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Arnold J. Toynbee

Arnold J. Toynbee
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This article is about the universal historian Arnold Joseph Toynbee. For his uncle, the economic historian, see Arnold Toynbee.
Arnold J. Toynbee
CH

Born
Arnold Joseph Toynbee
14 April 1889
London, England, UK
Died
22 October 1975 (aged 86)
York, England, UK
Nationality
British
Alma mater
Balliol College, Oxford
Occupation
Historian
Known for
Universal history
Notable work
A Study of History
Spouse(s)

• Rosalind Murray (m. 1913; div. 1946)
  
• Veronica M. Boulter (m. 1946)
  

Children

• Antony Toynbee
  
• Philip Toynbee
  
• Lawrence Toynbee
  

Relatives

• Arnold Toynbee (uncle)
  
• Jocelyn Toynbee (sister)
  

Somervell's abridgement of Toynbee's magnum opus

Arnold Joseph Toynbee CH (/ˈtɔɪnbi/; 14 April 1889 – 22 October 1975) was a British historian, philosopher of history, research professor of international history at the London School of Economics and the University of London and author of numerous books. Toynbee in the 1918–1950 period was a leading specialist on international affairs.
He is best known for his 12-volume A Study of History (1934–1961). With his prodigious output of papers, articles, speeches and presentations, and numerous books translated into many languages, Toynbee was a widely read and discussed scholar in the 1940sand 1950s.

Contents
  [hide] 

• 1Biography
  
• 2Academic and cultural influence
  
• 3Political influence in foreign policy
  • 3.1Meeting with Adolf Hitler
    
  • 3.2Russia
    
  • 3.3Greece and the Middle East
    
  • 3.4Dialogue with Daisaku Ikeda
    
  
  
• 4Challenge and response
  
• 5Toynbee Prize Foundation
  
• 6Allusions in popular culture
  
• 7Toynbee's works
  
• 8See also
  
• 9Notes
  
• 10References
  
• 11Further reading
  
• 12External links
  

Biography[edit]
Toynbee (born in London on 14 April 1889) was the son of Harry Valpy Toynbee (1861–1941), secretary of the Charity Organization Society, and his wife Sarah Edith Marshall (1859–1939); his sister Jocelyn Toynbee was an archaeologist and art historian. Toynbee was the grandson of Joseph Toynbee, nephew of the 19th-century economist Arnold Toynbee (1852–1883) and descendant of prominent British intellectuals for several generations. He won scholarships to Winchester College and Balliol College, Oxford (Literae Humaniores, 1907-1911),[1] and studied briefly at the British School at Athens, an experience that influenced the genesis of his philosophy about the decline of civilizations. In 1912 he became a tutor and fellow in ancient history at Balliol College, and in 1915 he began working for the intelligence department of the British Foreign Office. After serving as a delegate to the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 he served as professor of Byzantine and modern Greek studies at the University of London. It was here that Toynbee was appointed to the Koraes Chair of Modern Greek and Byzantine History, Language and Literature at King's College, although he would ultimately resign following a controversial academic dispute with the professoriate of the College.[2][3] From 1921 to 1922 he was the Manchester Guardian correspondent during the Greco-Turkish War, an experience that resulted in the publication of The Western Question in Greece and Turkey.[4] In 1925 he became research professor of international history at the London School of Economics and director of studies at the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London.

His first marriage was to Rosalind Murray (1890–1967), daughter of Gilbert Murray, in 1913; they had three sons, of whom Philip Toynbeewas the second. They divorced in 1946; Toynbee then married his research assistant, Veronica M. Boulter (1893-1980), in the same year.[5] He died on 22 October 1975, age 86.

Academic and cultural influence[edit]

Toynbee on the front cover of Time magazine, 17 March 1947. [url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,793438,00.html]read theTime article

Michael Lang says that for much of the twentieth century:

Toynbee was perhaps the world’s most read, translated, and discussed living scholar. His output was enormous, hundreds of books, pamphlets, and articles. Of these, scores were translated into thirty different languages....the critical reaction to Toynbee constitutes a veritable intellectual history of the midcentury: we find a long list of the period’s most important historians, Beard, Braudel, Collingwood, and so on.[6]

In his best-known work, A Study of History, published 1934–1961, Toynbee:

...examined the rise and fall of 26 civilizations in the course of human history, and he concluded that they rose by responding successfully to challenges under the leadership of creative minorities composed of elite leaders.[7]

A Study of History was both a commercial and academic phenomenon. In the U.S. alone, more than seven thousand sets of the ten-volume edition had been sold by 1955. Most people, including scholars, relied on the very clear one-volume abridgement of the first six volumes by Somervell, which appeared in 1947; the abridgement sold over 300,000 copies in the U.S. The press printed innumerable discussions of Toynbee's work, not to mention there being countless lectures and seminars. Toynbee himself often participated. He appeared on the cover of Time magazine in 1947, with an article describing his work as "the most provocative work of historical theory written in England since Karl Marx’s Capital”,[8] and was a regular commentator on BBC (examining the history of and reasons for the current hostility between east and west, and considering how non-westerners view the western world).[9][10]

Canadian historians were especially receptive to Toynbee's work in the late 1940s. The Canadian economic historian Harold Adams Innis(1894–1952) was a notable example. Following Toynbee and others (Spengler, Kroeber, Sorokin, Cochrane), Innis examined the flourishing of civilizations in terms of administration of empires and media of communication.[11]

Toynbee's overall theory was taken up by some scholars, for example, Ernst Robert Curtius, as a sort of paradigm in the post-war period. Curtius wrote as follows in the opening pages of European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages (1953 English translation), following close on Toynbee, as he sets the stage for his vast study of medieval Latin literature. Curtius wrote, "How do cultures, and the historical entities which are their media, arise, grow and decay? Only a comparative morphology with exact procedures can hope to answer these questions. It was Arnold J. Toynbee who undertook the task."[12]

After 1960, Toynbee's ideas faded both in academia and the media, to the point of seldom being cited today.[13][14] However, his work continued to be referenced by classical historians, at least, because "his training and surest touch is in the world of classical antiquity."[15] His roots in classical literature are also manifested by similarities between his approach and that of classical historians such as Herodotus and Thucydides.[16] Comparative history, by which his approach is often categorized, has been in the doldrums.[17]Yet, in Jared Diamond's book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed there are similarities between Toynbee's "Challenge and Response" theory and Diamond's analysis on how elites make decisions at critical moments. For example, Diamond writes in Collapse that if the elites are insulated from problems in society and not actively engaged, they are more apt to make mistakes. Thus, Diamond may be stating that elites can not mount effective responses to challenges if their knowledge, sympathy, or own self-interest is sufficiently the same as the broader society.[citation needed]

Political influence in foreign policy[edit]

While the writing of the Study was under way, Toynbee produced numerous smaller works and served as director of foreign research of the Royal Institute of International Affairs (1939–43) and director of the research department of the Foreign Office (1943–46); he also retained his position at the London School of Economics until his retirement in 1956.[7]

Toynbee worked for the Political Intelligence Department of the British Foreign Office during World War I and served as a delegate to the Paris Peace Conference in 1919. He was director of studies at Chatham House, Balliol College, Oxford University, 1924–43. Chatham House conducted research for the British Foreign Office and was an important intellectual resource during World War II when it was transferred to London. With his research assistant, Veronica M. Boulter, Toynbee was co-editor of the RIIA's annual Survey of International Affairs, which became the "bible" for international specialists in Britain.[18][19]

Meeting with Adolf Hitler[edit]
While on a visit in Berlin in 1936 to address the Nazi Law Society, Toynbee was invited to have a private interview with Adolf Hitler, at Hitler's request.[20] Hitler emphasized his limited expansionist aim of building a greater German nation, and his desire for British understanding and cooperation. Toynbee believed that Hitler was sincere and endorsed Hitler's message in a confidential memorandum for the British prime minister and foreign secretary.[21]

Russia[edit]
Toynbee was troubled by the Russian Revolution, for he saw Russia as a non-Western society and the revolution as a threat to Western society.[22] However, in 1952 he argued that the Soviet Union had been a victim of Western aggression. He portrayed the Cold War as a religious competition that pitted a Marxist materialist heresy against the West's spiritual Christian heritage—a heritage that had already been foolishly rejected by a secularized West. A heated debate ensued; an editorial in the London Times promptly attacked Toynbee for treating communism as a "spiritual force."[23]

Greece and the Middle East[edit]
Toynbee was a leading analyst of developments in the Middle East. His support for Greece and hostility to the Turks during World War I had gained him an appointment to the Koraes Chair of Modern Greek and Byzantine History at King's College, University of London.[2] However, after the war he changed to a pro-Turkish position, accusing Greece's military government in occupied Turkish territory of atrocities and massacres. This earned him the enmity of the wealthy Greeks who had endowed the chair, and in 1924 he was forced to resign the position.
His stance during World War I reflected less sympathy for the Arab cause and took a pro-Zionist outlook. He also expressed support for a Jewish State in Palestine, which he believed had "begun to recover its ancient prosperity" as a result. Toynbee investigated Zionism in 1915 at the Information Department of the Foreign Office, and in 1917 he published a memorandum with his colleague Lewis Namier which supported exclusive Jewish political rights in Palestine. In 1922, however, he was influenced by the Palestine Arab delegation which was visiting London, and began to adopt their views. His subsequent writings reveal his changing outlook on the subject, and by the late 1940s he had moved away from the Zionist cause and toward the Arab camp.

The views Toynbee expressed in the 1950s continued to oppose the formation of a Jewish state, partly out of his concern that it would increase the risk of a nuclear confrontation. However, as a result of Toynbee's debate in January 1961 with Dr. Yaakov Herzog, the Israeli ambassador to Canada, Toynbee softened his view and called on Israel to fulfill its special "mission to make contributions to worldwide efforts to prevent the outbreak of nuclear war."[24][25] In his article, "Jewish Rights in Palestine"[26], he challenged the views of the editor of the Jewish Quarterly Review, historian and talmudic scholar, Solomon Zeitlin, who published his rebuke, "Jewish Rights in Eretz Israel (Palestine)"[27] in the same issue.[28] Toynbee maintained, among other contentions, that the Jewish people have neither historic nor legal claims to Palestine, stating that the Arab

"population’s human rights to their homes and property over-ride all other rights in cases where claims conflict.” He did concede that the Jews, “being the only surviving representatives of any of the pre-Arab inhabitants of Palestine, have a further claim to a national home in Palestine." But that claim, he held, is valid "only in so far as it can be implemented without injury to the rights and to the legitimate interests of the native Arab population of Palestine."[29]

Dialogue with Daisaku Ikeda[edit]
In 1972, Toynbee met with Daisaku Ikeda, president of Soka Gakkai International (SGI), who condemned the "demonic nature" of the use of nuclear weapons under any circumstances. Toynbee had the view that the atomic bomb was an invention that had caused warfare to escalate from a political scale to catastrophic proportions and threatened humanity's very existence. In his dialogue with Ikeda, Toynbee stated his worry that humankind would not be able to strengthen ethical behavior and achieve self-mastery "in spite of the widespread awareness that the price of failing to respond to the moral challenge of the atomic age may be the self-liquidation of our species."
The two men first met on 5 May 1972 in London. In May 1973, Ikeda again flew to London to meet with Toynbee for 40 hours over a period of 10 days. Their dialogue and ongoing correspondence culminated in the publication of Choose Life, a record of their views on critical issues confronting humanity. The book has been published in 24 languages to date.[30] Toynbee also wrote the foreword to the English edition of Ikeda's most well-known book, The Human Revolution, which has sold more than 7 million copies worldwide.[31]

An exhibition celebrating the 30th anniversary of Toynbee and Ikeda's first meeting was presented in SGI's centers around the world in 2005, showcasing contents of the dialogues between them, as well as Ikeda's discussions for peace with over 1,500 of the world's scholars, intellects, and activists. Original letters Toynbee and Ikeda exchanged were also displayed.[32]

In 1984 his granddaughter Polly Toynbee wrote a critical article for The Guardian on meeting Daisaku Ikeda.[33]

Challenge and response[edit]
With the civilizations as units identified, he presented the history of each in terms of challenge-and-response, sometimes referred to as theory about the law of challenge and response. Civilizations arose in response to some set of challenges of extreme difficulty, when "creative minorities" devised solutions that reoriented their entire society. Challenges and responses were physical, as when the Sumerians exploited the intractable swamps of southern Iraq by organizing the Neolithic inhabitants into a society capable of carrying out large-scale irrigation projects; or social, as when the Catholic Church resolved the chaos of post-Roman Europe by enrolling the new Germanic kingdoms in a single religious community. When a civilization responded to challenges, it grew. Civilizations disintegrate when their leaders stopped responding creatively, and the civilizations then sank owing to nationalism, militarism, and the tyranny of a despotic minority. According to an Editor's Note in an edition of Toynbee's A Study of History, Toynbee believed that societies always die from suicide or murder rather than from natural causes, and nearly always from suicide.[34] He sees the growth and decline of civilizations as a spiritual process, writing that "Man achieves civilization, not as a result of superior biological endowment or geographical environment, but as a response to a challenge in a situation of special difficulty which rouses him to make a hitherto unprecedented effort." [35][36]

Toynbee Prize Foundation[edit]

Named after Arnold J. Toynbee, the [Toynbee Prize] Foundation was chartered in 1987 'to contribute to the development of the social sciences, as defined from a broad historical view of human society and of human and social problems.' In addition to awarding the Toynbee Prize, the foundation sponsors scholarly engagement with global history through sponsorship of sessions at the annual meeting of the American Historical Association, of international conferences, of the journal New Global Studies and of the Global History Forum.[37]

The Toynbee Prize is an honorary award, recognizing social scientists for significant academic and public contributions to humanity. Currently, it is awarded every other year for work that makes a significant contribution to the study of global history. The recipients have been Raymond Aron, Lord Kenneth Clark, Sir Ralf Dahrendorf, Natalie Zemon Davis, Albert Hirschman, George Kennan, Bruce Mazlish, John McNeill, William McNeill, Jean-Paul Sartre, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., Barbara Ward, Lady Jackson, Sir Brian Urquhart, Michael Adas, Christopher Bayly, and Jürgen Osterhammel.[38]

Allusions in popular culture[edit]
Toynbee's ideas also feature in the Ray Bradbury short story named "The Toynbee Convector". He appears alongside T. E. Lawrence as a character in an episode of The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, dealing with the post-World War I treaty negotiations at Versailles. He also receives a brief mention in the Charles Harness classic, The Paradox Men (a working title was Toynbee 22). Frederick Buechner also mentions him in the 1957 novel The return of Ansel Gibbs. Most versions of the Civilization computer game refer to his work as a historian as well. Toynbee receives mention in Pat Frank's post-apocalyptic novel "Alas, Babylon". A character in the P. Schuyler Miller short story "As Never Was" adopts the name Toynbee "out of admiration for a historian of that name". He is also mentioned in the Tom Robbins novel, Another Roadside Attraction. "Toynbee" is also the title of a song by the modern rock group Manic Bloom from the album In Loving Memory, the lyrics of which refer to the inevitability of the fall of society given the opportunity at hand to reclaim the future.

The Toynbee tiles may be a reference to Toynbee.

Wow.. I have twelve volumes to find