The “Toynbee Convector”: The Rise and Fall of Arnold J. Toynbee’s Anti-Imperial Mission to the West

Abstract

In the late 1940s and early 1950s, the historian and internationalist Arnold J. Toynbee (1889-1975) conducted a highly public campaign against Western imperialism, arguing that the West needed to acknowledge and atone for its aggression if the world was to find peace. His efforts met with considerable resistance, damaging his reputation as a scholar and a political thinker. This article examines the origins of Toynbee's anti-imperialism in his philosophy of history, his public arguments of the postwar period, and the reaction they provoked.