Sir William Foster CIE was a British historiographer and civil servant who was Registrar and Superintendent of Records in the India Office. He was a member of the Hakluyt Society and an authority on the detailed history of early British relations with India and other countries in Asia.
William Harold Ingrams, OBE CMG, was a British colonial administrator who served in Zanzibar, Mauritius, the Aden Protectorate, the British Zone in post-WW2 Germany, and the Gold Coast. He is best known for his posting in Mukalla, together with his wife Doreen, where he oversaw the Hadhramaut region and brokered a truce between feuding tribes known as "Ingrams' Peace".
William James Adair Nelson, the elder son of H. Adair Nelson who was the original manager of His Majesty's Theatre, Aberdeen, was educated at Aberdeen Grammar School (1914-24). On leaving school he was apprenticed to chartered accountants Williamson & Dunn, qualifying with distinction in 1930 when he took up a series of appointments with London accounting firms, followed by five years in Colombo working for Ford, Rhodes & Thornton. He served in the Royal Artillery in the Middle East during WWII. In 1946 he was appointed Finance Inspector to the Ministry of Food in Colwyn Bay, later becoming Finance Officer to the National Coal Board. In 1948 he was appointed Treasurer and Assistant Secretary at Aberdeen University where he remained until his retirement in 1975.
During his five years in Sri Lanka he developed an interest in castles and artillery fortifications and after his retirement he wrote Dutch Forts of Sri Lanka published in 1984. He then went on to study Fort Jesus at Mombasa and his book of the same name was published posthumously in 1994. Nelson was an active member of the Fortress Study Group for which he wrote many articles.
William Manning was the Rector of Diss & Weeting.
William Roff (mainly known as Bill) was born in Bearsden, in East Dunbartonshire, Scotland. He joined the merchant navy in the late 1940s and worked for the British and Burmese Steam Navigation Company in Asia.. He settled in New Zealand, working as a journalist, and in 1952, he took up New Zealand's offer for anyone over 21 to enrol in tertiary education and studied part-time for a history degree and Masters at Victoria University, Wellington. He went to the Australian National University for his PhD, much of which was researched when living with a family in Kampung Jawa, near Kuala Lumpur. His thesis was subsequently published as The Origins of Malay Nationalism .
He taught at the University of Malaya from 1965-1969 before moving to the University of Colombia where he remained until his retirement. On retiring, he moved with his wife, Sue, to the East Neuk of Fife, Scotland, in the early 1990s, and was an honorary professorial fellow in Edinburgh University's Islamic and Middle Eastern department. Throughout his "retirement" he continued to supervise PhD candidates. He died in 2013, aged 84.
William Woodville Rockhill was an American diplomat, author, and scholar of Chinese and, in particular, Tibetan studies. He served as United States Ambassador to Greece, Serbia, Romania, China, and Russia, and was known for helping to formulate the Open Door policy toward China advanced by the United States in the late 19th century. He became a member of the Society in 1882 and published an article on the geography, ethnography, and history of Tibet in the JRAS in 1891.
William Yule was the son of George and Elizabeth Yule; his family were farmers in East Lothian, Scotland. He was appointed a cadet in the Bengal Army in December 1780, aged sixteen, and sailed for India the following March. He was Assistant Resident in Lucknow and Delh,i and Postmaster in Lucknow in 1800. In October 1806 he was promoted to Major, retiring in 1808. He was offered the Lieutenant-Governorship of St Helena in 1807, but did not accept. In 1811 he married Eliza, eldest daughter of William Paterson of Braehead. He died at 25 Regent Terrace, Edinburgh on 6 October 1839.