First impressions

“A Study of History” is Arnold J Toynbee's impossibly large 10-volume work about the rise and fall of human civilizations. Most people have neither the time nor the inclination to read the entire opus. A two-volume abridgment has therefore been published, with an appreciative preface by the author. It's safe to assume that most people haven't read the entire abridgment either – it's still a monumental work. I admit that I belong to the majority, having read a few chapters and skimmed a few more in the first volume only. My review is therefore an educated layman's first impression of Toynbee's labor of love. But, as they say, you never get a second chance to make a first impression!

Toynbee argues that civilizations arise due to a pattern he calls “challenge and response”, carried out by “creative minorities” who inspire the inert mass to imitate their innovations, a process Toynbee calls “mimesis”. Conversely, a civilization breaks down when the creative minority stops being a trail-blazer, instead settling down as a coercive “dominant minority”. This eventually creates a schism in the body social, with the dominant minority being threatened by both an “internal proletariat” and an “external proletariat”. After a “time of troubles”, the dominant minority seemingly solves the problems of civilizational decline by creating a “universal state”. In reality, the universal state is an Indian summer and finally collapses under the dual strains of internal and external “proletarian” challenges. The internal proletariat creates a “universal church”, often based on ideas imported from another, perhaps older, civilization. The external proletariat simply creates barbarian war-bands. After a period Toynbee calls “Völkerwanderung”, a new civilization arises under the inspiration of the universal church, and the cycle begins anew.

As critics of Toynbee are fond to point out, this scenario is obviously based on the rise and fall of Greco-Roman Antiquity and its subsequent replacement by the civilization of the Middle Ages. The “universal state” is the Roman Empire, the “universal church” is Christianity, the “internal proletariat” consists of everyone in some sense disadvantaged by the growing power of the Roman oligarchy, and the “external proletariat” is identical with the Germanic and Hunnish invaders. The curious technical term “Völkerwanderung” is the German designation for the great migrations of peoples that took place immediately before and after the so-called fall of Rome. It's not overtly clear how this neat scheme can be applied to other civilizations! The cycles of Muslim civilization seem to follow different patterns, not to mention the Phoenix-like Chinese and Egyptian civilizations. Sometimes, Toynbee's reasoning makes little sense even when discussing Greco-Roman antiquity. Why does he date the “breakdown” of the ancient world to the Peloponnesian Wars? The term “breakdown” denotes the point when a civilization stops growing and maturing, and hence isn't necessarily identical to an actual collapse. However, it still doesn't make much sense. Wasn't Greek civilization growing under Alexander the Great and the Ptolemies? Toynbee dates the “breakdown” of Egyptian civilization to the end of the Pyramid Age, claiming that 2000 years of Egyptian history and splendid achievement were really a kind of afterthought to the “universal state” of the Old Kingdom! The breakdown of “Syriac” civilization is said to be the dissolution of king Solomon's kingdom in Biblical times, surely a strange perspective on the matter. Why is the Abbasid Caliphate rather than the Ottoman Empire the “universal state” of the Muslims? The reforms of Peter the Great in Russia and the Meiji Restoration in Japan, which both saved their respective civilization by Western modernization, don't seem to fit Toynbee's neat pattern either. It's almost as if Toynbee attempted to reinterpret all of world history on the Greco-Roman-medieval model, really a Euro-centrist perspective. This is ironic given Toynbee's considerable erudition concerning non-Western civilizations.

More interesting is Toynbee's implicitly spiritual perspective. The great historian was inspired by French philosopher Henri Bergson and explicitly mentions him a number of times. The term “creative minority” is based on Bergson's “creative evolution”. The creative minority consists of charismatic personalities, similar in many ways to religious visionaries or mystics. This is taken from Bergson's book “The Two Sources of Morality and Religion”. Toynbee compares the activity of the creative minorities to Plato's idea that the philosopher, after “ascending”, must then “descend” and offer solutions for the improvement of his polity (Arthur Lovejoy had the same interpretation of Plato. Admirers of Ken Wilber, take note). Charismatic personages also play an important role during periods of decline and fall, when they are seen as “saviors” in the messianic sense rather than as, say, great law-givers. One thing I always wondered about is *why* Toynbee believes that humans create civilizations, or why he believes that many of them eventually fail. He clearly doesn't see material factors as decisive. Technology can progress even in an “arrested civilization” such as the Ottoman Empire, and foreign conquerors are usually successful only because the vanquished have already vanquished themselves by internal processes. The Bergson connection gives the answer: Toynbee believes that history is the working out of the élan vital, presumably on very crooked timber! As far as I understand, Toynbee was Christian and believed in “Original Sin”…

An observation I found interesting is that the “universal church” is based on ideas imported from outside the dominant culture of the “universal state”. Thus, Christianity (originally from “Palestine”) became important in the Roman Empire and post-Roman Europe, while Mahayana Buddhism (from India) became important in China, Korea and Japan. Islam became strong in Asia Minor, Persia, India and Indonesia, outside the Arab World where it first emerged. Note also that Christianity and Buddhism (but not Islam) is almost extinct in the land of its origins! This raises interesting questions concerning the next Western “universal church”. Will it be a counter-culture based on Theosophy and various Hindu- and Buddhist-derived doctrines? Or will it be Christianity, not because it's “traditionally Western” but, on the contrary, because it's seen as virtually “foreign” in the secularized West? Perhaps Christianity will be reintroduced by missionaries from East Asia? Islam is another possibility, but in this case, due to massive immigration of “external” proletarians. Note that Toynbee believed that the universal church is the embryo of the next civilization. If the author is right, our secular Über-religion is in for a rough ride! As a side point, I note that Toynbee admits that his analysis of the universal church tends to break down the strict barriers between civilizations he postulates in his first chapters, since the universal church is connected to massive cultural diffusion between civilizations.

In contrast to Oswald Spengler, Toynbee didn't believe that Western civilization was necessarily doomed to decline and fall. This issue is dealt with at length in the second volume of the abridgment, which I haven't read. Perhaps the famous historian was unduly influenced by the heady optimism of the immediate post-war period? Today, Arnold J Toynbee's study of Greco-Roman history suddenly sounds very prescient…and very scary. Indeed, it's scarier than usual, since the “universal state” (Pax Americana) is already dead, and no “universal church” is visible on the horizon, only a very large amount of hungry “external proletarians”…

These, then, are my first impressions of Arnold Joseph Toynbee's “A Study of History”.