Single-country approaches to the study of Buddhism miss the crucial significance of
international networks in the making of modern Buddhism, in a period when the
material basis for such networks had been transformed. Southeast Asia in particular
acted as a dynamic crossroads in this period enabling the emergence of a ‘global
Buddhism’ not controlled by any single sect, while India and Japan both played
unexpectedly significant roles in this crossroads. A key element of this process was the encounter between Asian Buddhist networks and western would-be Buddhists. Those involved, however, were often marginal - ‘creative failures’ in many cases - whose stories enable us to think this history in a more diverse way than is often done. In other cases as isolated figures they could pave the way for the ‘mainstreaming’ of new forms of Buddhism by established actors in later decades. This book, formerly published as a special
issue of the journal Contemporary Buddhism entitled ‘A Buddhist crossroads: pioneer European Buddhists and globalizing Asian networks 1860–1960’. The research described in this
issue often raises other methodological questions of representativity and significance, while posing important challenges around collaborative research and the use of new
technologies.