A Study of History, Vol 5

Title: A Study of History, Vol 5 – The Disintegrations of Civilizations, Part 1

Author: Arnold Joseph Toynbee

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 1985 (First published 1939)

ISBN: 978-0-19-215212-1

Pages: 712

Volume 5 is the largest tome in the Toynbee series at 712 pages of fine print and even finer footnotes. Disintegration of civilizations is the theme of this volume and its first part is included here. Toynbee carries his theorization through the disintegration of civilizations till its dissolution in a two-part series covering volumes 5 and 6. The book commands careful study from its readers with its rich repertoire of references, incidents and long chain of sentences which won't let a reader look sideways while embarking on his epic journey through the narrative. But the sense of achievement and fulfillment that awaits him when the last page is turned is worth the effort.

Just like the mere birth of a civilization does not guarantee its growth, the breakdown of a civilization does not automatically relate to its disintegration and dissolution. While growth is achieved by the successful response to a challenge managed by the creative minority, disintegration sets in when the minority fails to come up with an effective response to a challenge. The minority then loses its creativity and thereby forfeits its privilege to act as the role model for the unthinking majority to mimic its newly managed feat. At this juncture, the creative minority turns into a dominant minority that forces the majority to toe its line through force. This group rides piggyback as an incubus on the society. New minorities may carry the baton at this point and may come up with a stimulating response to the challenge that proved insurmountable to the former. In such a case, the society continues its growth. In short, the growth phase of a civilization consists of several challenges and successful responses, while the disintegration phase is dominated by a single insuperable challenge that taxes the imagination and creativity of the society. It is then amenable to physical as well as spiritual aggression from outsiders and insiders alike. It is also likely that the disintegrating society may turn its arms towards its neighbours to bring about an expanded empire. Though it may seem counter-intuitive, the spread of a society denotes its disintegrative phase. The internal proletariat (the word means only a group of people in, but not out of, the society and its elders) provides a unique spiritual pathway to the beleaguered people in the form of a universal church. Christianity provided such a church to the Hellenic Civilization, exactly like Islam to the Syriac and Hinduism to the Indic.

A schism in the body social creates the toxic seed that develops into disintegration. The society splits up into a dominant minority and internal proletariat. The barbarians on the outer rim now secede from the society to turn into an external proletariat. The internal proletariat accepts alien intellectual sparks and develops a universal church founded on a higher religion, or at least, a different religion than that of the dominant minority. In the case of Hellenic civilization, Christianity donned the mantle of the universal church, in which the internal proletariat borrowed the idea from Syriac civilization, which was an alien one. Similarly, in the Sinic civilization, Mahayana (not of the Tantric variety) obtained that position which was assumed by Christianity in the Hellenic. The internal proletariat is the ideal fraction for assimilating foreign stimulus, since it is composed of an amalgam of groups of diverse origins – that of fallen members of the dominant minority, displaced members of that society, and externally recruited barbarians as a result of that civilization’s interactions with the outside world. The barbarians outside the pale, who are still unsubjugated have another destiny to perform, in the creation of a universal state for the disintegrating society. The Mongols and Manchus did it for the Sinic civilization, Ottomans made it for Orthodox Christendom, Mughals did it for the Hindu and the Aztecs for the Mayan. It need not always be the lot of barbarians to provide a universal state. In the case of the Hellenic, the Romans did it from their unique position of guarding the frontiers of the civilization against barbarian attackers. A curious fact is also identified by the author. When barbarians conquer a civilization to impose its universal state, their subjects acquiesce in when their rulers are unadulterated barbarians, who have not been ‘tainted’ by any alien civilization. In the case of such tainting, the society will be in rebellion against their masters, and may even throw them out, as the Chinese did against the Mongols and the Egyptians to the Hyksos. The external proletariat also gifts the society with heroic poetry of a distinctive kind.

As a sequel to the mention of the birth of astrology as the contribution of the Babylonian dominant minority, Toynbee says that, “in taking over Astrology from its Babylonic fathers in and after the 2^nd century BC, the Hellenes put their own imprint upon it, as is witnessed by the fact that, in India at the present day, some of the current technical terms of the practitioners of this pseudoscience are etymologically of Greek origin” (p.57 footnote). Unfortunately he doesn’t elaborate on the idea, which would have been a scathing indictment of this dubious practice that is wreaking havoc on millions of Indians even today. Continuing on the theme of India, this volume reserves an annex to speculate on the age of the greatest Indian epic, the ‘Mahabharata’. It proposes that the epic is not unitary and several accretions have taken place in its content. This is quite acceptable, and self-evident, but the second postulate challenges some of the established ideas about its origin. The author suggests that Mahabharata was crystallized at a much later date than the arrival of the Aryas at about the middle of second millennium BC. The foundations of heroic poetry depicted in the work corresponds to this period, but it condensed into its present form at the time of Saka rule in Ujjain, about 150-390 CE. The Sakas who came down to Indian in the 1^st century BC, following the same route as Aryas, might have found their predecessors’ heroic poetry impressive and might have added to it, using native bards. The suggestion is very bold and requires further research to be established or refuted.

According to Toynbee’s principles, an internal proletariat supplies a disintegrating society with a universal church and he examines carefully whether communism as exemplified in Soviet Union of that time, fits the bill. Marxian philosophy had all the trappings of a religion. It envisages a clash of competing demographic groups, resulting in dictatorship of the proletariat for a brief period and the whole merging into a stateless society. The author ascribes this part of Marx to be a borrowal from Jewish scriptures. In those books, the fight between the good and the evil results in the rule of a Messiah for a millennium and then God’s will prevails over the world. Marx’s appellation for comparable acts of God in Jewish scriptures is ‘Historical Necessity’. Marxism’s appeal is to the whole of mankind and not to a regional state. Toynbee identifies debt to Christian ecumenicalism here. However, when Lenin and Stalin established a socialist regime in Russia in 1917, it faced a dilemma. A faction led by Trotsky argued that revolution is a continuous affair and the resources of the Soviet state were to be earmarked for exporting revolution worldwide. Stalin’s official faction opposed this, arguing that the new state’s assets should be used for its own upliftment first. The degeneracy of communism as a parochial, national philosophy is to be observed here. He further equates this with the Maccabeus Jewish state in the first century and to Aristonicus’ failed City of the Sun in 2^nd century BC. Toynbee then predicts that communism will continue to exist as a state with degradation in its ideals. However, he is obviously way off the mark, when we look back with hindsight. Marxism exactly shared the fate of his own examples, in suffering a collapse in those countries where it ruled.

The author sets apart ample space a searing criticism of Marxism and its personification in the form of a communist state in the USSR. However, Toynbee’s accusations cross the limits of rational propriety on at least one occasion. He sings the praise of a primitive socialism that is said to have existed in primitive Christianity and argues that Marx borrowed his concepts from this ideal exemplified in the New Testament. This reasoning appears to be labored and tenuous to an impartial observer.

The book assigns a larger than life role for religion in the formation and growth of civilizations. Writing before the Second World War, this is not astonishing in a historian of that era, but such a gross accounting error is unpardonable in a post-bellum author if he intends to be taken seriously. More than that, Toynbee's ideal religion rises among the masses and grows to encircle the dominant minority. Such bottom-up progress is essential for the religion to grown, as he gives many examples in which the top-down approach, in which a monarch favors a religious persuasion of his choosing to be imposed on the proletariat. Roman emperor Julian's Neo-Platonism, Egyptian monarch Iknaton's solar worship, and Mughal emperor Akbar's din-elahi are examples of such religions that could not live much after their founder's own death. However, Christianity in Hellenic and Hinduism in Indic civilizations sprouted from its seed among the ordinary people and rose to the status of a universal church. The author identifies a major exception here - Islam, which grew with political backing of the monarch in the person of a caliph, but escaped the ill fate of its sister religions that were similarly imposed from above. But the author is quick to propose a mitigating factor. The Umayyad caliphate, under whose aegis a primitive Islam gained ground in the Middle East in 7th century CE, was lukewarm in their conformity to Islam, themselves being on the side of oppressors of the Prophet in Mecca and instrumental in making him flee to Medina. The Umayyads were usurped of their throne in 750 CE by the Abbasids, who continued the practice of noble toleration towards people of the book, (Christians and Jews, but extended to Zoroastrians as well). But this 'nobility' is of course derived from an economic motive. People of other faiths were tolerated in Islamic societies only on the two conditions of being loyal to the political regime and paying a super tax for practicing their own religion. If such a person converted to Islam, the administration stood to lose the tax. This unique arrangement might have provided Islam with an exceptional fate vis-à-vis other religions that were sponsored by the ruling party.

Exemplary research has gone into the making of this book, but some of Toynbee’s examples look a bit odd and even in bad taste! As an example, he says about the impact of Hellenism split the Syriac internal proletariat into fragments as “like the stones of a cathedral are splintered by the explosion of a shell” (p.126). A strange example indeed! Also, when commenting on the religion of black slaves transported to America, the author spurts out “The African negro slave’s religion was no more fit than any other element in their hereditary culture to hold its own against the overwhelmingly superior civilization of their European white masters” (p.192). Another drawback is the utter lack of maps which is really frustrating for uninitiated readers as the author refers to geographic parameters on literally every page.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 4 Star