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Nationality the war Arnold Joseph Toynbee Books

I discovered this book in my local library at around age 16. It aroused in me a lifelong interest in the First World War (and especially its politics) and for many years coloured my attitude to the Peace Treaties. It was Toynbee's first book, written when he was 25, so predictably did not get all matters right, but from this distance in time it hardly matters, as the things he got wrong are at least as interesting as those he got right.

This shows at times in his attitude to religion. At the time of writing, Toynbee wasn't all that religious (though he changed later) and whilst he includes "a common religion" as one of the factors bringing a nationality together, about the only time he invokes it in practice is in relation to the boundary of Northern Ireland. Thus neither Israel nor Pakistan features anywhere on his fascinating maps. This attitude leads him even further astray in relation to the South Slavs, where he confidently predicts that the Bosnian Moslems, after not only losing the ascendancy they enjoy under Habsburg rule, but also being impoverished by land reform for the benefit of their Serb neighbours, would soon be reconciled to the latter by - wait for it - going to the village school with them! After Srebrenica, one hardly knows whether to laugh or cry.

Not that he was always wrong by any means. He cautioned against any attempt to depose the Hohenzollerns, and predicted that if a German democracy were seen as something imposed by a foreign conqueror, it probably wouldn't last, and even that the Germans might "give it a militaristic turn, and disconcert us by aping the [Prussian] drill sergeant from whom we had delivered [them]". He also suggested that West Prussia (what would later be called "The Polish Corridor") might all too easily be the occasion for a future war. Not bad guesses at how things turned out twenty years later. In the final chapter, he also seems to envisage something like the League of Nations.

For all his brains, though, he could not totally escape the passions of his time. This shows particularly in his attitude toward Russia. As AJP Taylor might have put it, he was one of those intellectuals for whom "scepticism stopped at the Russian frontier", and his take on its future is often optimistic to the point of absurdity. He even calls it "Holy Russia", though one wonders what he could have thought holy about the regime of Nicholas II. So Southern Slavs and others have a clear right to independence from Austria, and Alsatians from Germany, but Poles, Lithuanians and other non-Russian subjects of the Tsar must be content with "Home Rule" of the sort being offered to Ireland - though an awful lot of Irishmen weren't - because "liberalism is in the ascendant [in Tsarist Russia!] and will prevail". So that's all right then.

His attitude to the Ukrainians is even worse. He explains at length why, for the greater good of the Russian Empire, they cannot be allowed even so much as Home Rule, let alone independence, and must "abandon their particularism, and allow themselves to be reabsorbed in the indivisible body of Holy Russia" [1]. He even urges them to abandon their language, as it consists only of "a few peasant ballads" in favour of Russian [2], and adds insult to injury by consistently referring to them as "Little Russians". Rereading this, I found myself wondering what the Ukrainian was for "Patronising prat".

One more goof. In the chapters on the Middle East, Toynbee touches on an unstable, multi-ethnic state which is "obviously" doomed to disintegration, and whose duty it is of the Powers to sort out how to divvy up when the inevitable collapse takes place. He is talking about - Afghanistan! It tickled me when reading "Between Oxus and Jumna" which he wrote some four decades later, how he praises the heroic stands of the Afghans against the British Empire (to whom he had blithely awarded most of it in the earlier book). In the later one, he makes no reference to his youthful predictions, which saddens me a bit. I would have loved to read his retrospections on this matter, and can't help wishing he at least had had the grace to blush.

Still, this was the first book of a young man not long out of College, so a little Christian charity is in order. This book gives a fascinating overview of the ethnic complexities of 1914 Europe, as seen by a super-intelligent young Englishman of the day. It really gripped me as a teenager and I still keep a copy half a century on. If you are interested in its themes, it is well worth a read as we come up to the its centenary, and that of the war which inspired it. Get a copy.

[1] The word "must" appears again and again in this book, and elsewhere in Toynbee. But rarely, after using it, does he follow up be even asking, let alone answering, the question of "Who's going to make them?" In this he reminds me forcefully of Woodrow Wilson and his "The Senate must take its medicine". All in all, though a great lover of Toynbee's books, I think it fortunate that he never held any political power, as I fear he could all too easily have joined Wilson, Herbert Hoover and Emperor Joseph II on history's long roll call of well-meaning disasters.

[2] In fairness to Toynbee, let it be said that he modifies this to some degree in a slightly later book "The New Europe", where he accepts that the Russian government "must" grant recognition to the Ukrainian language - once again without any indication of what could be done about it if they didn't - but still rejects any idea of independence, as it is unthinkable for Russia to lose Odessa and Kieff and be cut off from the Black Sea - though in an earlier chapter he is perfectly ok with Austria-Hungary losing access to the Adriatic, even though it has no other coastline, while Russia does. The principle of nationality can apparently be sacrosanct or not depending on whose ox is being gored.

Product details Paperback 556 pages Publisher Ulan Press (August 31, 2012) Language English ASIN B00B6AF1P2

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Nationality the war Arnold Joseph Toynbee Books Reviews

I discovered this book in my local library at around age 16. It aroused in me a lifelong interest in the First World War (and especially its politics) and for many years coloured my attitude to the Peace Treaties. It was Toynbee's first book, written when he was 25, so predictably did not get all matters right, but from this distance in time it hardly matters, as the things he got wrong are at least as interesting as those he got right.

This shows at times in his attitude to religion. At the time of writing, Toynbee wasn't all that religious (though he changed later) and whilst he includes "a common religion" as one of the factors bringing a nationality together, about the only time he invokes it in practice is in relation to the boundary of Northern Ireland. Thus neither Israel nor Pakistan features anywhere on his fascinating maps. This attitude leads him even further astray in relation to the South Slavs, where he confidently predicts that the Bosnian Moslems, after not only losing the ascendancy they enjoy under Habsburg rule, but also being impoverished by land reform for the benefit of their Serb neighbours, would soon be reconciled to the latter by - wait for it - going to the village school with them! After Srebrenica, one hardly knows whether to laugh or cry.

Not that he was always wrong by any means. He cautioned against any attempt to depose the Hohenzollerns, and predicted that if a German democracy were seen as something imposed by a foreign conqueror, it probably wouldn't last, and even that the Germans might "give it a militaristic turn, and disconcert us by aping the [Prussian] drill sergeant from whom we had delivered [them]". He also suggested that West Prussia (what would later be called "The Polish Corridor") might all too easily be the occasion for a future war. Not bad guesses at how things turned out twenty years later. In the final chapter, he also seems to envisage something like the League of Nations.

For all his brains, though, he could not totally escape the passions of his time. This shows particularly in his attitude toward Russia. As AJP Taylor might have put it, he was one of those intellectuals for whom "scepticism stopped at the Russian frontier", and his take on its future is often optimistic to the point of absurdity. He even calls it "Holy Russia", though one wonders what he could have thought holy about the regime of Nicholas II. So Southern Slavs and others have a clear right to independence from Austria, and Alsatians from Germany, but Poles, Lithuanians and other non-Russian subjects of the Tsar must be content with "Home Rule" of the sort being offered to Ireland - though an awful lot of Irishmen weren't - because "liberalism is in the ascendant [in Tsarist Russia!] and will prevail". So that's all right then.

His attitude to the Ukrainians is even worse. He explains at length why, for the greater good of the Russian Empire, they cannot be allowed even so much as Home Rule, let alone independence, and must "abandon their particularism, and allow themselves to be reabsorbed in the indivisible body of Holy Russia" [1]. He even urges them to abandon their language, as it consists only of "a few peasant ballads" in favour of Russian [2], and adds insult to injury by consistently referring to them as "Little Russians". Rereading this, I found myself wondering what the Ukrainian was for "Patronising prat".

One more goof. In the chapters on the Middle East, Toynbee touches on an unstable, multi-ethnic state which is "obviously" doomed to disintegration, and whose duty it is of the Powers to sort out how to divvy up when the inevitable collapse takes place. He is talking about - Afghanistan! It tickled me when reading "Between Oxus and Jumna" which he wrote some four decades later, how he praises the heroic stands of the Afghans against the British Empire (to whom he had blithely awarded most of it in the earlier book). In the later one, he makes no reference to his youthful predictions, which saddens me a bit. I would have loved to read his retrospections on this matter, and can't help wishing he at least had had the grace to blush.

Still, this was the first book of a young man not long out of College, so a little Christian charity is in order. This book gives a fascinating overview of the ethnic complexities of 1914 Europe, as seen by a super-intelligent young Englishman of the day. It really gripped me as a teenager and I still keep a copy half a century on. If you are interested in its themes, it is well worth a read as we come up to the its centenary, and that of the war which inspired it. Get a copy.

[1] The word "must" appears again and again in this book, and elsewhere in Toynbee. But rarely, after using it, does he follow up be even asking, let alone answering, the question of "Who's going to make them?" In this he reminds me forcefully of Woodrow Wilson and his "The Senate must take its medicine". All in all, though a great lover of Toynbee's books, I think it fortunate that he never held any political power, as I fear he could all too easily have joined Wilson, Herbert Hoover and Emperor Joseph II on history's long roll call of well-meaning disasters.

[2] In fairness to Toynbee, let it be said that he modifies this to some degree in a slightly later book "The New Europe", where he accepts that the Russian government "must" grant recognition to the Ukrainian language - once again without any indication of what could be done about it if they didn't - but still rejects any idea of independence, as it is unthinkable for Russia to lose Odessa and Kieff and be cut off from the Black Sea - though in an earlier chapter he is perfectly ok with Austria-Hungary losing access to the Adriatic, even though it has no other coastline, while Russia does. The principle of nationality can apparently be sacrosanct or not depending on whose ox is being gored.