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Arnold Toynbee was a man of great vision and imagination. His life spanned the century's greatest events and his scholarship spanned all of written history. He received wide admiration and readership from the general public and scorn and disdain from his peers. In his time he was called a mystic, a prophet, a fatalist, a genius and a pessimist.
Arnold Joseph Toynbee was born on April 14, 1889, in London England. He was born to a notable and scholarly family at a time when Great Britain was at the heights of its glory and it world spanning might. His Uncle, also named Arnold, was an economist whose lectures on the topics of economics and the Industrial Revolution were compiled into a book in 1884, which his namesake wrote a preface for in 1956. He died of a "Brain Fever" in 1883. His great grandfather, George, had been a physician to Queen Victoria and had thus traveled in the highest intellectual circles of the time. His grandfather Joseph, was a well-known physician who died when he experimented with chloroform on himself. His great grandfather Harry wrote a book called the Basest thing in the world, which was a scathing assault on self-idolatry which A.J. Toynbee would echo nearly century later. Toynbee's family carried on long tradition of authorship that impressed the importance of scholarship.
In 1902 he entered Winchester Preparatory School. He struggled with mathematics and sciences but excelled at languages and quickly mastered Greek and Latin. During his term at Westchester he wrote many essays on historical topics, as do most history students. William McNiell, in his 1989 biography of Toynbee, commented on these essays by stating that while they were by no means original they are interesting in that he begins to elucidate ideas which would become characteristic of his view of history.
When students graduated from Winchester they were expected to go to New College at Oxford. Toynbee, however, had so impressed on of his tutors that he was encouraged to enter Balliol at Oxford instead. Balloil was a distinguished school with alumni holding position of the highest importance. Henry Asquith, who was the Prime Minister of Great Britain at the time, was a Balliol man himself. It was through the contact with many of the alumni that Toynbee was to become as involved with his government.
Oxford was as elite an environment for Toynbee as can be imagined. McNiel claims that the celibate and austere surroundings impressed a sense of superiority an arrogance on the intellectually brilliant youth. The heritage of the school and the connections with its alumni and masters impressed a strong sense of class distinction on the students. His mother was concerned by this and cautioned Toynbee "don't be aloof: do be human, which is quite compatible with real work."
This life of scholastic excellence occurred over a background of familial tragedy. His father began to suffer from acute mental depression. In 1909 his father was deemed mentally incompetent and was institutionalized. Because of English law at the time, Edith Toynbee, Arnold's mother, was not allowed to control her husband's finances. A trust fund set up to care for Harry and his family barely covered the costs of institutionalization. According to McNiell, Toynbee's mother was forced to relay on the charity of better off members of the family which was a crushing blow to her. She became extremely depressed and embittered over the whole affair. There were some who feared she might go mad as well.
This fear of madness was one that Toynbee held his whole life as well. In the summer of 1910 he returned home during the summer and suffered his own collapse. While it was short lived it apparently frightened him deeply. In later years when he was to wrestle with God of the mean of life and death he would remember this time with dread and worry.
Between September of 1911 and august of 1912 he traveled to Italy and Greece. While there he gathered information for several of his first books, notably a indictment of the relationship between the Ottoman Empire and the Armenians, a book on the political situations in Greece, and a book about Greece and Turkey and the involvement of Western countries in the conflict between the two nations.
Toynbee married Rosalind Murray on September 10, 1913. She was an aristocratic woman who was descended from the Countess of Carlisle. She was a secretive woman who wrote several novels. One of the novels, Unstable ways, describes a situation very near to her courtship of Toynbee. McNiell suggests that her novelization of the courtship, which end poorly when the heroine commits suicide, might parallel Rosalind's reluctance to get married to the bookish Toynbee.
The young scholar became a tutor Balioll where he taught Greek and Roman history. The onset of the war did not interrupt Toynbee's life. He was ineligible for military because of a severe case of dysentery he suffered during his time in Greece. MCNiell relates that there may have been some question about the legitimacy of his exclusion but his patriotism led him to participate in other methods.
His first book, Nationalism and the War, was a call to the heroic aspects of war and was poorly received. It was a testament to the British dominance of the world that was the trademark of British thinking. In this book he predicts that after the war all the "threatened" nations of world would join in a league of nations led by the British Empire which would defeat the evil nations that allied with China. He wrote that the conflict of the future would be between China and the renewed British commonwealth. These two books led to his being offered a post in the Foreign Office.
With the first book he began a life time of scholarship. When the British decided to publicize the atrocities of the Turks to offset German propaganda about the Jewish pogroms in Russia Toynbee got the job as Lord Bryce's assistant.. His next book was an examination of the treatment of the Armenians under the Ottoman Empire. This indictment of one of Great Britain's enemies was heavily biased and is peppered with numerous details of the brutality that the Armenians suffered. He served at the Pans Peace Conference where he participated in the partitioning of the Ottoman Empire.
After the war he worked for the Manchester Guardian correspondent during the Greco-Turkish War for which he was well-prepared due travels in Greece and his research concerning the Turkish regions. His bias toward the Greeks was blunted in time by his experiences with the Turks. After this war he returned to academia.
In 1925 Toynbee accepted a research professorship of international history at the London School of Economics and became director of studies at the Royal Institute of International Affairs. In 1939 he became the director of foreign research of the Royal Institute of Intentional Affairs. In 1943 he returned to the Foreign Office of the British government as director of the research department. He also retained his position at the London School of Economics until his retirement in 1956.
During this time he began writing the Survey of International Affairs for the Royal Institute of International Affairs. This was an accounting of current events that delved into considerable detail concerning the activities of the nations around the world. These books were extremely well received for their inclusiveness and their detail. Toynbee considered the Survey to be one of his most important works because it dealt with the details of his society over a great stretch of time. The minute detail encouraged precision and accuracy and fairness. It also led Toynbee toward the formation of his own theories concerning the rise and fall of civilization.
Throughout his long life Toynbee wrote a great many books and articles. During the earlier parts of his life he wrote concerning Nationalism and current affairs in such works as Nationality and the War(1915), Treatment of the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, 1915-1916(1916), The Tragedy of Greece(1921), The Western Question in Greece and Turkey: A Study in the Contact Civilizations(1922). Between 1923 and 1946 Toynbee concerned himself with the producing the Survey and the first six volumes of the Study of History. In 1941 he wrote the first of several books which examined the philosophic basis of civilization with Christianity and Civilization(1940). This book was a description of the relationship between Christianity and Western Society. During the last 16 years of his professional career his wrote several books concerning war and the West with his books Civilization on Trial (1948), War and Civilization (1950), The World and the West(1953). He worked on an abridgment of the first six chapters of his Study with D. C. Somervell.
After his retirement he worked on several books with a more philosophic bent but he still produced sound historical works as well. Some of these were an attempt to define religions place in history. His philosophic works include An Historian's Approach to Religion (1956), Christianity among the Religions of the World (1957), Acquaintances (1967), Man's Concern with Death (1968), Experiences (1969), Change and Habit. The Challenge of Our Time (1966), Cities on the Move (1970), Surviving the Future (1971), Mankind and Mother Earth (1976). His historical works Hellenism. The History of a Civilization (1959), America and the World Revolution and Other Lectures(1962), Hannibal's Legacy: the Hannibalic War's Effects on Rome(1965), Some Problems of Greek History(1969), Constantine Porphyrogenitus and His World (1973). His book East to West(1958) was essentially a travel log of his trip around the world in 1957.
His last work was a discussion novel called The Toynbee-Ikeda Dialogue: Man Himself Must Choose (1976) was an evaluation of the differences of philosophy and civilizations between Western and eastern cultures.
Of all his works Toynbee considered the Survey of International Affairs and the Study of History to be his most important. One because of the detailed evaluation of current affairs and the other for its sweeping presentation of the rise and fall of civilizations. He began the second of his life's work in 1934 with the begin of his Study of History. This massive work describes civilizations in the various stages of development.
Toynbee proposes several basic concepts.
The first concerns the scope of research for historians. He believes that the proper topic of research is a whole civilization and not the national units that comprise it. This means that to examine ancient Greece one must examine the entire Hellenistic world from Greece through Rome and the early years of Christianity. To examine Modern Great Britain one must examine the entire western tradition from the end of the Hellenistic period to the present. He disparages the modern tendency to study evermoore detailed and minute aspects of history. The idea is that the interaction of nations or peoples is so complex that they should be viewed in their interactive environment to gain an idea of the importance of their influences.
Toynbee believes that civilizations rise through a process of Challenge and Response. This concept is that as a situation occurs those involved are faced with a challenge. If the respond creatively and effectively the outcome strengthens the successful participants. If the challenge was not faced effectively the people are weakened. It is the cycle of Challenge and Response that aids the creation of a civilization. As long as the leaders react creatively and effectively the civilization will continue to increase.
Toynbee uses the term Etherealization to represent a concept of a rising civilization. It represents a time when a rising civilization reaches a point where the concerns of the common man begin to leave the requirements of survival and may turn to spiritual matters. The basic idea is that once the elements of challenge and response that are based on challenges generated by natural aspects of food production and subsistence are able to be handled with considerable reliability the individual can spend tie on other activities. Amongst these activities, claims Toynbee, is the asking of questions concerning the nature of their surrounds. This questioning leads inevitably toward question regarding life and death and the nature of the divine.
As a civilization enters a period of general importance in its region the challenges and responses reach a dangerous level that Toynbee calls a Time of Troubles. This is a time when the challenges are sufficiently violent that failure may doom the civilization to failure.
In Toynbee's Study he examines a variety of cultures and classifies them as Independent Civilizations, Satellite Civilizations And Abortive Civilizations.
Independent Civilizations are the primary successful civilizations which dominate a region for a substantial period of time. Examples are Middle American, Hellenic, Sinic, Indic, and Western. Satellite Civilizations are those which have grown around the independent civilizations such as the Mississippian around the Middle American, Korean, Japanese and Vietnamese around the Sinic or Chinese. The Abortive civilizations were those which were eclipsed by other more vital ones or disappeared such as the Scandinavian which was eclipsed by Western Medieval which was itself eclipsed by Modern Western Civilization.
Toynbee claims that in each of these successful civilizations there emerges a dominate state that solidifies and so dominates the surrounding region that they establish what he calls a Universal State which can maintain a Universal Peace. This is a time when the general concerns of invasion and civil unrest abates. The Universal State is the pinnacle of the civilization and achieves its own precariousness. It has established institutions that maintain it and may out live it. It must face challenges to survive but has reached a stage where it is nearly impossible to expand further. The Roman Empire is an example of the Universal State which has pacified its enemies and has established a dominant religion in the State worship of Roman gods and divine emperors.
Within the Universal State is the Universal Church. The religious elements that provided solace during times of troubles achieves a position where it is dominant of manners of faith.
It is Toynbee's theory that eventually these Universal States fail because their leaders fail to continue to react creatively to the challenges it faces as other forces interact and strive toward cultural dominance. The shattering of the universal state is a catastrophic challenge that leads to the disintegration of the preeminent nation and to the decline of the civilization. The civilization fails completely unless one of the satellite groups or other nations rises to the challenge to maintain the continuance of the civilization. If they do not then other groups may rise in their stead and establish a new civilization.
Toynbee has been criticized for several different reasons. As a Meta-historian Toynbee, like Oswald Spengler, considered whole societies in relationship to each other rather than concentrating on a particular nation state. His wide view of the rise and fall of civilizations contains a great deal of depth but fails to provide sufficient detail that a study of a particular region would provide. Micro-historians who study the most minute of details in a particular topic can find little of use in Toynbee's study except in providing grand background.
Some critics, such as C.T. McIntyre, criticizes Toynbee's religious views and claims that they have blurred his perceptions. McIntyre criticizes Toynbee's use of Christianity as a bridge between the Roman-Hellenistic civilization to the Medieval Western civilization and finally to the Modern Western civilization. He points out that Christian figures such as St. Paul, St. Benedict and St. Gregory are featured as equals to Mohammed and Solon while Jesus Christ is not mentioned.
McIntyre site changes in Toynbee's own faith as the causes of the variation of the invasiveness in Toynbee's Study. His wife's conversion to Roman Catholicism in 1933 involved him with that branch of the Christian faith. He claims that as Toynbee placed a heavier emphasis on the importance of religion as his study progressed decade by decade. Toynbee, in apologia pro religione sua (1938) described his journey from belief to disbelief and back to belief. He claims to have believed in the existence of God yet found himself unable to follow the doctrines of either the Christian churches or the Roman Catholic church.
Christian B. Peper comments on the importance of Myth in Toynbee's
work. Toynbee's by states that the spiritual presence's of the
universe manifests itself in many forms; and one is in myths;
'in which our human imagination penetrates perhaps farthest into
the mystery of the Universe'. Toynbee places the value of myth
substantially higher than most historians.
Toynbee, Arnold J. A Study of History. Abridged. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972.
_____. America and the World Revolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1962.
_____. Change and Habit. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1966.
_____. Christianity: among the Religions of the World. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1982.
_____. Cities on the Move. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970.
_____. East to West. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1958.
_____. Hellenism. The History of Civilization. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1959.
_____. Man's Concern With Death. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1968.
_____. Surviving the Future. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971.
_____. Survey of International Affairs. The Eve of War: 1939. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1958.
_____.The Patterns of the Past. New York: Greenwood Press Publishers, 1968.
Barker, John. The Superhistorians. Makers of our Past. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1982.
Gargan, Edward T. The Intent of Toynbee's History. Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1961.
Jerrold, Douglas. The Lie about the West. New York: Sheed and Ward, 1954.
McIntire, C.T. and Perry, Marvin. Toynbee Reappraisals. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1989.
McNiell, William H. Arnold J. Toynbee. A life. Oxford: Oxford Press, 1989.
Montagu, M.F. Toynbee and History. Boston: Porter Sergeant Publisher, 1956.
Schmitt, Hans A. Historians of Modern Europe. Baton Rouge: Louisiana state University Press, 1971.
