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William Edward Maxwell, born in 1846, was the son of Sir Peter Benson Maxwell, the Chief Justice of the Straits Settlements. Maxwell followed in his father's footsteps, training in the legal profession and working within colonial administration. In 1883, Maxwell was appointed Commissioner of Land Titles in the Straits Settlements, and, therefore, Member of the Executive and Legislative Councils of those Settlements. In 1889, he was appointed the Resident of Selangor. He became the Colonial Secretary of the Straits Settlements in 1892, and was acting governor from 30 August 1893 to 1 February 1894. During this time Maxwell was actively involved with the Singapore Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, serving as President, Vice-President, and Editor of the Journal, to which he contributed a number of articles. He was avidly interested in the Malay language.

In 1895, he was transferred to be Governor of the Gold Coast (Ghana). Maxwell died at sea, from malaria, near the Canary Isles, in 1897, and was buried at sea. He requested that all his private papers and diaries were burnt. Fortunately, this did not include the many manuscripts which he had collected. These were bequeathed to the Royal Asiatic Society.

Wilfred Blythe Lawson completed his education in Birkenhead Institute and Liverpool University. In 1921 he joined the Malayan Civil Service and went to Canton in 1922 to study Cantonese. Blythe served as Assistant Protector or Protector of Chinese in Kuala Lumpur, Selangor, Penang, Johore, Negri Sembilan and Singapore. He continued to serve in a variety of roles and in 1950, Blythe was appointed the Colonial Secretary. He retired in 1953 but returned to Singapore in 1955 to work on his book.

Hannah More, a well-known playwright and religious writer, met Alexander Johnston in 1819 and he asked for her plays to be translated into Sinhalese by Buddhist priests.

William Cowan was an officer in the Chinese Protectorate in Malaya (Malaysia) working as assistant and then protector in the Perak area. He monitored the Chinese Secret Societies as well as implementing health and other reforms.

Bernhard Dorn was a German orientalist. He specialized in the history and the languages of Iran, Russia and Afghanistan. He studied theology and philology at the universities of Halle and Leipzig. At Leipzig University Dorn worked for a while as a lecturer before becoming a professor of oriental languages at Kharkov University (1829–35). In 1835 he relocated to St. Petersburg as a professor of history and geography in the Asiatic department of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He taught Sanskrit and Pashtu at St. Petersburg University. In 1839 he became an adjunct at the Russian Academy of Sciences, where he eventually attained the level of academician in 1852. He was appointed director of the Asiatic Museum in 1842 and director of the Ethnographic Museum in 1855.