A Study of History

Arnold J. Toynbee’s *A Study of History* is a 12-volume universal history published between 1934 and 1961. It attracted a wide popular audience, though historian Richard J. Evans later noted that it “enjoyed only a brief vogue before disappearing into the obscurity in which it has languished.” Toynbee aimed to examine the rise and fall of 19 or 21 world civilizations, applying a consistent model to each: genesis, growth, a time of troubles, a universal state, and disintegration. The major civilizations Toynbee identified include Egyptian, Andean, Sumerian, Babylonic, Hittite, Minoan, Indic, Hindu, Syriac, Hellenic, Western, Orthodox Christian (split into Byzantine and Russian branches), Far Eastern (split into Chinese and Japanese-Korean branches), Islamic (with Arabic and Iranic branches that later merged), Mayan, Mexican, and Yucatec. He also listed three “abortive civilizations” (Abortive Far Western Christian, Abortive Far Eastern Christian, and Abortive Scandinavian) and five “arrested civilizations” (Polynesian, Eskimo, Nomadic, Ottoman, and Spartan), making a total of 27 or 29. The work runs to more than 3 million words across about 7,000 pages, plus 412 pages of indices. The volumes were published by Oxford University Press: Volumes I–III in 1934, Volumes IV–VI in 1939, Volumes VII–X in 1954, Volume XI (Historical Atlas and Gazetteer) in 1959, and Volume XII (Reconsiderations) in 1961. D. C. Somervell produced abridgements of Volumes I–VI (1946) and Volumes VII–X (1957), and a combined one-volume edition of Volumes I–X (1960). A later abridgement by Toynbee and Jane Caplan appeared in 1972. Toynbee argued that civilizations emerge from simpler societies not due to race or environment, but as responses to challenges—such as harsh terrain, new land, external pressures, or penalization. For a civilization to be born, the challenge must be a “golden mean”: too severe a challenge crushes it, too mild a challenge causes stagnation. Growth continues only when each challenge is met and replaced by another, in a cycle of “Challenge and Response.” Different environments and approaches lead to different developmental paths. Growth is driven by “Creative Minorities” who find solutions to challenges and inspire others through imitation, rather than coercion. In 1939, Toynbee wrote that the challenge of creating a political world-order, as a framework for an economic one, then confronted modern Western society. Breakdown, in Toynbee’s view, does not stem from loss of control over the physical or human environment, or from external attack. Instead, it arises from the deterioration of the Creative Minority, which stops being creative and becomes a mere “Dominant Minority.” This decline occurs because the minority worships its “former self,” grows prideful, and fails to address the next challenge. The final breakdown leads to “positive acts of creation.” The Dominant Minority tries to establish a universal state to preserve its power, while the internal proletariat seeks to create a universal church to safeguard its spiritual and cultural values. The ultimate sign of breakdown is the formation of a universal state, which stifles political creativity. Toynbee cites the Roman Empire as a classic example, among many others. He wrote: “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.