Notes & Quotes: The Relativity of Historical Thought
Notes & Quotes
This marks the beginning of an endeavor I hope to institutionalize in my life. When I read, I make an effort to understand and remember the key points the author is making. Going forward, I am going to memorialize my reading in a series called “Notes & Quotes.” I can’t do this for all the books I read, but for some, I’ll do it for small sections or chapters, and others entire books.
A Study of History
Arnold Toynbee’s A Study of History is a 12 volume discourse of historical thought, civilizations, and historical models.
The Relativity of Historical Thought
Toynbee begins the book by examining historical thought as an institution before launching into discussion of history itself. He is clearly seeking to establish a basis for “doing history” as a scientist would set forth standards before “doing science,” such as the scientific method.
The Question
Toynbee asks two questions: (1) is our view of history relative to our own societies, environments, biases, and experiences? And (2): is there an intelligible field of historical study that can be independent of the local and ephemeral?
The Argument
To the first question, Toynbee’s answer is yes. First, he believes that his contemporary (he wrote this in the 1930s) Western historians were influenced by two things, which he calls the Industrial System and the Parliamentary National State.
He describes the Industrial System:
"It’s method of operation is to maintain, up to the maximum of its productive capacity, an incessant output of such articles as can be manufactured from raw materials by the mechanically coordinated work of a number of human beings.”
His point: history had become a “tour de force,” an administrative feat, but its music is only played for the experts. Members of the academy measure the importance of the work by its output: it’s sheer size. He highlights several works, such as Mommsen’s The History of the Roman Republic and Meyer’s The Decline and Fall of the Holy Roman Empire in contrast to H.G. Wells’ The Outline of History. Wells received much criticism from the academy, but his book was popular. Why? Because the public deemed it useful and interesting, even for what it lacked in cubic feet.
He goes on to point out that the Seleucid Monarchy gave birth to the Roman Empire, Christianity, Islam, and many other lasting cultural deposits on the shores of history. Regardless, it receives little historical attention because of the lack of abundance of discernible raw material. By contrast, the Ptolemaic Monarchy receives much influence, simply owing to the abundant existence of papyri and a national system for record keeping, thus creating immense “natural resource” for the academy. The Industrial Society’s emphasis on quantity of output causes the Ptolemies to get the limelight, while the much more important Seleucid Empire is overlooked.
Next, he looks at the Parliamentary National State, or what he also calls a mix of “Western Democracy” and “Nationalism.” The picture he paints is that of an idealistic society combined with tribalism in a “strange mixture.” On one hand, he describes the ideal of democracy as noble:
“The ideal of our modern Western Democracy has been to apply in practical politics the Christian intuition of the fraternity of all Mankind.”
Everyone is created in God’s image and is therefore equal from birth, so let us create a society where everyone has equal rights. It sounds great, but then he describes Nationalism as the “sour ferment” that creeps in, and the Christian ideal above gives way to national pride and exceptionalism. The view is that to experience life in that society is to experience humanity not only at its best, but to experience it at all.
He goes on to give the example of Camille Jullian’s De la Gaule a La France: Nos Origines Historiques, wherein Jullian extends his scope all the way back the early Gaulic history.
“All the time Monsieur Jullian is projecting back into the past his own burning consciousness of France as she exists for him to-day - a spiritual France which furnishes him with the experience of human life so exhaustively that, if the rest of the World were to be annihilated and France left solitary but intact, Monsieur Jullian would perhaps hardly be sensible of any spiritual impoverishment… The self-sufficiency of France and her separateness from the rest of the World are ideas which dominate Monsieur Jullian’s imagination even when he is dealing with the history of this piece of territory at dates hundreds or thousands of years before such a conception of France even existed.”
By referring to modern France as “that piece of territory at dates of X years ago” says a lot of about Toynbee’s perspective. The point is well-made. Jullian probably should not attribute the “French Spirit” to Gauls in 1000 A.D. They were not French, and the defining events that led to Modern France had not happened yet. Either these events unfolded in view of broader human society to give France her national personality or, as Jullian seems to accidentally imply, they are intrinsic. The truth surely lies closer to the former.
What About Today?
Toynbee lays out a surprisingly precocious post-World War I observation. He points out that states, after enduring the horrors of wars against powers far greater than themselves, sought to either align with the captains of industry to fuel regional prosperity, or use “militant monetary and tariff quota and migration policies” to ward them off. Sound familiar?
He goes on to say that nations would seek to align with other nations to protect their political, economic, militaristic and cultural interests (sounds a lot like the EU and United Nations).
His point is that while these specific institutions may change, we can expect the outlook of historians to change with them.
“If this observation is correct, and if it is also true that historians cannot abstract their thoughts and feelings from the influence of the environment in which they live, then we may expect to witness int he near future a change in the outlook and activities of Western historians corresponding to the recent change in the general conditions of the Western Society.”
The Second Question: Is there any alternative?
Toynbee ends the chapter with a cliffhanger.
“Our next step, therefore, is to take up a search for an intelligible field of historical study independent of the local and temporary standpoints and activities of historians upon which we have focused our attention hitherto.”
Toynbee believes there is a field of historical study independent of such bias. I have a hunch he is heading somewhere in the direction of boiling history down to some sort of first principal relative to the origins of humanity, but I have no idea how he will do this.
