also worked as an archaeologist for the Survey of Burma, including being its first Director. In 1883 and 1884 he visited the Amherst, Prome and Thayetmyo districts collecting manuscripts and copying inscriptions. In 1885 he made an extensive tour of Arakan. He created a publication about Arakan which went to the Press in 1886 but was not actually published until 1891, a year after his death. From 1886 to 1888 he catalogued the library of the late Nyaungyan Prince and other Pali manuscripts. He suffered from ill health, but wished to survey Pagan, which he undertook in 1888-9. it was requested that he be allowed to return to Europe to complete his work on Pagan. Unfortunately, Forchhammer died in 1890 before his work could be completed.

William Francklin, orientalist, was educated at Westminster School from 1777 to 1781 and at Trinity College, Cambridge (1781–2). He was admitted as a cadet in the service of the East India Company in 1782 and appointed ensign of the 19th regiment of Bengal native infantry on 31 January 1783. By 1814 he had risen to the rank of lieutenant-colonel. On being invalided on 1 October 1815 he was made regulating officer at Bhagalpur. He retired from the army in December 1825, and died on 12 April 1839, aged seventy-six.

A distinguished officer, Francklin also enjoyed considerable reputation as an oriental scholar. In 1786 he made a tour of Persia, in the course of which he lived at Shiraz for eight months as the close friend of a Persian family, and subsequently wrote an account of Persian customs, "Observations Made on a Tour from Bengal to Persia" (Calcutta, 1788). His publications also include a compilation of the memoirs of George Thomas (1756–1802); translations from Persian; archaeological remarks on the plain of Troy; and historical, political, geographic, economic, and religious essays on parts of India. His religious writings include a discussion of the worship of the serpent in various parts of the world. Francklin was a member, and during the later years of his life, librarian and council member, of the Royal Asiatic Society. He was also a member of the Asiatic Society of Bengal.