Arnold J. Toynbee

Toynbee was born on 14 April 1889 in London, England, to Harry Valpy Toynbee (1861–1941), secretary of the Charity Organization Society, and his wife Sarah Edith Marshall (1859–1939). His mother took the equivalent of an undergraduate degree in English history at Cambridge University, when higher education for women was unusual and before women were allowed to graduate from the university,^[10] and his sister Jocelyn Toynbee was an archaeologist and art historian. Arnold Toynbee was a grandson of Joseph Toynbee, a nephew of the 19th-century economist Arnold Toynbee (1852–1883), and a descendant of prominent British intellectuals for several generations.

Having won a scholarship, he was educated at Winchester College, an all-boys independent boarding school in Winchester, Hampshire. From 1907 to 1911, having won a scholarship to Oxford University, he read literae humaniores (i.e. classics) at Balliol College, Oxford.^[11] Early in Toynbee's degree, his father suffered a nervous collapse and was institutionalised, causing financial difficulties for the family.^[10] Regardless, Toynbee achieved first class honours in mods and in greats and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree.^[10] From 1911 to 1912, he toured Italy and Greece to study the classical landscape and remains that "he had thitherto known only through books".^[10]

In 1912, having returned from his travels, Toynbee was elected a fellow of his alma mater Balliol College, Oxford, and appointed a tutor in ancient history.^[10][12] Unusually for a British classical scholar of that time, his interests crossed Greek and Roman civilisation, and ranged from Bronze Age Greece to the Byzantine Empire.^[10] He also combined traditional classical literary scholarship with the emerging discipline of classical archaeology.^[10]

At the start of the First World War, Toynbee was found, because of a bout of dysentery after his return from Greece, to be unfit for military service.^[10] In 1915, he began working for the intelligence department of the British Foreign Office. He worked under Viscount Bryce to investigate the Ottoman atrocities against the Armenians and wrote a number of pro-Allied propaganda leaflets.^[10]

He served as a delegate to the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, where he helped shape the Treaty of Sèvres.^[10] He was present at the meeting at the Hotel Majestic when Lionel Curtis proposed the formation of an Institute of International Affairs, resulting in the formation of Chatham House in London and The Council on Foreign Relations in New York.

Following the end of the First World War, he returned to the University of London, specialising in the Byzantine Empire and Modern Greek studies and being appointed to the Koraes Professor of Modern Greek and Byzantine History, Language and Literature at King's College London in 1919.^[12] He would ultimately resign from the chair in 1924, following an academic dispute (see subsection on Greece below).^[13][14] In 1921 and 1922 he was the Manchester Guardian correspondent during the Greco-Turkish War, an experience that resulted in the publication of The Western Question in Greece and Turkey.^[15] In 1925 he became Research Professor of International History at the London School of Economics.^[12] In 1929 he became Director of Studies at the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House), a post he held until 1956.^[7]

He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy (FBA) in 1937.^[12] He was elected an International Member of the American Philosophical Society in 1941 and an International Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1949.^[16]

His first marriage was to Rosalind Murray (1890–1967), daughter of Gilbert Murray, in 1913; they had three sons, of whom Philip Toynbee was the second. They divorced in 1946; Toynbee then married his research assistant, Veronica M. Boulter (1893-1980), in the same year.^[8] He died on 22 October 1975, age 86.^[17]

In his 1915 book Nationality & the War, Toynbee argued that any eventual postwar peace settlement should be guided by the principle of nationality.^[18] In Chapter IV of his 1916 book The New Europe: Essays in Reconstruction, Toynbee argued against the competing principle of "natural borders."^[19] Toynbee encouraged the use of plebiscites for the allocation of disputed territories,^[19] an idea brought to fruition by the postwar use of plebiscites.^[20][21]

In his 1915 book Nationality & the War, Toynbee offered various elaborate proposals and predictions for the future of various countries, both European and non-European. For example, he advocated an autonomous Poland in a federal arrangement with Russia,^[22] the retention of Austro-Hungarian dominion over Czech and Slovak lands,^[23] Austro-Hungarian relinquishment of Galicia, Transylvania, and Bukovina,^[24] independence for Bosnia, Croatia, and Slovenia,^[23] the division of Bessarabia between Russia and Romania and joint use by those two countries of the port of Odessa,^[25] Russian acquisition of Outer Mongolia and the Tarim Basin in central Asia^[26] and of Pontus and the Armenian Vilayets in the Ottoman Empire,^[27] a strong, independent, central government in Persia.^[28] and a Russo-British partitioning of Afghanistan.^[29][30]

 

 

Michael Lang says that for much of the twentieth century,

Toynbee was perhaps the world's most read, translated, and discussed living scholar. His output was enormous, hundreds of books, pamphlets, and articles. Of these, scores were translated into thirty different languages....the critical reaction to Toynbee constitutes a veritable intellectual history of the midcentury: we find a long list of the period's most important historians, Beard, Braudel, Collingwood, and so on.^[31]

In his best-known work, A Study of History, published 1934–1961,^[32] Toynbee

examined the rise and fall of 26 civilisations in the course of human history, and he concluded that they rose by responding successfully to challenges under the leadership of creative minorities composed of elite leaders.^[33]

A Study of History was both a commercial and an academic success. In the US alone, more than 7,000 sets of the ten-volume edition were sold by 1955. A 1947 one-volume 1947 abridgement by David Churchill Somervell of the first six volumes sold over 300,000 copies in the US. Toynbee appeared on the cover of Time magazine in 1947, with an article describing his work as "the most provocative work of historical theory written in England since Karl Marx's Capital".^[34] He became a regular commentator for the BBC on the then-current hostility between east and west and on non-western views of the western world.^[35][36]

Toynbee's overall theory was taken up by some scholars, such as Ernst Robert Curtius, as a sort of paradigm in the post-war period. In the opening pages of his own study of medieval Latin literature,. 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.^[37]

After 1960, Toynbee's ideas faded in both academia and in popular culture. His work is seldom cited today.^[38][39] In general, historians pointed to his preference for myths, allegories, and religion over factual data. His critics argued that his conclusions are more those of a Christian moralist than of a historian.^[40] In his 2011 article for the Journal of History titled "Globalization and Global History in Toynbee," historian Michael Lang wrote:

To many world historians today, Arnold J. Toynbee is regarded like an embarrassing uncle at a house party. He gets a requisite introduction by virtue of his place on the family tree, but he is quickly passed over for other friends and relatives.^[41]

Toynbee's work, however, continues to be referenced by some classical historians, because "his training and surest touch is in the world of classical antiquity."^[42] His roots in classical literature are also manifested by similarities between his approach and that of classical historians such as Herodotus and Thucydides.^[43] Comparative history, in which his work is often categorised, has been in the doldrums.^[44]

Toynbee is thanked in the acknowledgment section of Mark Lane's Rush to Judgment (1966), which critiques the official explanation of the assassination of John F. Kennedy, for having been "kind enough to read the manuscript and make suggestions" to the book.^[45]

While the writing of the Study was underway, Toynbee produced numerous smaller works and served as Director of Studies of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, Chatham House, (from 1929-1956).^[46] He also retained his position at the London School of Economics until his retirement in 1956.^[33]

Toynbee worked for the Political Intelligence Department of the British Foreign Office during World War I and served as a delegate to the Paris Peace Conference in 1919.

He was Director of Studies at Chatham House from 1929 to 1956.^[47]

Toynbee was co-editor with his research assistant, Veronica M. Boulter, of the RIIA's annual Survey of International Affairs, from 1922-1956. It became the "bible" for international specialists in Britain.^[48][49]

At the outbreak of the Second World War the institute was decentralised for security reasons, with many of the staff moving to Balliol College, Oxford from Chatham House's main buildings in St James's Square. There, the Foreign Press and Research Service of the Institute worked closely with the Foreign Office to provide intelligence for and to work closely with the Foreign Office dedicating their research to the war effort under the Chairmanship of Waldorf Astor.^[50]

The formal remit of Chatham House for the FPRS at Balliol was:
1. To review the press overseas.
2. To “produce at the request of the Foreign Office, and the Service and other Departments, memoranda giving the historical and political background on any given situation on which information is desired”.
3. “To provide information on special points desired" (in regards to each country).^[51] It provided various reports on foreign press, historical and political background of the enemy and various other topics.

Many eminent historians served on the FPRS under Arnold J. Toynbee as its Director and with Lionel Curtis (represented the Chairman) at Oxford until 1941 when Ivison Macadam took over the role from Curtis. There were four deputy directors. The four Deputy Directors were Alfred Zimmern, George N. Clark, Herbert J. Patton and Charles K. Webster and a number of experts in its nineteen divisions.^[52]

It was moved to the Foreign Office 1943–46.^[53]

While on a visit in Berlin in 1936 to address the Law Society, Toynbee was invited to a private interview with Adolf Hitler at Hitler's request.^[54] During the interview, which was held a day before Toynbee delivered his lecture, Hitler emphasized his limited expansionist aim of building a greater German nation, and his desire for British understanding and co-operation with Nazi Germany.^[55] Hitler also suggested Germany could be an ally to Britain in the Asia-Pacific region if Germany's Pacific colonial empire were restored.^[56] Toynbee believed that Hitler was sincere and endorsed Hitler's message in a confidential memorandum for the British prime minister and foreign secretary.^[57]

Toynbee presented his lecture in English, but copies of it were circulated in German by Nazi officials, and it was warmly received by his Berlin audience who appreciated its conciliatory tone.^[56] Tracy Philipps, a British 'diplomat' stationed in Berlin at the time, later informed Toynbee that it 'was an eager topic of discussion everywhere'.^[56] Back home, some of Toynbee's colleagues were dismayed by his attempts at managing Anglo-German relations.^[56]

Toynbee was troubled by the Russian Revolution since he saw Russia as a non-Western society and the revolution as a threat to Western society.^[58] However, in 1952, he argued that the Soviet Union had been a victim of Western aggression. He portrayed the Cold War as a religious competition that pitted a Marxist materialist heresy against the West's spiritual Christian heritage, which had already been foolishly rejected by a secularised West. A heated debate ensued, and an editorial in The Times promptly attacked Toynbee for treating communism as a "spiritual force".^[59]

Toynbee was a leading analyst of developments in the Middle East. His support for Greece and hostility to the Turks during World War I had gained him an appointment to the Koraes Chair of Modern Greek and Byzantine History at King's College, University of London.^[13] However, after the war he accused Greece's military government in occupied Turkish territory of atrocities and massacres. This earned him the enmity of the wealthy Greeks who had endowed the chair, and in 1924 he was forced to resign the position.

His stance during World War I reflected less sympathy for the Arab cause and took a pro-Zionist outlook. Toynbee investigated Zionism in 1915 at the Information Department of the Foreign Office, and in 1917 he published a memorandum with his colleague Lewis Namier which supported exclusive Jewish political rights in Ottoman Palestine.^[60] He expressed support for Jewish immigration to Palestine, which he believed had "begun to recover its ancient prosperity" as a result.^[61] Historian Isaiah Friedman felt Toynbee had been influenced by the Palestine Arab delegation which was visiting London in 1922.^[60] His subsequent writings reveal his changing outlook on the subject, and by the late 1940s he had moved away from the Zionist concept taking into account the Palestine Arabs' tenure. Toynbee maintained that the Jewish people had neither historic nor legal claims to Palestine, stating that the Arab "population's human rights to their homes and property over-ride all other rights in cases where claims conflict." Toynbee did concede that Jews, "being the only surviving representatives of any of the pre-Arab inhabitants of Palestine, had a further claim to a national home in Palestine," but even so Toynbee felt the Balfour Declaration had guaranteed that such a claim was valid "only in so far as it can be implemented without injury to the rights and to the legitimate interests of the native Arab population of Palestine."^[62]

Although not the official view of Chatham House which discussed numerous opinions on the then evolving situation,^[63] Toynbee came to be known, by his own admission, as "the Western spokesman for the Arab cause."^[60]

The views Toynbee expressed in the 1950s continued to oppose the formation of a Jewish state, partly out of his concern that it would increase the risk of Middle East conflict with the Jews and Arabs and could lead to a nuclear confrontation.Toynbee in his article "Jewish Rights in Palestine",^[64] 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 (Palestine)"^[65] in the same issue. However, 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, by then established, to fulfil its special "mission to make contributions to worldwide efforts to prevent the outbreak of nuclear war."^[60][66]

Though Toynbee co-authoured papers with and commissioned articles from Jewish scholars, and included Jewish friends among those whom he praised in his book Acquaintances,^[67] Toynbee's views on Judaism and Middle East politics prompted allegations of antisemitism.^[68][69][70] Abba Eban's 1955 speech The Toynbee Heresy,^[68] for example, bases the accusation of antisemitism on, among other things, the allegedly negative portrayal of Judaism in A Study of History,^[68] Toynbee's frequent use of the adjective Judaic to describe episodes of "extreme brutality" even where Jews were not involved, as in the Gothic persecution of Christians,^[68] Toynbee's reference to the Jewish presence in Palestine at the time of the publication of A Study of History as merely a "fossil remnant,"^[71] his portrayal of Judaism as fanatical and provincial and as having advanced the cause of civilization only as a seedbed for Christianity,^[68] his view that Zionism offends Jewish piety by attempting to effect a return to the Mideast through secular means rather than entrusting it to a divinely promised Messiah,^[68] and certain troubling passages in Toynbee's oeuvres, such as a passage in Vol.8 of A Study of History in which Toynbee wrote that, "On the Day of Judgement, the gravest crime standing to the German National Socialists' account might be, not that they had exterminated a majority of the Western Jews, but that they had caused the surviving remnant of Jewry to stumble."

In 1971 and '73, Toynbee met and corresponded with Daisaku Ikeda, president of the Soka Gakkai International. Their dialogue was later edited and presented in the form of a book, Choose Life.

The handsome payment he received from the allegedly megalomaniacal Ikeda prompted the accusation that Toynbee was all too willing, on this occasion and throughout his earlier career, to associate himself with unworthy persons and organizations for money, write historian Louis Turner.^[72] In 1984 his granddaughter Polly Toynbee wrote an article for The Guardian regretting her late grandfather's association with Ikeda.^[73]

With the civilisations as units identified, he presented the history of each in terms of challenge-and-response, a process he proposed as a scientific law of history. Civilizations arose in response to some set of extreme challenges, when "creative minorities" devised new solutions that reoriented their entire society. Challenges and responses were physical, as when the Sumerians exploited the intractable swamps of southern Iraq by organising the Neolithic inhabitants into a society capable of carrying out large-scale irrigation projects; or social, as when the Catholic Church resolved the chaos of post-Roman Europe by enrolling the new Germanic kingdoms in a single religious community. When civilisations responded to challenges, they grew; but they disintegrated when their leaders stopped responding creatively, sinking into nationalism, militarism, and the tyranny of a despotic minority. 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 natural causes; and nearly always the former.^[74] He sees the growth and decline of civilizations as a spiritual process, writing that "Man achieves civilization, not as a result of superior biological endowment or geographical environment, but as a response to a challenge in a situation of special difficulty which rouses him to make a hitherto unprecedented effort."^[75][76]

Named after Arnold J. Toynbee, the [Toynbee Prize] Foundation was chartered in 1987 'to contribute to the development of the social sciences, as defined from a broad historical view of human society and of human and social problems.' In addition to awarding the Toynbee Prize, the foundation sponsors scholarly engagement with global history through sponsorship of sessions at the annual meeting of the American Historical Association, of international conferences, of the journal New Global Studies and of the Global History Forum.^[77]

The Toynbee Prize is an honorary award, recognising social scientists for significant academic and public contributions to humanity. Currently, it is awarded every other year for work that makes a significant contribution to the study of global history. The recipients have been Raymond Aron, Lord Kenneth Clark, Sir Ralf Dahrendorf, Natalie Zemon Davis, Albert Hirschman, George Kennan, Bruce Mazlish, J. R. McNeill, William McNeill, Jean-Paul Sartre, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., Barbara Ward, Lady Jackson, Sir Brian Urquhart, Michael Adas, Christopher Bayly, and Jürgen Osterhammel.^[78]

• The Armenian Atrocities: The Murder of a Nation, with a speech delivered by Lord Bryce in the House of Lords (Hodder & Stoughton 1915)
• Nationality and the War (Dent 1915)
• The New Europe: Some Essays in Reconstruction, with an Introduction by the Earl of Cromer (Dent 1915)
• Contributor, Greece, in The Balkans: A History of Bulgaria, Serbia, Greece, Rumania, Turkey, various authors (Oxford, Clarendon Press 1915)
• British View of the Ukrainian Question (Ukrainian Federation of U.S., New York, 1916)
• Editor, The Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, 1915–1916: Documents Presented to Viscount Grey of Fallodon by Viscount Bryce, with a Preface by Viscount Bryce (Hodder & Stoughton and His Majesty's Stationery Office, 1916)
• The Destruction of Poland: A Study in German Efficiency (1916)
• The Belgian Deportations, with a statement by Viscount Bryce (T. Fisher Unwin 1917)
• The German Terror in Belgium: An Historical Record (Hodder & Stoughton 1917)
• The German Terror in France: An Historical Record (Hodder & Stoughton 1917)
• Turkey: A Past and a Future (Hodder & Stoughton 1917)
• The Western Question in Greece and Turkey: A Study in the Contact of Civilizations (Constable 1922)
• Introduction and translations, Greek Civilization and Character: The Self-Revelation of Ancient Greek Society (Dent 1924)
• Introduction and translations, Greek Historical Thought from Homer to the Age of Heraclius, with two pieces newly translated by Gilbert Murray (Dent 1924)
• Contributor, The Non-Arab Territories of the Ottoman Empire since the Armistice of 30 October 1918, in H. W. V. Temperley (editor), A History of the Peace Conference of Paris, Vol. VI (Oxford University Press under the auspices of the British Institute of International Affairs 1924)
• The World after the Peace Conference, Being an Epilogue to the "History of the Peace Conference of Paris" and a Prologue to the "Survey of International Affairs, 1920–1923" (Oxford University Press under the auspices of the British Institute of International Affairs 1925). Published on its own, but Toynbee writes that it was "originally written as an introduction to the Survey of International Affairs in 1920–1923, and was intended for publication as part of the same volume".
• With Kenneth P. Kirkwood, Turkey (Benn 1926, in Modern Nations series edited by H. A. L. Fisher)
• The Conduct of British Empire Foreign Relations since the Peace Settlement (Oxford University Press under the auspices of the Royal Institute of International Affairs 1928)
• A Journey to China, or Things Which Are Seen (Constable 1931)
• Editor, British Commonwealth Relations, Proceedings of the First Unofficial Conference at Toronto, 11–21 September 1933, with a foreword by Robert L. Borden (Oxford University Press under the joint auspices of the Royal Institute of International Affairs and the Canadian Institute of International Affairs 1934)
• A Study of History
  • Vol I: Introduction; The Geneses of Civilizations
  • Vol II: The Geneses of Civilizations
  • Vol III: The Growths of Civilizations

(Oxford University Press 1934)

• Editor, with J. A. K. Thomson, Essays in Honour of Gilbert Murray (George Allen & Unwin 1936)
• A Study of History
  • Vol IV: The Breakdowns of Civilizations
  • Vol V: The Disintegrations of Civilizations
  • Vol VI: The Disintegrations of Civilizations

(Oxford University Press 1939)

• D. C. Somervell, A Study of History: Abridgement of Vols I-VI, with a preface by Toynbee (Oxford University Press 1946)
• Civilization on Trial (Oxford University Press 1948)
• The Prospects of Western Civilization (New York, Columbia University Press 1949). Lectures delivered at Columbia University on themes from a then-unpublished part of A Study of History. Published "by arrangement with Oxford University Press in an edition limited to 400 copies and not to be reissued".
• Albert Vann Fowler (editor), War and Civilization, Selections from A Study of History, with a preface by Toynbee (New York, Oxford University Press 1950)
• Introduction and translations, Twelve Men of Action in Greco-Roman History (Boston, Beacon Press 1952). Extracts from Thucydides, Xenophon, Plutarch and Polybius.
• The World and the West (Oxford University Press 1953). Reith Lectures for 1952.
• A Study of History
  • Vol VII: Universal States; Universal Churches
  • Vol VIII: Heroic Ages; Contacts between Civilizations in Space
  • Vol IX: Contacts between Civilizations in Time; Law and Freedom in History; The Prospects of the Western Civilization
  • Vol X: The Inspirations of Historians; A Note on Chronology

(Oxford University Press 1954)

• An Historian's Approach to Religion (Oxford University Press 1956). Gifford Lectures, University of Edinburgh, 1952–1953.
• D. C. Somervell, A Study of History: Abridgement of Vols VII-X, with a preface by Toynbee (Oxford University Press 1957)
• Christianity among the Religions of the World (New York, Scribner 1957; London, Oxford University Press 1958). Hewett Lectures, delivered in 1956.
• Democracy in the Atomic Age (Melbourne, Oxford University Press under the auspices of the Australian Institute of International Affairs 1957). Dyason Lectures, delivered in 1956.
• East to West: A Journey round the World (Oxford University Press 1958)
• Hellenism: The History of a Civilization (Oxford University Press 1959, in Home University Library)
• With Edward D. Myers, A Study of History
  • Vol XI: Historical Atlas and Gazetteer

(Oxford University Press 1959)

• D. C. Somervell, A Study of History: Abridgement of Vols I-X in one volume, with a new preface by Toynbee and new tables (Oxford University Press 1960)
• A Study of History
  • Vol XII: Reconsiderations

(Oxford University Press 1961)

• Between Oxus and Jumna (Oxford University Press 1961). Account of a journey made in North-West India, West Pakistan and Afghanistan during the early months of 1960.
• America and the World Revolution (Oxford University Press 1962). Public lectures delivered at the University of Pennsylvania, spring 1961.
• The Economy of the Western Hemisphere (Oxford University Press 1962). Weatherhead Foundation Lectures delivered at the University of Puerto Rico, February 1962.
• The Present-Day Experiment in Western Civilization (Oxford University Press 1962). Beatty Memorial Lectures delivered at McGill University, Montreal, 1961.

The three sets of lectures published separately in the UK in 1962 appeared in New York in the same year in one volume under the title America and the World Revolution and Other Lectures, Oxford University Press.

• Universal States (New York, Oxford University Press 1963). Separate publication of part of Vol VII of A Study of History.
• With Philip Toynbee, Comparing Notes: A Dialogue across a Generation (Weidenfeld & Nicolson 1963). "Conversations between Arnold Toynbee and his son, Philip … as they were recorded on tape."
• Between Niger and Nile (Oxford University Press 1965)
• Hannibal's Legacy: The Hannibalic War's Effects on Roman Life
  • Vol I: Rome and Her Neighbours before Hannibal's Entry
  • Vol II: Rome and Her Neighbours after Hannibal's Exit

(Oxford University Press 1965)

• Change and Habit: The Challenge of Our Time (Oxford University Press 1966). Partly based on lectures given at University of Denver in the last quarter of 1964, and at New College of Florida and the University of the South, Sewanee, Tennessee in the first quarter of 1965.
• Acquaintances (Oxford University Press 1967)
• Between Maule and Amazon (Oxford University Press 1967)
• Editor, Cities of Destiny (Thames & Hudson 1967)
• Editor and principal contributor, Man's Concern with Death (Hodder & Stoughton 1968)
• Editor, The Crucible of Christianity: Judaism, Hellenism and the Historical Background to the Christian Faith (Thames & Hudson 1969)
• Experiences (Oxford University Press 1969)
• Some Problems of Greek History (Oxford University Press 1969)
• Cities on the Move (Oxford University Press 1970). Sponsored by the Institute of Urban Environment of the School of Architecture, Columbia University.
• Surviving the Future (Oxford University Press 1971). Rewritten version of a dialogue between Toynbee and Professor Kei Wakaizumi of Kyoto Sangyo University: essays preceded by questions by Wakaizumi.
• With Jane Caplan, A Study of History, new one-volume abridgement, with new material and revisions and, for the first time, illustrations (Oxford University Press and Thames & Hudson 1972)
• Constantine Porphyrogenitus and His World (Oxford University Press 1973)
• Editor, Half the World: The History and Culture of China and Japan (Thames & Hudson 1973)
• Toynbee on Toynbee: A Conversation between Arnold J. Toynbee and G. R. Urban (New York, Oxford University Press 1974)
• Mankind and Mother Earth: A Narrative History of the World (Oxford University Press 1976), posthumous
• Richard L. Gage (editor), The Toynbee-Ikeda Dialogue: Man Himself Must Choose (Oxford University Press 1976), posthumous. The record of a conversation lasting several days.
• E. W. F. Tomlin (editor), Arnold Toynbee: A Selection from His Works, with an introduction by Tomlin (Oxford University Press 1978), posthumous. Includes advance extracts from The Greeks and Their Heritages.
• The Greeks and Their Heritages (Oxford University Press 1981), posthumous
• Christian B. Peper (editor), An Historian's Conscience: The Correspondence of Arnold J. Toynbee and Columba Cary-Elwes, Monk of Ampleforth, with a foreword by Lawrence L. Toynbee (Oxford University Press by arrangement with Beacon Press, Boston 1987), posthumous
• The Survey of International Affairs was published by Oxford University Press under the auspices of the Royal Institute of International Affairs between 1925 and 1977 and covered the years 1920–1963. Toynbee wrote, with assistants, the Pre-War Series (covering the years 1920–1938) and the War-Time Series (1938–1946), and contributed introductions to the first two volumes of the Post-War Series (1947–1948 and 1949–1950). His actual contributions varied in extent from year to year.
• A complementary series, Documents on International Affairs, covering the years 1928–1963, was published by Oxford University Press between 1929 and 1973. Toynbee supervised the compilation of the first of the 1939–1946 volumes, and wrote a preface for both that and the 1947–1948 volume.

• Fernand Braudel
• Christopher Dawson
• Will Durant
• Historic recurrence
• Carroll Quigley
• Oswald Spengler
• Toynbee tiles
• Eric Voegelin
• World history

• William H. McNeill (1989). Arnold J. Toynbee: A Life. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-506335-6. online from ACLS E-Books (subscription required)

• Beacock, Ian. Humanist among machines – As the dreams of Silicon Valley fill our world, could the dowdy historian Arnold Toynbee help prevent a nightmare? (March 2016), Aeon
• Ben-Israel, Hedva. "Debates With Toynbee: Herzog, Talmon, Friedman", Israel Studies, Spring 2006, Vol. 11 Issue 1, pp. 79–90
• Brewin, Christopher. "Arnold Toynbee, Chatham House, and Research in a Global Context", in David Long and Peter Wilson, eds. Thinkers of the Twenty Years' Crisis: Inter-War Idealism Reassessed (1995) pp. 277–302.
• Chrissochoidis, Ilias. "'But I mustn't let myself be a Philhellene': Arnold J. Toynbee's unpublished correspondence in the Hoover Institution archives (January–May 1921)", The Journal of Modern Hellenism 36 (2024), pp. 103–172.
• Costello, Paul. World Historians and Their Goals: Twentieth-Century Answers to Modernism (1993). Compares Toynbee with H. G. Wells, Oswald Spengler, Pitirim Sorokin, Christopher Dawson, Lewis Mumford, and William H. McNeill
• Friedman, Isaiah. "Arnold Toynbee: Pro-Arab or Pro-Zionist?" Israel Studies, Spring 1999, Vol. 4#1, pp. 73–95
• Hutton, Alexander. "'A belated return for Christ?': the reception of Arnold J. Toynbee's A Study of History in a British context, 1934–1961". European Review of History 21.3 (2014): 405–424.
• Lang, Michael. "Globalization and Global History in Toynbee", Journal of World History 22#4 Dec 2011 pp. 747–783 in project MUSE
• McIntire, C. T. and Marvin Perry, eds. Toynbee: Reappraisals (1989) 254pp
• McNeill, William H. Arnold J. Toynbee: a life (Oxford UP, 1989). The standard scholarly biography.
• Martel, Gordon. "The Origins of World History: Arnold Toynbee before the First World War", Australian Journal of Politics and History, Sept 2004, Vol. 50 Issue 3, pp. 343–356
• Montagu, Ashley M. F., ed. Toynbee and History: Critical Essays and Reviews (1956) online edition
• Paquette, Gabriel B. "The Impact of the 1917 Russian Revolutions on Arnold J. Toynbee's Historical Thought, 1917–34", Revolutionary Russia, June 2000, Vol. 13#1, pp. 55–80
• Perry, Marvin. Arnold Toynbee and the Western Tradition (1996)
• Toynbee, Arnold J. A Study of History abridged edition by D. C. Somervell (2 vol. 1947); 617pp online edition of vol. 1, covering vols 1–6 of the original; A Study of History online edition

•   Media related to Arnold J. Toynbee at Wikimedia Commons
•   Quotations related to Arnold J. Toynbee at Wikiquote
• Works by Arnold Toynbee at Project Gutenberg
• Works by or about Arnold J. Toynbee at the Internet Archive
• Toynbee bibliography
• Klaus-Gunther Wesseling (1998). "Kircher, Athanasius". In Bautz, Traugott (ed.). Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL) (in German). Vol. 13. Herzberg: Bautz. cols. 382–392. ISBN 3-88309-072-7. large bibliography of secondary literature
• Site analysing passages in Toynbee's work
• Arnold Toynbee, The Challenge Hypothesis (1934)
• Newspaper clippings about Arnold J. Toynbee in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW
• Arnold J. Toynbee at Find a Grave