A Study of History, Vol 7A

Title: A Study of History, Vol 7A – Universal States

Author: Arnold Joseph Toynbee

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 1985 (First published 1953)

ISBN: 978-0-19-215236-7

Pages: 379

A society in disintegration is marked by a ‘Time of Troubles’ in which it is rent by fratricidal warfare between contending states in its bosom. After this show of strength that saps all progress in other spheres of culture, either one state among the many or an alien community defeats the other contenders and establishes a universal state for the society in consideration. This volume describes this phenomenon in detail. Universal states and universal churches occur side by side, and both of them constitute the subject matter of volume 7 of Toynbee’s classic, but due to inordinate size of the content, it is separated into two sub-volumes 7A and 7B. The author’s survey covers the whole world, but four states in particular attracts our attention more than any other because of their continuing moral and cultural impact on today’s world – them being the Roman, the Han, the Ottoman and the Caliphate. The coverage is comprehensive as usual, with all aspects of a working state like its civil and military services, enfranchisement of citizenry, road network, postal and espionage services, law, coinage, weights and measures and also the unintended services these states render to higher religions. Being the shortest volume in the series, readers may find this one easier to complete, but the road is as tough as those of the previous volumes due to the author’s mastery over joining up sentences to make a very long piece of information that envelops a large ensemble of concepts.

Universal states originate in the disintegrating phase of the life of a society. The dominant minority among the society or external barbarians may do it a creditable service by establishing a universal state. In China, the Tsin and in the Hellenic, the Roman empire were universal states created by the society itself, but for the Eastern Orthodox Christian and Hindu civilizations, the Ottoman and Mughal empires provided the unity obtainable only through a universal state. A notable aspect of these political creatures is the delusion of immortality these states imprint among its citizens. Even long after the state had crumbled and had lost its coercive power beyond the immediate neighbourhood, the citizens cling to their old impression of its invincibility. The nominal ruler of such states wields honour and legitimacy to the extent that even contending rulers seek investiture from the titular monarch. The Islamic Caliphate is a good case in point. The last Abbasid caliph was deposed and brutally killed in 1258 by the invading Mongol Hulagu Khan, but his legacy lived on and all Muslim rulers sought to obtain legitimacy for their own regimes by receiving titles from the caliph or swearing allegiance to him. This lasted until the caliphate itself was dissolved by Turkish nationalists in 1924, after deposing the last Ottoman sultan.

Universal states help to permeate uniformity among the subject populations. State’s institutions like roads, garrisons, language and law reach far and wide. One of the first acts of an ecumenical power will normally be building thoroughfares that link remote corners of the country to the capital city. The Roman Empire provides an excellent example. But the roads prove to be a boon not only for the empire builders, but the enemies from outside the pale too. Goths and Vandals, who finally sacked Rome, found it easy to speed their way across the length and breadth of the empire through the well maintained road network. Roads are normally directed at capital cities, but the capitals too might wander across the land according to the whims of conquerors and the necessity of the military situation. To make an example from India, the ancient Mauryas ruled from Pataliputra, which continued as the seat of government by the Gupta dynasty too. In the meantime, the country was subjected to alien intrusions from the North-west in the form of Saka and Kushan invasions. Harsha then moved the capital nearer to the troublesome border, at Sthaneswara, near Delhi. Muslim sultans adopted this city as their own. When a new threat arose from the sea in the form of British incursions, the victorious British set up their capital at Calcutta first, which was nearer to their own arena of operations. But when they established suzerainty over all other states in the sub-continent, even they couldn’t resist the lure of the old imperial city. The capital was moved from Calcutta to Delhi in 1912.

Language is another medium through which a universal state makes its presence felt. In any case, there is no general rule to predict in which way the victor would choose to go. Sometimes, the conqueror’s mother tongue will be enforced as the medium of administration. The British replaced Persian of the Mughal Raj with English and vernacular languages. In some cases, the language of the vanquished that command such a high degree of reverence might continue to be used. The Romans acquiesced in to the continuance of Greek in those provinces where that language was used, and forced Latin on others. The Achaemenid empire helped Aramaic to obtain wide currency in the Near East at the crucial juncture when Sumerian and Akkadian languages were on the decline. In some very special cases, the barbarian conquerors allow the continued usage of the civilized language of the defeated. The Mongol and Manchu backwoodsmen who established universal states for China allowed and even enthusiastically followed the adoption of Chinese for official purposes. Similarly, the Mughals, whose native tongue was Turkish, accepted Persian as the official language that was a continuation of the system of Sultanates whom they dethroned.

The book includes a commendable survey on the origin of law and jurisprudence in ancient societies. It is only a small step from here to deduce the indebtedness of modern legal systems to the age old codification of laws. The first such attempt to compile statutes was performed in Babylon by Hammurabi in the 19^th century BCE, followed roughly 2500 years later by Justinian in the East Roman empire. Surprisingly, it took another 1300 years for Napoleon to follow suit with his own code after establishing the French empire. These anthologies produce lasting effects on the populace and even religious schools are also not immune to its percolating effects. Hammurabi’s code is the basic source for many of the Jewish strictures and Justinian’s code similarly provided the source material for many articulations of legal proceedings in Islamic Sharia. A debilitating oversight at this point of the Study is the casual way in which the author glosses over these facts without the least care to bring about the points of correspondence in greater detail. This is in stark contrast to the other parts of the Study (see Christus Patiens in Volume 6), where even a minor argument is supported with the forceful enlistment of extensive references. Such cavalier treatment of so important a fact was a little disappointing. He further extends the study to the standardization of weights and measures, time keeping, calendars, and military and civil administrations.

This volume came out after a delay of 14 years, as the author was called upon civil duty during the Second World War for seven years. This unsettled the book’s original plans, but had produced a welcome change in the author to review the earlier scheme and incorporate apposite changes in its structure. The War was such a profound event in human history that it has doubtless forced changes in some of the author’s previous arguments. The readability has improved a lot. This incident also shows the unsettling impact the war inflicted on the people. It was all pervading and all enveloping. Eminent scholars like the author could not escape the call of duty and conscription. Younger scholars fought on the fields. The cruel demand war extracts from the populace is clearly evident from the Introduction to this volume.

Even with the apparently superhuman effort that has gone into research for this work of erudition, it seems possible that the author has missed a point that might harbor immense relevance to ancient Indian history. While discussing about the uniform practice of garrisoning the frontiers of universal states, with special reference to the Achaemenian empire (Persian), the author observes that on the Northeast frontier with Ferghana in Central Asia, the Persians used the services of nomads to guard the borders and says, “on its Sogdian sector, this frontier was screened by a military alliance with a nomad horde in Farghana described in the official lists as ‘the Hauma (?)-drinking Saka (Saka Haumavarga, Greek Amyrgioi)” (p.120). Accounting for the peculiarity of Persian phonetic expression in transforming the sound ‘s’ to ‘h’, the Hauma changes to ‘Soma’, which is meaningful in the Vedic context where the mild alcoholic stimulating drink of Soma is highly praised. Toynbee fails to make this connection and puts a question mark after Hauma (see above). If this allusion to Soma holds good, it is a clear and even convincing argument in favour of the Central Asian ancestry of Aryans. Historians may like to carry this point further.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 4 Star