MATERIALS FOR THE STUDY OF THE WORK AND THOUGHT
OF ARNOLD J. TOYNBEE
by Teodoro Tagliaferri (University of Naples Federico II)
No. 8 (January 31, 2022)
WRITINGS ON THE EMPIRES IN WORLD HISTORY, V
Arnold Joseph Toynbee, Peace, Empire, and World Government, in «Saturday Review», L, 17,
April 29, 1967, pp. 17-21.
“Today most people in the world are inclined to take the prevailing political dispensation
for granted. It is assumed that the present partition of mankind among a number of local
sovereign states that can, and do, go to war with each other is the natural order of human
affairs at the political level. Yet this is not the only way in which mankind has organized itself
politically since the rise of civilization about 5000 years ago. For instance, in 800 A.D. the
whole of the Western world, within its limits at that date, was united politically under the
single sovereignty of Charlemagne, except for a few small states in Britain and in
Northwestern Spain. And when, on Christmas Day, 800, Charlemagne assumed the title of
Roman Emperor, he was deliberately reviving in the West a Roman world-state which, for
more than four centuries ending about 400 A.D., had united politically the greater part of
Western Europe with a ring of territories surrounding the Mediterranean basin.”
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