Palestine Association

The Palestine Association, formerly the Syrian Society, was formed in 1805 by William Richard Hamilton to promote the study of the geography, natural history, antiquities and anthropology of Palestine and the surrounding areas, "with a view to the illustration of the Holy Writings".

[2] Scholarly work in the region began in earnest around the time of the Oriental Crisis of 1840, with the travels of Edward Robinson, the appointment of the first British consul to Jerusalem and the establishment of the Anglican-German Bishopric in Jerusalem.

[3] In 1834, the Palestine Association was formally disbanded and incorporated into the Royal Geographical Society.

[5] Scholars have debated whether the founding of the society was driven primarily by religious and spiritual motives, or rather "reconstituted, redeployed, redistributed" in a secular orientalist framework.

[7] In 1810, the association published the account of the travels of Ulrich Jasper Seetzen,[5] entitled "A Brief Account of the Countries Adjoining the Lake of Tiberias, the Jordan, and the Dead Sea"[8] In the preface to the publication, the editors noted that "We use the word Palestine not in its confined sense of a province or part of Judea, but in its most extended sense as comprehending all the countries on either side of the river Jordan, inhabited by the Tribes of Israel".