Arnold J. Toynbee
British historian, RIIA Director of Studies, author of A Study of History
Also known as: Toynbee, Arnold Toynbee
Arnold J. Toynbee (1889–1975) was a British historian, long-serving Director of Studies at the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House), and author of the twelve-volume A Study of History. He is simultaneously an institutional insider of the The Milner Group network — through the The All Souls Network and Chatham House — and Quigley's principal intellectual rival in the field of civilizational analysis.
The original Toynbee group
Quigley uses "the Toynbee group" as one of three founding clusters of what became the Milner Group. "The Toynbee group was a group of political intellectuals formed at Balliol about 1873 and dominated by Arnold Toynbee" — the elder Arnold Toynbee, uncle of the historian — "and Milner himself. It was really the group of Milner's personal friends" (AAE 7). Toynbee Hall, the East-End settlement house, was founded as a memorial: "Gell was made first chairman of Toynbee Hall by Milner when it was opened in 1884… In 1894 Milner delivered a eulogy of his dead friend at Toynbee Hall, and published it the next year as Arnold Toynbee: A Reminiscence" (AAE 8–9). The younger Arnold J. Toynbee, the historian, inherited both the family connection and a position inside the Milner Group's intellectual apparatus.
Toynbee as civilizational rival
The Evolution of Civilizations positions itself directly against A Study of History. Quigley's reading of Toynbee is that he "has produced the most voluminous and, in spite of its sprawling organization, most satisfactory theory of these processes. He is still strongly influenced by Darwinian biology, and attributes the rise and fall of civilizations" to challenge-and-response patterns (EoC 117). Reviewers of EoC immediately identified the rivalry: the Christian Science Monitor wrote that Quigley "has reached sounder ground than has Arnold J. Toynbee" (EoC 2, 9). In Quigley's introduction to T&H Toynbee appears alongside Spengler among those "puzzling over the problem whether civilizations have a life cycle" (T&H 18) — Quigley aligns himself with the cyclical-stages tradition while breaking from Toynbee's organic-biological emphasis.
Break with the Milner Group
Quigley records Toynbee's eventual estrangement from the The Milner Group during the appeasement crisis. After the failed plan to channel German expansion southward, "the Milner Group lost another important member, Arnold J. Toynbee, who separated himself from the policy of appeasement" (AAE 227). The episode encapsulates the late-1930s fracturing inside the Group itself — and provides one of Quigley's clearest examples of an intellectual figure whose break with the network is itself a piece of evidence for the network's existence.
Cited in
- anglo-american-establishment · p. 7 Quigley
The Toynbee group was a group of political intellectuals formed at Balliol about 1873 and dominated by Arnold Toynbee and Milner himself. It was really the group of Milner's personal friends.
- anglo-american-establishment · p. 8 Quigley
In 1894 Milner delivered a eulogy of his dead friend at Toynbee Hall, and published it the next year as Arnold Toynbee: A Reminiscence. He also wrote the sketch of Toynbee in the Dictionary of National Biography.
- anglo-american-establishment · p. 227 Quigley
The Milner Group lost another important member, Arnold J. Toynbee, who separated himself from the policy of appeasement.
- evolution-of-civilizations · p. 117 Quigley
The most famous of recent writers on this subject, Arnold J. Toynbee, has produced the most voluminous and, in spite of its sprawling organization, most satisfactory theory of these processes.
- tragedy-and-hope · p. 18 Quigley
Oswald Spengler in the early twentieth century and Arnold J. Toynbee in our own day, men have been puzzling over the problem whether civilizations have a life cycle and follow a similar pattern of change.
- tragedy-and-hope · p. 144 Quigley
At Oxford were a group of intimate friends including Arnold Toynbee, Alfred (later Lord) Milner, Arthur Glazebrook, George (later Sir George) Parkin, Philip Lyttelton Gell, and Henry (later Sir Henry) Birchenough.