Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 March 2019
As far back as the incorporation of the Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge in 1662, it has been understood that association, discussion, exchange of information, and debate among scholars and scientists are essential to the development of scholarship and research. The very existence of the Royal Society contributed to the strong development of science, particularly in Britain in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and much was accomplished as a result of the associations therein formed. Similarly, the establishment of the Internationale Musikgesellschaft in 1899 provided for musicology an international forum and fostered the development of general European rather than simply national approaches. In the United States, the establishment of the American Folklore Society, just a hundred years ago, brought together literary artists and scholars, musicians, and anthropologists in a way that made possible the peculiarly interdisciplinary configuration of American folkloristics.