hin a few years, A Study of History all but dropped off both the popular and academic radar. Historians have heard of it but few have read it, much less used its framework to find research problems. Today, few among the general public would even recognize his name. Nevertheless, some basic elements of Toynbee's thesis have entered American popular intellectual culture--largely through the surprising yet logical medium of science fiction.
This essay explores the reception and impact of A Study of History, at the time of its publication and in the decades since, with particular emphasis on its broadest impact, the indirect one through science fiction. The essay will also inquire, though, into whether historians today may now be more receptive to Toynbee's work than they were when it appeared.
Arnold Toynbee was born in England in 1881, and by his own testimony belonged to the last generation of scholars to receive a classical education, that is, one based primarily on mastery of ancient Latin and Greek and the literatures written in those languages (Toynbee, v. 12, 1961, pp. 575-76). Although his subsequent professional work, apart from the Study, included much classical scholarship, his professional career was at least as active in the field of current international politics; he was a leading compilor of the annual Survey of International Affairs from 1925 on (Den Boer, 1956, p. 224).
Toynbee thus brought a powerful toolkit to his work; he was versed at once in history as seen from the distance of some two thousand years and in history as seen at the moment it is just ceasing to be news. He also brought the experience of his life and times: born into the confident and (in Europe) largely peaceful late Victorian era, he was just entering his middle years as the First World War broke out. The effect was to give him a tremendous sense of history running in cycles; in 1914 he felt himself a spiritual contemporary of ...