The English historian and philosopher of history Arnold Joseph Toynbee (1889-1972) described himself as a "metahistorian" whose "intelligible field of study" was civilization.

Arnold Toynbee was born into an upper-middle-class family in London. He attended Balliol College, Oxford, and from 1912 to 1915 he was a fellow and tutor in classics. During World War I he served in the Political Intelligence Department of the War Office, where, among other duties, he edited accounts of atrocities. In 1919 he was a member of the Middle Eastern section of the British delegation to the Paris Peace Conference.

He was Koraes professor of Byzantine and modern Greek language, literature, and history at London University from 1919 to 1924. From 1925 until he retired in 1955 he was director of studies in the Royal Institute of International Affairs and professor of international history at London University. He directed the Research Department at the Foreign Office from 1943 until 1946, when he...