Editing A Study of History (section)

== Reception ==
Historian [[Carroll Quigley]] expanded upon Toynbee's notion of [[Societal collapse|civilizational collapse]] in ''The Evolution of Civilizations'' (1961, 1979).<ref>{{Cite web|title=The Evolution of Civilizations - An Introduction to Historical Analysis (1979)|url=https://archive.org/details/CarrollQuigley-TheEvolutionOfCivilizations-AnIntroductionTo|via=Internet Archive}}</ref> He argued that societal disintegration involves the metamorphosis of social instruments, set up to meet actual needs, into institutions, which serve their own interest at the expense of social needs.<ref>Harry J Hogan in the foreword (p17) and Quigley in the conclusion (p416) to {{cite book|author=Carroll Quigley|url=https://archive.org/details/evolutionofcivil0000quig|title=The evolution of civilizations: an introduction to historical analysis|publisher=Liberty Press|year=1979|isbn=978-0-913966-56-3|access-date=26 May 2013|url-access=registration}}</ref>

Social scientist [[Ashley Montagu]] assembled 29 other historians' articles to form a symposium on Toynbee's ''A Study of History'', published as ''Toynbee and History: Critical Essays and Reviews''.<ref name="Montagu1956">{{cite book |title=Toynbee and History: Critical Essays and Reviews |date=April 1956|publisher=Extending Horizons Books, [[Porter Sargent Publishers]]|location=[[Boston]] |edition=1956 Cloth |isbn=0-87558-026-2}}</ref> The book includes three of Toynbee's own essays: "What I am Trying to Do" (originally published in ''[[International Affairs (journal)|International Affairs]]'' vol. 31, 1955); ''What the Book is For: How the Book Took Shape'' (a pamphlet written upon completion of the final volumes of ''A Study of History'') and a comment written in response to the articles by Edward Fiess and [[Pieter Geyl]] (originally published in ''[[Journal of the History of Ideas]]'', vol. 16, 1955.)

[[David Wilkinson (political scientist)|David Wilkinson]] suggests that there is an even larger unit than civilisation. Using the ideas drawn from "[[World Systems Theory]]" he suggests that since at least 1500 BC that there was a connection established between a number of formerly separate civilisations to form a single interacting "Central Civilisation", which expanded to include formerly separate civilisations such as India, the Far East, and eventually Western Europe and the Americas into a single "World System".<ref>{{cite news|url=https://ojs.lib.byu.edu/spc/index.php/CCR/article/view/12262/12162|title=Central Civilization|last1=Wilkinson|first1=David|author-link1=David Wilkinson (political scientist)|journal=[[Comparative Civilizations Review]]|volume=17|date=Fall 1987|pages=31–59}}</ref> In some ways, it resembles what [[William Hardy McNeill|William H. McNeill]] calls the "Closure of the Eurasian [[Ecumene]], 500 B.C.-200 A.D."<ref>{{cite book |last1=McNeill |first1=William H. |title=The Rise of the West: A History of the Human Community |date=2009 |publisher=University of Chicago Press |pages=295–359 |isbn=978-0-226-56141-7 |edition=3rd |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=_RsPrzrsAvoC&pg=PA295 |access-date=10 December 2019}}</ref>

=== Legacy ===
After 1960, Toynbee's ideas faded both in academia and the media, to the point of seldom being cited today.<ref>{{cite book |editor1-last=McIntire |editor1-first=C. T. |editor2-last=Perry |editor2-first=Marvin |title=Toynbee: Reappraisals |publisher=[[University of Toronto Press]] |year=1989 }}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Perry |first=Marvin |title=Arnold Toynbee and the Western Tradition |location=New York |publisher=[[Peter Lang (publisher)|Peter Lang]] |year=1996 |isbn=978-0820426716}}</ref> Toynbee's approach to history, his style of civilizational analysis, faced skepticism from mainstream historians who thought it put an undue emphasis on the divine, which led to his academic reputation declining, though for a time, Toynbee's ''Study'' remained popular outside academia. Nevertheless, interest revived decades later with the publication of ''[[The Clash of Civilizations]]'' (1997) by political scientist Samuel P. Huntington. Huntington viewed human history as broadly the history of civilizations and posited that the world after the end of the Cold War will be a multi-polar one of competing major civilizations divided by "fault lines."<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Kumar|first=Krishan|date=October 2014|title=The Return of Civilization—and of Arnold Toynbee?|journal=Comparative Studies in Society and History|volume=56|issue=4|pages=815–843|doi=10.1017/S0010417514000413|doi-access=free}}</ref>

In popular culture, Toynbee's theories of historical cycles and civilisational collapse are said to have been a major inspiration for [[Isaac Asimov]]'s seminal science-fiction novels, the [[Foundation (book series)|Foundation series]].<ref>{{Cite web|last=Armstrong|first=Neil|title=Foundation: The 'unfilmable' sci-fi epic now on our screens|url=https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20210920-foundation-the-unfilmable-sci-fi-epic-now-on-our-screens|access-date=2021-09-30|website=www.bbc.com|language=en}}</ref>

=== Jews and Armenians as a "fossil society" ===

In the introduction of his work Toynbee refers to a number of "fossilized relics" of societies, among others he mentions the [[Armenians]], who according to Toynbee played a similar role to that of the Jews in the world of Islam.

<blockquote>"...and yet another Syriac remnant, the Armenian Gregorian Monophysites, have played much the same part in the World of Islam."<ref>''A Study of History'', Volume 1, Section VII, at 164.</ref> </blockquote>
 
Volume 1 of the book, written in the 1930s, contains a discussion of Jewish culture which begins with the sentence <blockquote>"There remains the case where victims of religious discrimination represent an extinct society which only survives as a fossil. .... by far the most notable is one of the fossil remnants of the Syriac Society, the Jews."<ref>''A Study of History'', Volume 1, Section VII, at 135–139.</ref> </blockquote>That sentence has been the subject of controversy, and some reviewers have interpreted the line as antisemitic (notably after 1945).<ref>Franz Borkenau, "Toynbee's Judgment of the Jews: Where the Historian Misread History", ''Commentary'' (May 1955).</ref><ref>Eliezer Berkovits, ''Judaism: Fossil or Ferment?'' (Philosophical Library, 1956).</ref><ref>Nathan Rotenstreich, "The Revival of the Fossil Remnant: Or Toynbee and Jewish Nationalism", ''Jewish Social Studies'', Vol. 24, No. 3 (July 1962), pp. 131–143.</ref><ref>Abba Solomon Eban, "The Toynbee heresy: address delivered at the Israel", in ''Toynbee and History: Critical Essays and reviews'', ed. by Ashley Montagu (Porter Sargent, 1956).</ref><ref>Oskar K. Rabinowicz, ''Arnold Toynbee on Judaism and Zionism: A Critique'' (W.H. Allen, 1974).</ref> In later printings, a footnote was appended which read <blockquote>"Mr. Toynbee wrote this part of the book before the Nazi persecution of the Jews opened a new and terrible chapter of the story...".{{citation needed|date=July 2015}} </blockquote>The subject is extensively debated with input from critics in Vol XII, ''Reconsiderations'', published in 1961.