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The Origins of World History: Arnold Toynbee before the First World War
Author(s) -
Martel Gordon
Publication year - 2004
Publication title -
australian journal of politics and history
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.123
H-Index - 23
eISSN - 1467-8497
pISSN - 0004-9522
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-8497.2004.00338.x
Subject(s) - criticism , empire , first world war , world war ii , history , publishing , world history , intellectual history , classics , ancient history , economic history , law , political science , archaeology
Arnold Toynbee's ambitious work A Study of History was a phenomenal publishing success in its day, but it came under severe criticism from academic historians. In recent years, there has been something of a Toynbee revival among the proponents of the growing discipline of world history. This article suggests that Toynbee makes a somewhat unlikely founding figure for the broadly liberal and cosmopolitan world history movement, and investigates the very particular origins of Toynbee's vision of world history in the intellectual world of the pre‐1914 British Empire, and especially in Toynbee's education at Winchester and Oxford.