Study of History
* Book: A Study of History. Arnold Toynbee.
URL = https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Study_of_History
Description
"“English historian whose 12-volume A Study of History (1934–61) put forward a philosophy of history, based on an analysis of the cyclical development and decline of civilizations, that provoked much discussion.” [1]
From the Wikipedia:
"A Study of History is a 12-volume universal history by the British historian Arnold J. Toynbee, published from 1934 to 1961. It received enormous popular attention but according to historian Richard J. Evans, "enjoyed only a brief vogue before disappearing into the obscurity in which it has languished."[1] Toynbee's goal was to trace the development and decay of 19 or 21 world civilizations in the historical record, applying his model to each of these civilizations, detailing the stages through which they all pass: genesis, growth, time of troubles, universal state, and disintegration.
The 19 (or 21) major civilizations, as Toynbee sees them, are: Egyptian, Andean, Sumerian, Babylonic, Hittite, Minoan, Indic, Hindu, Syriac[disambiguation needed], Hellenic, Western, Orthodox Christian (having two branches: the main or Byzantine body and the Russian branch), Far Eastern (having two branches: the main or Chinese-Korean body and the Japanese branch), Persian, Arabic, Hindu, Mayan, Mexican and Yucatec. Moreover, there are three "abortive civilizations" (Abortive Far Western Christian, Abortive Far Eastern Christian, Abortive Scandinavian) and five "arrested civilizations" (Polynesian, Eskimo, Nomadic, Ottoman, Spartan), for a total of 27 or 29."
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Study_of_History)
Contents
From the Wikipedia:
Publication of A Study of History
- Vol I: Introduction: The Geneses of Civilizations, part one (Oxford University Press, 1934)
- Vol II: The Geneses of Civilizations, part two (Oxford University Press, 1934)
- Vol III: The Growths of Civilizations (Oxford University Press, 1934)
- Vol IV: The Breakdowns of Civilizations (Oxford University Press, 1939)
- Vol V: The Disintegrations of Civilizations, part one (Oxford University Press, 1939)
- Vol VI: The Disintegrations of Civilizations, part two (Oxford University Press, 1939)
- Vol VII: Universal States; Universal Churches (Oxford University Press, 1954) [as two volumes in paperback]
- Vol VIII: Heroic Ages; Contacts between Civilizations in Space (Encounters between Contemporaries) (Oxford University Press, 1954)
- Vol IX: Contacts between Civilizations in Time (Renaissances); Law and Freedom in History; The Prospects of the Western Civilization (Oxford University Press, 1954)
- Vol X: The Inspirations of Historians; A Note on Chronology (Oxford University Press, 1954)
- Vol XI: Historical Atlas and Gazetteer (Oxford University Press, 1959)
- Vol XII: Reconsiderations (Oxford University Press, 1961)
- Abridgements by D. C. Somervell:
- A Study of History: Abridgement of Vols I–VI, with a preface by Toynbee (Oxford University Press, 1946)[4]
- A Study of History: Abridgement of Vols VII–X (Oxford University Press, 1957)
* A Study of History: Abridgement of Vols I–X in One Volume, with new preface by Toynbee & new tables (Oxford Univ. Press, 1960)
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Study_of_History)
Discussion
The Civilizational Cycle
From the Wikipedia:
Genesis and Growth
"Toynbee argues that civilizations are born out of more primitive societies, not as the result of racial or environmental factors, but as a response to challenges, such as hard country, new ground, blows and pressures from other civilizations, and penalization. He argues that for civilizations to be born, the challenge must be a golden mean; that excessive challenge will crush the civilization, and too little challenge will cause it to stagnate. He argues that civilizations continue to grow only when they meet one challenge only to be met by another, in a continuous cycle of "Challenge and Response". He argues that civilizations develop in different ways due to their different environments and different approaches to the challenges they face. He argues that growth is driven by "Creative Minorities": those who find solutions to the challenges, who inspire (rather than compel) others to follow their innovative lead. This is done through the "faculty of mimesis." Creative minorities find solutions to the challenges a civilization faces, while the great mass follow these solutions by imitation, solutions they otherwise would be incapable of discovering on their own.
In 1939, Toynbee wrote,
"The challenge of being called upon to create a political world-order, the framework for an economic world-order … now confronts our Modern Western society."
Breakdown and Disintegration
Toynbee does not see the breakdown of civilizations as caused by loss of control over the physical environment, by loss of control over the human environment, or by attacks from outside. Rather, it comes from the deterioration of the "Creative Minority", which eventually ceases to be creative and degenerates into merely a "Dominant Minority".
He argues that creative minorities deteriorate due to a worship of their "former self," by which they become prideful and fail adequately to address the next challenge they face.
Results of the breakdown
The final breakdown results in "positive acts of creation;" the dominant minority seeks to create a Universal state to preserve its power and influence, and the internal proletariat seeks to create a Universal church to preserve its spiritual values and cultural norms.
Universal state
He argues that the ultimate sign a civilization has broken down is when the dominant minority forms a "universal state", which stifles political creativity within the existing social order. The classic example of this is the Roman Empire, though many other imperial regimes are cited as examples. Toynbee writes:
"First the Dominant Minority attempts to hold by force—against all right and reason—a position of inherited privilege which it has ceased to merit; and then the Proletariat repays injustice with resentment, fear with hate, and violence with violence when it executes its acts of secession. Yet the whole movement ends in positive acts of creation—and this on the part of all the actors in the tragedy of disintegration. The Dominant Minority creates a universal state, the Internal Proletariat a universal church, and the External Proletariat a bevy of barbarian war-bands."
Universal church
Toynbee developed his concept of an "internal proletariat" and an "external proletariat" to describe quite different opposition groups within and outside the frontiers of a civilization. These groups, however, find themselves bound to the fate of the civilization.[5] During its decline and disintegration, they are increasingly disenfranchised or alienated, and thus lose their immediate sense of loyalty or of obligation. Nonetheless an "internal proletariat," untrusting of the dominant minority, may form a "universal church" which survives the civilization's demise, co-opting the useful structures such as marriage laws of the earlier time while creating a new philosophical or religious pattern for the next stage of history.
Before the process of disintegration, the dominant minority had held the internal proletariat in subjugation within the confines of the civilization, causing these oppressed to grow bitter. The external proletariat, living outside the civilization in poverty and chaos, grows envious. Then, in the social stress resulting from the failure of the civilization, the bitterness and envy increase markedly.
Toynbee argues that as civilizations decay, there is a "schism" within the society. In this environment of discord, people resort to archaism (idealization of the past), futurism (idealization of the future), detachment (removal of oneself from the realities of a decaying world), and transcendence (meeting the challenges of the decaying civilization with new insight, e.g., by following a new religion). From among members of an "internal proletariat" who transcend the social decay a "church" may arise. Such an association would contain new and stronger spiritual insights, around which a subsequent civilization may begin to form. Toynbee here uses the word "church" in a general sense, e.g., to refer to a collective spiritual bond found in common worship, or the unity found in an agreed social order."
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Study_of_History)
More information
Sorokin’s summary of Toynbee: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1874765
John David Ebert recommends
- the 2-volume abridged version, which was approved by Toynbee.
- a one volume abridged and illustrated version, written by Toynbee himself in 1972, 3 years before he died.
Online version at https://archive.org/details/studyofhistory0005toyn
* Article: The Return of Civilization—and of Arnold Toynbee? By Krishan Kumar. Cambridge University Press: 03 October 2014
"This paper considers the history of the concept of civilization, and argues for the continuing importance and relevance of Toynbee's multi-volume A Study of History within that tradition. The claim is that, whatever the weaknesses of Toynbee's general approach, the civilizational perspective he adopts allows him to cast an illuminating light on many important historical questions. Moreover his belief in the “philosophical contemporaneity” and equal value of all civilizations should make him peculiarly attractive to those many today who reject Eurocentrism and who are increasingly persuaded of the need to consider the total human experience from earliest times up to the present."