Arnold J  Toynbee
Channel: the aleatoric learning channel
Date: 2021-08-22

From 1918 to 1950, Toynbee was considered a leading specialist on international affairs. Curtius wrote, "How do cultures, and the historical entities which are their media, arise, grow and decay? Only a comparative morphology with exact procedures can hope to answer these questions. It was Arnold J. Toynbee who undertook the task."After 1960, Toynbee's ideas faded both in academia and the media, to the point of seldom being cited today. In his 2011 article for the Journal of History titled "Globalization and Global History in Toynbee," Michael Lang wrote: To many world historians today, Arnold J. Toynbee is regarded like an embarrassing uncle at a house party. With his research assistant, Veronica M. Boulter, Toynbee was co-editor of the RIIA's annual Survey of International Affairs, which became the "Bible" for international specialists in Britain. Meeting with Adolf Hitler While on a visit in Berlin in 1936 to address the Nazi Law Society, Toynbee was invited to have a private interview with Adolf Hitler, at Hitler's request. During the interview, which took place a day before Toynbee delivered his lecture, Hitler emphasised his limited expansionist aim of building a greater German nation, and his desire for British understanding and co-operation. Toynbee's lecture - delivered in English, but copies of which in German were circulated in advance by officials - was warmly received by his Berlin audience, who appreciated its conciliatory tone. As a result of Toynbee's debate in January 1961 with Yaakov Herzog, the Israeli ambassador to Canada, Toynbee softened his view and called on Israel to fulfill its special "Mission to make contributions to worldwide efforts to prevent the outbreak of nuclear war." In his article "Jewish Rights in Palestine", he challenged the views of the editor of the Jewish Quarterly Review, historian and talmudic scholar Solomon Zeitlin, who published his rebuke, "Jewish Rights in Eretz Israel" in the same issue. According to an Editor's Note in an edition of Toynbee's A Study of History, Toynbee believed that societies always die from suicide or murder rather than from natural causes, and nearly always from suicide.