Nationalism

The growth of nationalism was one of the most important developments in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Western history. Toynbee disliked nationalism, regarding it as one of the besetting evils of the modern world. He believed it was the cause of war. He also believed that emphasis on the nation-state led to distorted versions of history. This was why he took civilizations rather than nations as the units of historical study. Toynbee also wanted to combat another dangerous modern tendency, that of Eurocentric or Western bias, which he called an "egocentric illusion." He did not view Western civilization as the apex of human development since this left no room for objective evaluation of civilizations originating in China and India, let alone South and Central American civilizations.

World Wars I and II

A Study of History was influenced by the times in which Toynbee lived. In 1920, Western civilization was facing...