Arnold J. Toynbee’s Quest for a New World Order: A Survey

Abstract

This article surveys the work of the controversial historian and internationalist Arnold J. Toynbee (1889–1975). In particular, it examines Toynbee’s understanding of foreign politics and his constant search for a stable world order. From the idealism of his youth, through his temporary disenchantment with his youthful expectations, to the religiously inspired utopianism of his final years, this essay discusses the development of Toynbee’s work and understanding of international affairs throughout the twentieth century.

I am grateful to Ian Hall for sharing with me his published and unpublished work on Toynbee, and to the two anonymous reviewers for their comments on this article.

Notes

1. Arnold J. Toynbee, Civilization on Trial (London: Oxford University Press, 1948), 150.

2. On Arnold J. Toynbee’s life, see William H. McNeill, Arnold Joseph Toynbee: A Life (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989). On his contribution to the study of International Relations, see Henry L. Mason, Toynbee’s Approach to World Politics (New Orleans, LA: Tulane University-Martinus Nijhoff, 1958); Luca G. Castellin, Ascesa e declino delle civiltà. La teoria delle macro-trasformazioni politiche di Arnold J. Toynbee (Milan: Vita e Pensiero, 2010).

3. Pitirim A. Sorokin, “Arnold J. Toynbee’s Philosophy of History,” The Journal of Modern History 12.3 (1940): 374–87; Hans J. Morgenthau, “Toynbee and the Historical Imagination,” in Toynbee and History, ed. Ashley M. F. Montagu (Boston, MA: Porter Sargent, 1956), 193–94; Hugh Trevor-Roper, “Arnold Toynbee’s Millennium,” Encounter 8.6 (1957): 14–28; José Ortega y Gasset, Una Interpretacíon de la historia universal. En torno a Toynbee (Madrid: Revista de Occidente, 1960).

4. Pieter Geyl, “Toynbee the Prophet,” Journal of the History of Ideas 16.2 (1955): 260–74; James Joll, “Two Prophets of the Twentieth Century: Spengler and Toynbee,” Review of International Studies 11.2 (1985): 91–104.

5. Alexander Hutton, “‘A belated return for Christ?’: The Reception of Arnold J. Toynbee’s A Study of History in a British Context, 1934–1961,” European Review of History–Revue européenne d’histoire 21.3 (2014): 405–24.

6. Gordon Martel, “The Origins of the Chatham House Version,” in National and International Politics in the Middle East: Essays in Honour of Elie Kedourie, ed. Edward Ingram (London: Frank Cass, 1986), 71–73; Peter Wilson, “Introduction: The Twenty Years’ Crisis and the Category of ‘Idealism’ in International Relations,” in Thinkers of the Twenty Years’ Crisis: Inter-war Idealism Reassessed, ed. David Long and Peter Wilson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 14–15; Cornelia Navari, Internationalism and the State in the Twentieth Century (London: Routledge, 2000), 94.

7. Kenneth W. Thompson, “Toynbee and the Theory of International Politics,” Political Science Quarterly 71.3 (1956): 365–86.

8. Murray Forsyth, “The Classical Theory of International Relations,” Political Studies 26.3 (1978): 411–16; Richard Little, “The System Approach,” in International Relations: British and American Perspectives, ed. Steve Smith (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1985), 71–91.

9. M. Lang, “Globalization and Global History in Toynbee,” Journal of World History 22.4 (2011): 747–83.

10. Arnold J. Toynbee, A Study of History, 12 vols. (London: Oxford University Press, 1939–61).

11. Ian Hall, “‘Time of Troubles’: Arnold J. Toynbee’s Twentieth Century,” International Affairs 90.1 (2014): 23–36.

12. Alfred E. Zimmern, The Greek Commonwealth: Politics and Economics in Fifth-Century Athens (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1911), Nationality and Government with Other War-Time Essays (London: Chatto & Windus, 1918), and The Third British Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1926). Toynbee acknowledged Zimmern’s influence on his education in Arnold J. Toynbee, Acquaintances (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967), 49–61.

13. Lionel Curtis, Civitas Dei: The Commonwealth of God (London: Macmillan & Co., 1935). On the relationship between Toynbee and Curtis, see Toynbee, Acquaintances, 133–35.

14. McNeill, Arnold Joseph Toynbee, 64–91.

15. Martin Wight, “Arnold Toynbee: An Appreciation,” International Affairs 52.1 (1976): 10. On the relationship between Toynbee and Wight, see Elie Kedourie, “Religion and Politics: Arnold Toynbee and Martin Wight,” British Journal of International Studies 5.1 (1979): 6–14; Ian Hall, “Challenge and Response: The Lasting Engagement of Arnold J. Toynbee and Martin Wight,” International Relations 17.3 (2003): 389–404, and The International Thought of Martin Wight (New York: Palgrave, 2006); Michele Chiaruzzi, Politica di potenza nell'età del Leviatano. La teoria internazionale di Martin Wight (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2008).

16. Luca G. Castellin, “Lo ‘sguardo’ di Arnold J. Toynbee sulla politica internazionale del XX secolo. Attualità di un’analisi geopolitica,” Filosofia politica 25.1 (2011): 57–69.

17. H. A. L. Fisher, review of Survey of International Affairs, 1927, by Arnold J. Toynbee, Journal of the Royal Institute of International Affairs 8.5 (1929): 522–24; Alfred E. Zimmern, review of Survey of International Affairs, 1929, by Arnold J. Toynbee, International Affairs 10.1 (1931): 110–13.

18. Roland N. Stromberg, Arnold J. Toynbee: Historian for an Age in Crisis (Carbondale– Edwardsville, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1972), 10.

19. Charles E. Martin, review of The World After the Peace Conference and Survey of International Affairs, 1920–1923, by Arnold J. Toynbee, The American Political Science Review 19.4 (1925): 833.

20. Ernest M. Patterson, review of The World After the Peace Conference and Survey of International Affairs, 1920–1923, by Arnold J. Toynbee, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 124 (1926): 197.

21. Christopher Brewin, “Research in a Global Context,” Review of International Studies 18.2 (1992): 120.

22. C. T. McIntire and Marvin Perry, “Toynbee’s Achievement,” in Toynbee: Reappraisals, ed. C. T. McIntire and Marvin Perry (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1989), 26.

23. J. S. Barnes, “Correspondence,” Journal of the Royal Institute of International Affairs 8.5 (1929): 534–40; Edward H. Carr, review of Survey of International Affairs, 1935, by Arnold J. Toynbee, International Affairs 16.2 (1937): 280–83; Frederick L. Schuman, review of Survey of International Affairs, 1937, by Arnold J. Toynbee, The American Political Science Review 33.3 (1939): 513–15.

24. Edward H. Carr, The Twenty Years’ Crisis 1919–1939: An Introduction to the Study of International Relations (London: MacMillan & Co., 1939).

25. Hans J. Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace (New York: Knopf, 1948), 125–66, 279; Raymond Aron, Paix et guerre entre les nations (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1968); Raymond Aron, ed., L’histoire et ses interprétations. Entretiens autour de Arnold Toynbee (Paris-La Haye: Mouton & Co., 1961); Reinhold Niebuhr, Faith and History: A Comparison of Christian and Modern Views of History (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1949), and Nations and Empires: Recurring Patterns in the Political Order (London: Faber & Faber, 1959).

26. Henry Kissinger, The Meaning of History: Reflections on Spengler, Toynbee and Kant (Undergraduate honor thesis, Harvard University, 1950, unpublished). See Peter W. Dickson, Kissinger and the Meaning of History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978).

27. Ian Hall, Dilemmas of Decline: British Intellectuals and World Politics, 1945-1975 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012); Ian Hall and Mark Bevir, “Traditions of British International Thought,” The International History Review 36.5 (2014): 823-34.

28. Arnold J. Toynbee, The World After the Peace Conference, Being an Epilogue to the “History of the Peace Conference of Paris” and a Prologue to the “Survey of International Affairs, 1920–1923” (London: Oxford University Press, 1926), 4–43.

29. Toynbee, The World After the Peace Conference, 6. See also Martin Wight, Systems of States, ed. Hedley Bull (Leicester, UK: Leicester University Press, 1977), 111–12, 131, 151–52, and Power Politics, ed. Hedley Bull and Carsten Holbraad (Leicester, UK: Leicester University Press, 1978), 37–38.

30. Arnold J. Toynbee, Survey of International Affairs, 1936 (London: Oxford University Press, 1937), 35.

31. Toynbee, The World After the Peace Conference, 7, 12.

32. Nuri A. Yurdusev, “From the Eastern Question to the Western Question: Rethinking the Contribution of Toynbee,” Critique: Critical Middle Eastern Studies 14.3 (2005): 323–32.

33. Toynbee, The World After the Peace Conference, 35.

34. Arnold J. Toynbee, A Study of History, vol. 1 (London: Oxford University Press, 1934), 14.

35. Arnold J. Toynbee, “World Sovereignty and World Culture: The Trend of International Affairs since the War,” Pacific Affairs 4.9 (1931): 753.

36. Toynbee, The World After the Peace Conference, 15, 25.

37. Arnold J. Toynbee, “The Trend of International Affairs since the War,” International Affairs 10.6 (1931): 818; Toynbee, “World Sovereignty and World Culture,” 768–69.

38. Eduard Meyer, Geschichte des Altertums (Stuttgart: Cotta, 1907); Eduard Meyer, “Zur Theorie und Methodik der Geschichte,” in Kleine Schriften (Halle: Niemeyer, 1924), 1.1–78; James Bryce, Presidential Address at the Opening of the International Congress of Historical Studies, April 3, 1913 (Oxford, 1913), 14, 17; James Bryce, World History (London: The British Academy, 1919), 4.

39. Richard Little, “The English School’s Contribution to the Study of International Relations,” European Journal of International Relations 6.3 (2000): 395–422.

40. George Frost Kennan, “The History of Arnold Toynbee,” The New York Review of Books 36.9 (1989): 22.

41. Toynbee, The World After the Peace Conference, 24.

42. Arnold J. Toynbee, The New Europe: Some Essays in Reconstruction (London: J. M. Dent & Sons, 1915), 32–33.

43. Toynbee, The World After the Peace Conference, 24; Toynbee, The New Europe, 61–62; Arnold J. Toynbee, Economics and Politics in International Life (Nottingham, UK: University College, 1930), 8–9.

44. Gilbert Murray, The Ordeal of this Generation: The War, the League and the Future (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1930).

45. Toynbee, “The Trend of International Affairs since the War,” 805–6; Toynbee, “World Sovereignty and World Culture,” 755; Toynbee, Economics and Politics in International Life, 8.

46. Arnold J. Toynbee, “A Turning Point in History,” Foreign Affairs 17.2 (1939): 319.

47. Toynbee, Nationality and the War, 7, 479–81.

48. Arnold J. Toynbee, The Armenian Atrocities: The Murder of a Nation (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1915); Arnold J. Toynbee, The Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, 1915–1916 (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1916). On the relationship between Toynbee and Lord Bryce, see Toynbee, Acquaintances, 149–60.

49. Arnold J. Toynbee, The Western Question in Greece and Turkey: A Study in the Contact of Civilization (London: Constable & Co., Ltd., 1923), 15–17. On this argument, see Laura Di Fiore, L’Islam e l’impero: Il Medio Oriente di Toynbee all’indomani della Grande Guerra (Rome: Viella, 2015).

50. Arnold J. Toynbee, Survey of International Affairs, 1935: Abyssinia and Italy, vol. 2 (London: Oxford University Press, 1936), 1.

51. Arnold J. Toynbee, A Study of History, vol. 4 (London: Oxford University Press, 1939), 261.

52. Arnold J. Toynbee, Survey of International Affairs, 1931 (London: Oxford University Press, 1932), 1–2; Arnold J. Toynbee, The Downfalls of Civilizations, in The Hobhouse Memorial Lectures 1930–1940 (London: Oxford University Press, 1948), 7.

53. Toynbee, Nationality and the War, 500; Toynbee, Survey of International Affairs, 1931, 6; Arnold J. Toynbee, Survey of International Affairs, 1933 (London: Oxford University Press, 1934), 115. The subject is extensively studied also in Arnold J. Toynbee, Hellenism: The History of a Civilization (London: Oxford University Press, 1959), 143–202.

54. Arnold J. Toynbee, “America, England, and World Affairs,” Harper’s Monthly Magazine 152 (1925–26): 487; Arnold J. Toynbee, “Historical Parallels to Current International Problems,” International Affairs 10.4 (1931): 480–81.

55. Toynbee, Civilization of Trial, 60–61.

56. Toynbee, “World Sovereignty and World Culture,” 759–60.

57. Toynbee, “America, England, and World Affairs,” 488–89; Arnold J. Toynbee, “The Issues in British Foreign Policy,” International Affairs 17.3 (1938): 311–12.

58. Toynbee, “A Turning Point in History,” 319–20.

59. Toynbee, “The Issues in British Foreign Policy,” 313.

60. Toynbee, “A Turning Point in History,” 320. As noted by Marvin Perry in Arnold Toynbee and the Western Tradition (New York: Peter Lang, 1996), 72: “Toynbee believed that Nazism was not a peculiarly German phenomenon, but a German expression of the crisis in the modern Western civilization—the rejection of Christianity and the regression to a primitive religion.”

61. Communism, he wrote, was an “unsatisfying substitute for Religion”: Arnold J. Toynbee, A Study of History, ed. D. C. Somervell (London: Oxford University Press, 1957), 339. Its aim was to impose a world state by military force; see Arnold J. Toynbee, Change and Habit: The Challenge of Our Time (London: Oxford University Press, 1966), 105.

62. Christian B. Peper, ed., An Historian’s Conscience: The Correspondence of Arnold J. Toynbee and Columba Cary-Elwes, Monk of Ampliforth (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1986).

63. Toynbee, Survey of International Affairs, 1936, 24–25.

64. Toynbee, Survey of International Affairs, 1933, 121–22 n.

65. Brewin, “Research in a Global Context,” 119.

66. Toynbee, “The Issues in British Foreign Policy,” 317–18.

67. Toynbee, “A Turning Point in History,” 319.

68. Arnold J. Toynbee, Survey of International Affairs, 1930 (London: Oxford University Press, 1931), 143.

69. Arnold J. Toynbee, Survey of International Affairs, 1937, vol. 1 (London: Oxford University Press, 1938), 6–8.

70. Brewin, “Research in a Global Context,” 121.

71. Arnold J. Toynbee, “Can Western Civilization Save Itself? Our Present Anxiety in the Light of History,” Commentary 7 (1949): 105.

72. Arnold J. Toynbee, A Study of History, vol. 9 (London: Oxford University Press, 1954), 473–79.

73. Arnold J. Toynbee, “La Guerra fredda nell’Impero romano,” Aut Aut 1.3 (1951): 199–218. On this argument, see Luca Maggioni, Uno Scontro di civiltà? Usa e Urss nell’opera di A. J. Toynbee (Genoa: Erga, 2013).

74. Toynbee, Civilization on Trial, 126.

75. Toynbee, Civilization on Trial, 127.

76. Toynbee, Civilization on Trial, 128.

77. Arnold J. Toynbee, “A Turning Point in the Cold War?” International Affairs 26.4 (1950): 457.

78. Toynbee, Civilization on Trial, 135.

79. Toynbee, Civilization on Trial, 39.

80. Toynbee, Civilization on Trial, 39–40.

81. Arnold J. Toynbee, “The Siege of the West,” Foreign Affairs 31.2 (1953): 284–85.

82. Toynbee, Civilization on Trial, 40.

83. Toynbee, A Study of History, vol. 9, 525.

84. Toynbee, Civilization on Trial, 135–36.

85. Toynbee, Civilization on Trial, 136.

86. Toynbee, A Study of History, vol. 9, 543–44.

87. Toynbee, Civilization on Trial, 137–40.

88. “It is better,” Churchill noted, “to have a world united than a world divided; but it is also better to have a world divided, than a world destroyed.” See Winston Churchill, “Let Germany Live,” in Hansard, House of Commons, 5 June 1946, columns 2031.

Hans J. Morgenthau, In Defence of the National Interest (New York: Knopf, 1951), 139–40, 142–51, 155–58.

89. Toynbee, Civilization on Trial, 142–43.

90. Arnold J. Toynbee, “Russian-American Relations: The Case for Second Thoughts,” Journal of International Affairs 22.1 (1968): 2.

91. Toynbee, Survey of International Affairs, 1936, 33–34.

92. Toynbee, Civilization on Trial, 146, 221. This idea often recurs; see Toynbee, “Can Western Civilization Save Itself?” 104; Toynbee, Change and Habit, 27; Arnold J. Toynbee and Daisaku Ikeda, Choose Life: A Dialogue (London: Oxford University Press, 1976), 179.

93. Arnold J. Toynbee, “Communism and the West in Asian Countries,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 336 (1961): 30–9.

94. Toynbee, Civilization on Trial, 146–47.

95. Toynbee, “Can Western Civilization Save Itself?” 105.

96. Toynbee, “The Siege of the West,” 285–86

97. Toynbee, A Study of History, vol. 9, 529–30.

98. Toynbee, Civilization on Trial, 148.

99. Ian Hall, “‘The Toynbee Convector’: The Rise and Fall of Arnold J. Toynbee’s Anti-Imperial Mission to the West,” The European Legacy 17.4 (2012): 455–69.

100. Frederick L. Schuman, The Commonwealth of Man: An Inquiry into Power Politics and World Government (New York: Knopf, 1952), 489; Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations, 402.

101. Toynbee, Civilization on Trial, 137.

102. Paul Rich, “Civilizations in European and World History: A Reappraisal of the Ideas of Arnold Toynbee, Fernand Braudel and Marshall Hodgson,” The European Legacy 7.3 (2002): 335.

103. Lord Lothian, Pacifism in not Enough (Nor Patriotism Either) (London: Oxford University Press, 1935); Kenneth C. Wheare, On Federal Government (London: Oxford University Press, 1946); Emery Reves, The Anatomy of Peace (London: Harper & Brothers, 1945).

104. David Mitrany, A Working Peace System: An Argument for the Functional Development of International Organization (London: National Peace Council, 1946).

105. Toynbee, A Study of History, vol. 9, 544.

106. Toynbee, Change and Habit, 140.

107. Toynbee and Ikeda, Choose Life, 178.

108. Arnold J. Toynbee, Mankind and Mother Earth (London: Oxford University Press, 1976), 593.

109. Schuman, The Commonwealth of Man, 484, 491–94.

110. Toynbee, A Study of History, vol. 6, 10.

111. Toynbee, Civilization on Trial, 234, 235–36.

112. Toynbee, Civilization on Trial, 253–63, 159.

113. Toynbee and Ikeda, Choose Life, 129.

114. Toynbee, Hellenism, 7.

115. Toynbee and Ikeda, Choose Life, 245–46.

116. Arnold J. Toynbee, Experiences (London: Oxford University Press, 1969), 154–58.

117. T. Tagliareffi, Storia ecumenica. Materiali per lo studio dell'opera di Toynbee (Soveria Mannelli, Italy: Rubbettino, 2002).

118. On this element, and particularly on the role of Christianity, the relationship with Wight breaks; see Martin Wight, “The Crux for an Historian Brought Up in the Christian Tradition,” in Arnold J. Toynbee, A Study of History, vol. 7, 737–48.

119. Cornelia Navari, “Arnold Toynbee (1889–1975): Prophecy and Civilization,” Review of International Studies 26.2 (2000): 296.

120. Morgenthau, “Toynbee and Historical Imagination,” 199.

121. Felix Oppenheim, “Review of Civilization on Trial by Arnold J. Toynbee,” American Political Science Review 42.4 (1948): 814–15.

122. Ray Bradbury, “The Toynbee Convector,” in The Toynbee Convector (New York: Knopf, 1988).

123. Charles E. Jones, “Christian Realism and the Foundations of the English School,” International Relations 17.3 (2003): 376.

124. Castellin, Ascesa e declino delle civiltà, 40–58.

125. Toynbee, Experiences, 87, 112.