A Study of History, Volume 4

A Study of History #4

by Arnold Joseph Toynbee

Arnold Toynbee writes:
The first three volumes of this work deal with the birth and growth of civilizations; the present three deal with their breakdown and disintegration. Why have some civilizations broken down in the past? I do not believe that civilizations are fated to break down, or that they have a fixed maximum life-span, as organisms have. On this point—and it is one of capital importance—I differ from that great man of genius, Oswald Spengler. I do not believe, either, that civilizations break down through being worsted by their environment. I believe that, when they do break down, the cause is, not some blow from outside, but some inward spiritual failure—some kind of demoralization to which we human beings are not bound to succumb and for which we ourselves therefore bear the responsibility. We can become demoralized by success. This may make us lazy or self-satisfied or conceited. We may be intoxicated with the pride that goes before a fall.

Breakdowns are not inevitable and not irretrievable; but, if the process of disintegration is allowed to continue, it seems to follow patterns that make their appearance in a number of different cases. In a disintegrating society, the masses become estranged from the leaders, and these then try to cling to their position by using force as a substitute for their lost power of attraction. The society splits up into a dominant minority, an internal proletariat, and an external proletariat consisting of the barbarians on its fringes. There is a corresponding psychological schism in the souls of people who happen to have been born into a disintegrating society. Discordant psychic tendencies which are perhaps always latent in human nature now find free play. People try to escape from an intolerable present into an idealized past or into an imaginary future. Greater souls try to detach themselves from life; still greater souls try to transfigure life into something spiritually higher than mere life as we know it on Earth.

Genres: History, Nonfiction

576 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1934

About the author

Not the same as Arnold Toynbee, economist and nephew of Arnold Joseph Toynbee

British educator Arnold Joseph Toynbee noted cyclical patterns in the growth and decline of civilizations for his 12-volume Study of History (1934-1961).

He went to Winchester college and Balliol college, Oxford.

During both world wars, he worked for the foreign office. He additionally published Nationality and the War (1915), The Armenian Atrocities: The Murder of a Nation (1915), The German Terror in France: An Historical Record (1917), and Turkey, a Past and a Future (1917). He attended the peace conference of Paris in 1919 as a delegate.

From 1919 to 1924, Arnold J. Toynbee served as professor of modern Greek and Byzantine at King's college, London. From 1925, Oxford University Press published The Survey of International Affairs under the auspices of the royal institute of international affairs, and Toynbee, professor, oversaw the publication. From 1925, Toynbee served as research professor and director at the royal institute of international affairs. He published The Conduct of British Empire Foreign Relations since the Peace Settlement (1928).

His first marriage to Rosalind Murray produced three sons and ended in divorce in 1946. Toynbee, professor, then married Veronica M. Boulter, his research assistant. He published Civilization on Trial (1948).

Toynbee served as research professor and director at the royal institute of international affairs until 1955.
People published best known lectures of Toynbee, professor, in memory of Adam Gifford as An Historian's Approach to Religion (1956). His massive work examined development and decay. He presented the rise and fall rather than nation-states or ethnic groups. According to his analysis, the welfare depends on ability to deal successfully with challenges.

He also published Democracy in the Atomic Age (1957), Christianity among the Religions of the World (1958), and Between Niger and Nile (1965).

He died in York, North Yorkshire, England.

Reviews

[Paul Bryant · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well I used to have a giant hardback abridgement of this. I remember how it used to near cripple me every time I moved my books around or moved house. You almost needed two guys just to lift this one volume. Or two strong women, of course. Or nine freakishly strong children. I used to read it in bed, and that's why I walk with a limp to this day. Anyway, this guy Toynbee, man alive he never stopped writing, have you seen how many books he wrote? This particular elephantine work is one of those grandiose Spenglerian surveys of absolutely everything, and he has a Theory. Wikipedia, in a rare burst of fun, describes A Study of History thus -

Of the 26 civilizations Toynbee identified, sixteen were dead by 1940 and nine of the remaining ten were shown to have already broken down. Only western civilization was left standing. He explained breakdowns as a failure of creative power in the creative minority, which henceforth becomes a merely 'dominant' minority; that is followed by an answering withdrawal of allegiance and mimesis on the part of the majority; finally there is a consequent loss of social unity in the society as a whole. Toynbee explained decline as due to their moral failure. Many readers, especially in America, rejoiced in his implication (in vols. 1-6) that only a return to some form of Catholicism could halt the breakdown of western civilization which began with the Reformation.

Since he wrote this corpulent classic between 1934 and 1956 but he survived another 20 years, I wonder if he would have been wagging his old head over the evident connections that so many people miss. You may begin with what you feel is a justifiable and harmless Reformation but you do not realise that you are now on a slippery slope which leads straight to boys wearing long hair, girls riding motorcycles, and LSD being put into the water supply.

Toynbee describes the rise and fall of civilisations not as some kind of mystical-natural organisms like Spengler, but like organisations that adapt or die. Those are the important things, nations and ethnicities are just the wallpaper in the rooms. He judges on results - "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" - I wonder if he lived just long enough to call Pol Pot a neo-Sumerian.

Historians mostly sneered at all this overarching giantism but allegedly the public lapped it up – they must have been made of sterner stuff, but it was in the days before junk food had made people’s limbs go all floppy, so they had the physical strength to stagger home with it from the bookshop. Historians these days don’t do this Toynbee Spengler My Great Big Theory of God the Universe and Everything, instead they write about the Guild of Oat-Cake Re-Grinders in Lehrenbreinheimgavau, Upper Munster, 1341 to 1374 and suchlike.

As you know, I think that history will teach us nothing and I firmly reject any supposed link between Martin Luther’s 95 Theses and Johnny Rotten’s Anarchy in the UK. The sex Pistols would have happened anyway, even if the Sumerians had still been in charge.

[Sajith Kumar · Rating 4 out of 5]

We saw how a civilization takes birth and how it grows to adulthood, in the previous volumes. We have also witnessed the problems of origin and growth the societies encounter in their multiplicity of paths and saw how Toynbee proposes a general law that applies to all known cases in the world. And we come now to analyse the problem of the breakdowns of civilizations and learn about the mechanisms that cause cracks in the body social from within. One aspect of the author’s thinking that shines through the text is his preference for an ecumenical world order that is not fettered by nation states divided on the principle of nationalism that spread like wildfire across the face of the globe in the last century. In fact, nothing irritates him more than the appeal to patriotism to a parochial state. He identifies papacy with the personification of a spiritual order that embraces all humanity. Some readers are justified in suspecting this to be the author’s weak point. This volume also includes a concise, yet illuminating monograph on the caste system in India which turned into hyper-religiosity that is the hallmark of Indian society even today. Even though the author has not delved deep into the unique social feature of caste in India, what is given is a nice preface for other scholars to build on. Toynbee is an admirer of science and an enthusiast in applying its findings to history too. Evolution is his favourite area of interest and imports its concepts freely to demonstrate as proof to his own arguments in a historical milieu. Though his researches go deep into five millennia of history, the failure to anticipate a world war looming on the horizon in 1938 when the book was in publication is indeed a drawback. Mussolini and Hitler are criticized regularly in the text, but the quicksand in which contemporary Europe was mired in, does not find articulation in any convincing detail.

As the title implies our investigation enters the next phase in the life of civilizations – its breakdown. As is usual with the author, he starts by negating some of the usual reasons attributed to the breakdown of a soceity. This is not the result of a loss of command over the enviornment. These are instances in which the society that has superior means of interaction with the physical world was actually in decay. Apart from the physical, the human enviornment, in the form of aggression from outside the realm of the society plays a significant factor in bringing to a close the life of a stricken society. Rome met its end in the rise of barbarians who invaded from outside its frontiers, while the Christian Church corroded its foundation from the inside. But Toynbee establishes that this apparent victory of barbarism and religion was not the factor that contributed to Roman society’s demise, which was in breakdown right from the time of Hannibal’s invasion a few centuries ago. In other cases, a civilization is eclipsed by an alien society imposing its cultural implements on the vanquished, thereby making them subject to the external stimulus. Egyptiac society was likewise wiped off the face of the Earth by Syriac society and Orthodox Christendom was annexed by Osmanlis. But in both these cases, the external aggeression provided only the coup de grace on a stricken society that had committed great self-mortification akin to suicide much time ago. In most of the instances, internecine warfare has been the mechanism of breakdown.

Three of the clear roads to disintegration are the creative minority losing its creative streak and going on to idolize the self, institutions or techniques. By this worship of the created as against the creator, the society loses steam on its track to growth and attempts geographical expansion. One clear example is the Eastern Roman Empire and its modus operandi to disaster at the hands of Ottoman Turks. When a time of troubles began at the breakdown of Roman Civilization, the creative minority had lost the talent to offer a successful response to the challenge. So they idolized and glorified the Roman Empire which had just collapsed in Italy. Adoration of this lost cause ended up in establishing that ghost of Roman Empire as the East Roman Empire in Constantinople. However, being a patchwork of irreconcilable divergences, break down began soon after, when internecine warfare with Bulgaria exhausted its resources. The Empire was provided with its coup de grace by Saljuq Turks at the Battle of Manzikert in 1071. The author identifies another social law here. When a state is conjectured out of enmity towards an alien one, such as the East Roman one was made into being to stop the outward spread of Abbasid Caliphate, the state will crumble when the alien one which was its purport to hinder, was also in decline. When the Abbasids declined, the East Romans also disintegrated. And this is valid in other civiliztions too.

It is natural to expect a British historian to sing the praise of British Raj that was running full throttle when he was writing those lines. Toynbee gets one step ahead and claims that the future would hold the Raj, a golden moment in India’s political history by providing it with a modern and viable universal state. But he takes great pains to acquit his compatriots from the charge of overthrowing the Hindu Civilization. The British eliminated the anarchy that came in the aftermath of the collapse of the Mughal Empire, and the Mughals were as alien to the Indians as British were. The disintegration of Indian society is argued to have occurred far earlier, just before the first wave of Turkish invasions heated up the north western frontier nearing the end of 12th century. The author does not put forward a conclusive reason for the breakdown, but his wild guess of the cause being the abduction of the daughter of Raja Jaichand by Prithviraj Chauhan that led to fratricidal warfare can’t be taken seriously.

A fine description of the strange effects the modern institutions of industrialism and democracy is given. These had lasting effects whenever they touched social lives. Slavery was abolished when democracy crossed swords with it. Making another human being a slave ran counter to the nations of liberal thought in contemporary England and anti-slavery measures gradually spread round the world. Industrialism didn’t produce such a salutary effect when it embraced nation states in the 19th century. Men fought their best (or worst) when they fought for the cause of religion. But Episcopal schism in churches succeeding the Renaissance generated a sense of disillusionment. So the, 18th century war between states had become a sport of kings. They played for provinces, concessions and other limited objectives with minimal losses in money and men. But industrialism placed deadly weapons in the hands of new states formed under the zeal of democracy. The democratic states fought bitterly and at great expense with each other. Thus, the modern ideas of industrialism and democracy produced bitter results of war when enmeshed with the older institution of parochial state sovereignty. Toynbee correctly identifies the arena of industrialism as the whole world without artificial trade barriers, but falls short of envisaging globalization. His idea of international trade was the liberal regulations that will be imposed by a powerful state that conquered its brothers to assume world hegemony.

The most inscrutable fact of Toynbee’s argument is his preoccupation with the glorification of papacy. He even calls it ‘the greatest of western society’s institutions’. The most important factor in his adoration of the Roman high priest’s claim to ecclesiastical sovereignty over the whole of Western Christendom is his equally sharp disfavor against the division of society into parochial nation states. Nationalism and its byproduct of narrow patriotism find intense criticism at every turn of the book’s pages. In this arrangement, the author might have liked the effects of papacy as a lesser evil, in which the religious attraction is trans-national. We should note one clear aspect in this context. Toynbee’s infatuation with papacy is not at all linked to recognition of any moral or spiritual fountain emanating from the institution in Rome or in the person of the Pope. In fact, this volume contains numerous instances of the nefarious ways of popes in which they were involved in instances of simony, political machinations, conspiracies, adultery and wanton cruelty. Toynbee even thinks about a crisis that may soon engulf the Western society that might spell doom for the parochial, democratic nation states and dreams about a return of the papal control as a way out of the bottleneck. However, his observation falls short of the then state of society to which he belonged.

The book is highly recommended.

Please visit http://sapientiasemita.blogspot.in for more.

[mohab samir · Rating 5 out of 5]

هذا أحد الكتب التى قامت بإعادة تنظيم كل ما قرأت من قبل فهو بكونه بحثاً اجتماعياً تاريخياً شاملاً ينظر فى تاريخية نشأة الحضارة وانحدارها بشكل عام فإنه يتضمن اعادة النظر والصياغة لحركة تطور المعرفة بشكل عام وفى كل اشكالها الخاصة (فلسفية كانت ام سياسية او علمية او اقتصادية او .... ) . واذا حقق جيبون يوماً ما كان حلماً انذاك بتحليله العميق لنشأة الحضارة الرومانية وانهيارها ، فإن توينبى قد حقق حلما اخر بهذه الدراسة الاكثر شمولية لعملية نشأة الحضارة وانهيارها .
وهو ما يتطلب معرفة موسوعية للكاتب - كعادة الاعمال الاصيلة فى العلوم الاجتماعية - وهو ما يسهل ملاحظته من خلال قدرة الكاتب على العرض للمراحل المتشابهة والمختلفة فى تاريخ الحضارات وايصال الفكرة للقارئ دون ان يكون القارئ ملماً بالأحداث التى يتناولها الكاتب ولكن يجب على الاقل ان تكون هناك خلفية عن مسيرة التاريخ الأوروبى منذ الهلينية الى الحرب العالمية الثانية وهو ما يُمَكِن القارئ من فهم المقاربات والمقارنات التى يعرضها الكاتب مع الحضارات المختلفة. وان الكاتب بذلك ليبرز للقارئ محاور اخرى للقراءة مبيناً اهميتها الخاصة فى فهم جدلية الحركة الحضارية فى الزمان والمكان وكيف تقدمت هذه العجلة وما تطلبه هذا التقدم وما أسفر عنه !؟ وهو يساعد القارئ كذلك على وضع هذه الحضارات فى اطر محددة زمنياً بتاريخها وحاضرها ومكانيا بالحضارات المعاصرة لها فى الخارج وبطبيعة الانقسام الطبقى فى الداخل . الا انه لا يصور الحضارة كلحظة جامدة فى هذا الاطار الذى يدرك ان اهميته ليست اكثر من أهمية نظرية بغاية الفهم العقلى . فهو فى الاساس يصور الحركة التفاعلية بين شتى العوامل والعناصر المعاصرة المتحالفة او المتصارعة وبين التحديات والاستجابات وبين الرجعية والحداثة وهى الحركية التى يمكن من خلال طبيعتها استنباط النظري��ت وهو يصور هذه التفاعلات الحضارية كما يصور العالم الفيزيائى تجربته المعملية التى قادته لاستنتاجاته النظرية .
هذه الاعادة المنظمة والمنهجية لصياغة العلاقات واعادة النظر فى مدى التعميم أو التحديد لهذه النظريات ، والتى يستنتجها قارئ التاريخ او التى تناولتها الابحاث التاريخية من وجهة نظر احادية ومجردة ، نقول ان هذه المراجعة واعادة الصياغة هى احد اهم ما يخرج به القارئ ، الا ان الأهم من ذلك فى اعتقادى هو ما يمكن للقارئ ان يفكر به بطريقة انعكاسية او تناظرية ينتقل بها من تاريخ الحضارات العام الى تاريخ شعبه الحديث او الى تاريخه الشخصى الفردى . وهذا ما اعتقد ان الكاتب لم ينبه اليه القارئ الا فى شكل ايماءات وغمزات - لا يكاد يفطن اليها القارئ - تاركاً له حرية الحركة الفكرية خلال القراءة او التشبث بالخط العلمى المتعلق بموضوع البحث الاجتماعى .
وفى رأيى فقد نجح الكاتب الى ابعد مدى  - بما يمتلك من معطيات عصره المعرفية التى هى فى حوزتنا كذلك - ان يخرج بنظريات محددة فى ما يتطلبه الارتقاء الحضارى وما يستدعى الشعور بالخطر ويأذن بخطر الانهيار ، وكذلك فى كل ما يتعلق بالتفاعلات الحضارية المختلفة ( سياسية ، علمية ، اقتصادية ، .... ) التى مرت بها البشرية فى صورها الخاصة الماضية او فيما هو اكثر عمومية فيها بحيث يمكننا ان نحيل النظر اليه فى حالة تعثرنا بخطر مشابه يتنكر فى ثياب حديثة . والاهم هو ما اذا اردنا استشراف المستقبل بطريقة عقلانية تساعدنا على رؤية احتمالاته وممكناته انطلاقاً من فهم الحاضر الناشئ عن فهم أصيل وشمولى لصيرورة ماضى الحضارة .

[Sayed · Rating 1 out of 5]

لعلك خدعك العنوان مثلي فظننته كتابا تاريخيا تقليديا يسرد التاريخ متدرجاً من القديم للحديث
وقد قرأت الكتاب بناءً على نصيحة الدكتور شكري ، وهو لمن لا يعرفه بطل سلسلة رحلات الكاتب صنع الله إبراهيم عبر العالم فى رواياته ( أمريكانلي ) و ( الجليد ) و ( القانون الفرنسي ) ، الذي ذكر هذا الكتاب كمرجع هام لطلابه الأميركيين فى رواية ( امريكانلي )
ولكنني وجدته كتاباً أخر غير ما توقعته ، وندمت على شرائه بشدة . ولعل هذا سبب النجمة الواحدة وليس سببها سوء المحتوى .
وقد لفت انتباهي دفاع المترجم فى تعليقاته عن الشيوعية ووصفها بمحاسن الأوصاف تعقيباً على انتقادات الكاتب لها .

[Sayed Ismail ElMasry · Rating 4 out of 5]

نهاية السلسلة الرائعة

[Steven H · Rating 5 out of 5]

THE FOURTH OF TOYNBEE'S 10-VOLUME "METAHISTORY"

Arnold Joseph Toynbee (1889-1975) was a British historian whose ten-volume 'A Study of History' was an extremely popular approach to historical writing. The first three volumes were released at the same time, in 1933, while the next three were released in 1939.

He begins by saying, "The geneses of civilizations call for explanation in view of the mere fact ... that we are able to enumerate twenty-six representatives of the species... that have come to birth up to date, as against four civilizations that have been abortive... no less than sixteen out of these twenty-six are by now dead and buried... [seven are] under threat of either annihilation or assimilation by our own civilization of the West. Moreover, no less than six... non-Western civilizations that are alive to-day... had broken down internally before they were broken in upon by the impact of our Western Civilization from outside... every one... is now in the process of disintegration, with the possible exception of our own." (Pg. 1-3)

He states, "the nature of the breakdown of civilizations can be summed up in three points: a failure of creative power in the minority, an answering withdrawal of mimesis on the part of the majority, and a consequent loss of social unity in the society as a whole." (Pg. 6) Later, he asserts, "We have now disposed of three predestinarian explanations of the breakdowns of civilizations: the theory that they are the incidental consequence of a running-down of the clockwork of the Physical Universe; the theory that a civilization, like a living organism, has its own inherent life-span and life-curve which compel it to pass... from birth through growth and senescence to death; and the theory that the breakdown of any given civilization at any given date is due to the racial degeneration of a particular portion of the Human Race from which this particular civilization happens to have drawn its 'members.'" (Pg. 23)

He suggests, "Toleration... is the sovereign and essential antidote to a fanaticism which the impact of the Sense of Unity upon Religion is apt to breed... the nemesis is a choice between a revolutionary revulsion against Religion itself and a hideous triumph of the fanatical spirit." (Pg. 228) He argues, "in the present 'fool-proof' stage of our Machine Age our workers are being reduced in ever-increasing numbers to the role of mere mechanical executants---when they are lucky enough to escape being replaced altogether by some totally inanimate machine and being thrown out upon the human scrap-heap of unemployment." (Pg. 235) He asserts, "If Israel succumbed to the nemesis of creativity by idolizing itself in its transitory role of being 'the Chosen People,' Athens condemned herself to the same fate by becoming infatuated with her own no less transitory role of being 'the Education of Hellas.'" (Pg. 263)

He summarizes, "for four centuries our modern Western master-institution, the parochial Sovereign State, has been steadily strengthening its ominous hold upon our Western life by taking advantage of the successive impacts of new social forces... The spirit of Nationality... we denounced ... as a political counterpart of the sin of polytheistic idolatry ... If that is the besetting sin of our Western Civilization in our day... then, indeed, we must lay aside every weight; for we shall need the last reserve of our strength for running the race that is set before us against a doom to which our sister society has already succumbed." (Pg. 407-408)

Toynbee's reputation is considerably diminished from when these volumes were first published; but reading the entire series is still a very worthwhile (if time-consuming) endeavor.

[Zach · Rating 4 out of 5]

Aside from an odd "idolization of an ephemeral institution" in the Papacy by the author, probably as a consequence of the disastrous international situation in the year the book was finished (1938), this continues an interesting and thought-provoking "empirical" study of civilizations and their life cycles.