Arnold J. Toynbee in East Asia and the Middle East: Modernization Theory, World History, and the West

British historian Arnold J. Toynbee became a global intellectual celebrity from the 1950s to the 1970s. What is interesting about the popularity of Toynbee’s writings on universal history through a narrative of world civilizations was that, in many ways, his ideas were contradicting and challenging the basic content of the modernization theory at the peak of the cold war. Toynbee was very famous not only in the America, where modernization theory was born, but also in many modernizing nations in the Western bloc, such as Turkey, Japan, Lebanon, Iran and Pakistan. What did the interest in world history and comparative civilizations mean for the intellectuals of East Asia and the Middle East at the peak of their American promoted modernization experiences? How did the reception of Toynbee interact with legacies of thinking about the West, world history, and national culture in different intellectual contexts? This paper will approach the reception of Toynbee’s ideas in East Asian and Middle Eastern countries within the broader debates on European modernity, cultural traditions, and transnational identities.