Imperial Networks of Art and Alternative Modernities in the Early Twentieth Century

At the turn of the twentieth century an important transnational network of art developed that join Britain and Asia. In this network artists and art critics traveled back and forth between Britain, India, and Japan, collaborated closely with, and mutually influenced, one another.  It was quite a complex network as it included men and women; British government officials and Indian artists who lived in India; Japanese artists and critics who stay temporarily in India; Indian and Japanese artists who traveled to Britain; and British critics and artists who visited India. One of the most important and long lasting innovations made by members of the network was a new theory of the importance and value of Asian culture and art. But they did more than just that.  This network was not like other British Imperial networks which acted as assimilationist forces creating a common sense of Britishness among settlers of British descent throughout the world.  In fact, many members of this network were anti-imperialist and very critical of Britain.  They hoped for a form of modernity, for post-colonial India and contemporary Europe, which was alternative to and very different from that of the modern West.  They disliked Western economic capitalism and the politics of nation-states, and they suggested the need for a cooperative economy and a federal system of government that treated all races, religions, and regions as equals.  They also challenged the Westernizing ideology of imperialists and many anti-colonial nationalists, and supported a new cosmopolitan nationalism that considered East and West as equivalent, and that combined the best elements of both with the traditional culture of each. While this alternative modernity never was implemented and lost popularity after the First World War, something similar to it has become popular a century later.