The chapter discusses cultural agency and the creation of new channels of communication between communities of literati across linguistic, cultural, national and temporal borders. It focuses on the process of transformation of cosmopolitan pre-national cultural identities into national schemes of appropriation and affiliation. The article further investigates how tensions between post-Kantian cosmopolitanism and the emerging local nationalisms gave space to the formation of transnational communities and the foundation of trans-temporal affiliations or intellectual allegiances.