Title: A Study of History, Vol 9 – Contacts between Civilizations
in Time, Law and Freedom in History
Author: Arnold Joseph Toynbee
Publisher: Oxford University
Press, 1985 (First published 1954)
ISBN: 978-0-19-215217-6
Pages: 759
This volume took ages to
complete. Being the largest in the series, and handling a multitude of issues,
this volume is a manifesto of the Western Society’s prospects at the time of
taking stock at the culmination of the Second World War that pulverized the
moral element in Europe’s psyche. We can also see the author revising some of
his earlier theories in light of newer archeological findings and also because
of the change in the author’s perception in the intervening two decades. The
highlight of the volume is the contacts between civilizations in the time
domain, also known as Renaissances. Toynbee dispels the myths about renaissance
harboured by many readers. We have heard about the Renaissance that visited
Italy in the 15th century, which also coincided with the worldwide
expansion of the Western Culture. We take it for granted that it was a
benevolent characteristic that freed Europe from the dark ages of ignorance.
However, the author treats this in a different way. Revival of classical
learning in Greek and Latin was said to be asphyxiating for the vernacular
languages and the return of the vernaculars in full glory some two hundred
years later at the expense of Greek and Latin paved the way for resuming
progress. The treatise of Renaissance in this book is spread over only
two-fifths of the text. The other two parts that are given extensive coverage
are the cases of Law and Freedom in History and the Prospects of the Western
Civilization. The first narrates about the plausibility of there occurring a
law that governs human actions constituting history. But more noteworthy is the
third part where the historical scholar writing with anguish at the close of
two excruciating world wars ruminating pessimistically at the future prospects
of the society to which he belongs. Many times we see dark anticipation of a
third war, as the cold war began in right earnest in the 1950s while Toynbee
was writing these lines.
Renaissances which are contact between civilizations in the time dimension
occur when the intelligensia of an affiliated civilization invokes the ghost of
a dead civilization that is apparented to it. The ghost thus animating the flesh
once again finds expression in several facets of the civilization like
political ideas and institutions, law, philosophies, languages, literatures,
visual arts and religious ideals and institutions. The most prominent
manifestation of all is obviously in the political plane, where the Roman
Empire, which was the universal state of Hellenistic culture, was re-incarnated
as the East Roman Empire at Constantinople and the Holy Roman Empire in Western
Christendom. Even though shorn of all actual powers, the symbolic investiture of
privilege drove these institutions forward until the first succumbed to the
arms of the Ottoman Turks in 1453 and the other in 1805 of Napoleon. Perhaps
the most visual of the renaissances took place in 14th-15th
centuries in Italy when remnants of Hellenistic arts and literature were
resuscitated and spread to the other parts of Europe. Toynbee argues that the
vernacular languages soon broke free from the stultifying grasp of resurgent
Greek, while in China the breaking free did not take place until after the
revolutions in 1900s. The Hellenistic culture of city states transformed to the
scale of kingdoms and carried forward its divisive ethos. It may look
satisfying to Indian readers that Toynbee attributes harmonious relationship
between Sanskrit which was renovated, with vernaculars to compete for patronage.
This was due to the ubiquitous circulation of the epics and religious myths
that first found expression in Sanskrit, but which never receded from public
mind. Renaissance on the religious plane constitutes renewed interest in
pilgrimages to the holy places of a religion and the irrepressible urge to
conquer them, if they happen to fall into the hands of rival religions in the
meanwhile. Such overdrive resulted in crusades, which was a dominant landmark
in human history.
The term ‘Renaissance’ evokes memories of a beneficial phenomenon, but
this false concept is convincingly repudiated. Renaissance is the evocation of
the ghost of a past civilization by a necromancer in a living society at the
cost of sacrificing the vitality of his contemporaries. The revenant ideas
eclipse the natural growth of modern concepts that are the offsprings of the
later society. Aristotle’s logic, which was rejuvenated in the 12th
century in Western Europe, could be dismantled only in the 17th
century, upon which the inborn trend of inquisitiveness carried European
science forward. The Church persecuted Galileo, because his theories ran counter
to Aristotelian postulates, but not against any of the injunctions in the
Bible. What Toynbee establishes with elaborate arguments is that Europe
progressed only when the renaissance was effectively capped. This took place in
the religious plane as well. Western Christendom was deeply involved in the
Crusades to liberate Christian holy places in Palestine. They succeeded in it
by 12th-13th centuries, when there were born many
Frankish Kingdoms in the holy land. The crusades finally turned out to be
inimical not only to Muslims but also to the crusaders’ co-religionists - the
Eastern Orthodox Christians. Finally Islam cast these aliens out of Palestine
for good. Toynbee postulates that this expulsion proved to be a blessing in
disguise for the Western Europeans who turned their attentions to the west,
towards the Atlantic Ocean. Consequently, mariners from the Iberian Peninsula
crossed the ocean and discovered the New World. Immense wealth gobbled by the
Europeans from newly conquered domains made them so powerful as to serve a
turning point in history. Genoa and Venice, two Italian principalities that
continued to prosper through trade with Middle East, even after the Westerners
were driven out, were also stultified when the Iberian states launched on a new
era of discovery. The old order went under and the new could gain the upper
hand only when the last traces of renaissance on the religious domain were cast
out.
A sizeable section of this book is devoted to ‘law and freedom in history’.
Here the author addresses an issue the reader harbors in his mind right from
starting reading of the first volume of the series. How can Toynbee make laws
and theories about historical events which didn’t follow any human or natural
rhythm as in the case of physical events? This chapter analyzes the various
aspects of historical acts that follow a rhythm, with some consideration on why
they are influenced in the suggested manner. This is best illustrated in the
cycles of war and peace in the lives of civilizations. Toynbee identifies a
cycle of events in the life of a society. There will be a premonitory war, then
a general war, then a breathing space, supplementary wars and a general peace
following it. This argument is driven forcefully home with instances taken from
three civilizations, the Hellenistic (321 – 31 BCE), the Sinic (497 - 221 BCE),
and the Western (1494 – 1945 CE). As
usual, with the other volumes, this text is also overloaded with references to
an omnipotent God whose will makes men dance to its tune. The description is
sometimes inconsistent at best and outright contradictory at its worst. In the section of ‘law and freedom in history’,
the author analyses whether human acts that make up the history of a civilization
is based on a law to which human will is inexorably linked or whether he is
free to choose an outcome at will. Then Toynbee takes a somersault by claiming
that “this liberty is also a law of love;
for man’s freedom could only have been given to man by a God who is love in
person“(p.395). The argument, logic and result is made irrelevant by this
sweeping statement that’s the outcome of a theist when he can’t think of
anything better to say. This attitude coming from a distinguished author
thoroughly disappointed the readers.
No other religion strictly adheres to its doctrine of forbidding all
representation of living beings in the visual media than Islam. Recent
controversy erupted upon the graphical portrayal of its Prophet in European satirical
journals find their origins in the taboo on visual depiction. While it seems,
this issue is solely concerned with Islam, reading Toynbee on Renaissance of
religious ideals and institutions bring forth the fact that it is proscribed
for Christianity and Judaism as well. This section offers an enlightening
analysis of the internal tussle in Christianity between iconoclasts and iconodules.
One of the commandments enjoined by Moses was that “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image or any likeness of
anything that is in the heaven above or that is in the earth beneath or that is
in the water under the Earth, thou shalt not bow down thyself to them nor serve
them” This was strictly followed by Jewry and they looked upon with disdain
Christianity’s supposed compromise with Hellenistic paganism in adopting visual
forms of adoration in its theology and art. This was necessary for the new
religion that tried to become the universal religion of the Hellenistic culture
while Judaism could afford to be dogmatic in its desert fastness in Judea.
There had always been opposition against using idols and pictures for worship.
The second council at Nicaea (787 CE) came out in favor of icons, which was
vehemently opposed in Western Christendom. However, unlike Islam’s dry puritanism,
Christianity never fully did away with images. Even the latest offensive for
iconoclasm spearheaded by Martin Luther as the Protestant Reformation never
really succeeded in wiping out idols.
Toynbee’s animosity to Gibbon’s
ideas was noticed in an earlier volume. In the present text, he devotes an
annex to rubbishing his senior’s review of the state of Western society in the
1780s. Gibbon paints a self-congratulatory picture of a civilization that has
mastered all challenges from barbarians and was in the path of peaceful
progress. With the unfair advantage of hindsight, Toynbee attacks Gibbon with
devastating precision. This appears to be a case of being wise after the event.
In the 1780s, when the ‘Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire’ was coming out of
the press, Europe was in a comfortable position, but it very soon turned sour,
which couldn’t be foreseen by the great historian.
The book is recommended.
Rating: 3 Star
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