Introduction

In this area we give a chronology of the dates of founding of most of the scholarly societies covered by the Project. We have prepared this section to complement the historical remarks in the set of essays that begin the Project.

The chronology makes it clear that until well into the nineteenth century, scholarly societies tended to be of broad scope (usually covering all the sciences or all the arts, or both), and associated with a definite geographical area. The chronology also demonstrates that with the passage of time, increasingly specialized scholarly societies came into being.

The chronology covers virtually all of the societies included in the Scholarly Societies Project. The only omissions are for a handful of societies included prior to February 1995 for which the editor has not been able to determine a founding date, not even by contacting the societies themselves. For societies added since that time, a condition of inclusion in the Project is that all societies must provide the year of founding when requested, if the Editor cannot determine it from the web site or using standard directories.