He is not only a historian but also a philosopher and seer: who is Arnold Joseph Toynbee?

Arnold Josephh Toynbee, one of the most important historical philosophers, thinkers, diplomats, and history and literature professors of the 20th century, was born in London on April 14, 1889. His father is a social worker and his mother was one of the first women to earn a college degree in England.

Toynbee's grandfather was a doctor famous for his work in the field of anesthesia. His maternal grandfather, Edwin Marshall, was a pioneer in the use of iron, not wood, in the production of railway vehicles. The person who influenced Toynbee the most in his childhood, after his parents, was his sailor uncle, Harry Toynbee. Harry, who has a tough temperament, taught Toynbee the difficulties of life at a very young age and showed him how to fight.

Arnold Joseph Toynbee (14 April 1889 – 22 October 1975) was an English historian, a philosopher of history, an author of numerous books and a research professor of international history at the London School of Economics and King's College London. From 1918 to 1950, Toynbee was considered a leading specialist on international affairs; from 1924 to 1954 he was the Director of Studies at Chatham House, in which position he also produced 34 volumes of the Survey of International Affairs, a "bible" for international specialists in Britain.

Toynbee, who started to learn Latin at the age of seven and went to boarding school at the age of 10 as a tradition of his time, is interested in history mainly due to the fact that his mother is also a historian. He expresses this clearly in his work titled "Memories of My Experiences" with the words, "It is definitely my mother who inspired me to become a historian".

John Rendall, who was the assistant principal and Greek history teacher at Winchester College, where he studied between 1902-1907, contributed to his success in history and especially in Greek history courses. The excellent training he received in Greek and Latin languages and literature was effective enough to write his poems in Latin and Greek.

Having completed his education at Oxford University in 1911, Toynbee's academic career begins with his appointment as a lecturer in Ancient Greek and Roman History at Balliol College. The fact that he had the chance to personally tour and see the Greek world and the Greco-Roman geography, which is in his field of interest, in his first year here, affects his view of the events he will be involved in in the future. During this period, during his first visit to Turkey in 1912, he fell ill with dysentery. This disease also constitutes an important turning point in his life, because he does not join the war because he cannot be recruited. Expressing that this disease saved his life, Toynbee resigned from his university teaching position in 1915.

During the First World War, he took part in the propaganda and intelligence unit formed by the British General Staff and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The responsibility of this unit was to study the great states of the world and the people on the battlefields and to organize intensive propaganda activities about them. In this activity, in which many academics and scientists are assigned, Toynbee's area of responsibility is determined as the Ottoman Empire, Mesopotamia, Arabia, and Egypt.

The process that gave him one of his most valuable experiences was his assignment at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919. Toynbee, who was in the British delegation and had the chance to watch all the works and meetings carefully, had great claims in his work called The Nationalities and The War, which he started to write before the war. Toynbee, who is 26 years old and has little experience, redraws the borders of Europe during the years of the world war and makes ambitious predictions about the future borders of the countries.

Some world-renowned thinkers and strategists also work on similar issues. However, the different side of Toynbee is that he is a British representative and spokesman, not an intellectual who makes independent initiatives. Toynbee, a war propagandist with the skills to become a member of the world's most influential and well-known propaganda organization at a young age, is likely to work on behalf of his state in the coming years. The fact that he took part in the delegations formed after the Second World War and participated in the peace talks is an indicator of this.

Toynbee, who worked in the propaganda office of the Ministry of War during the First World War, wrote the Blue Book and similar propaganda works that slandered Turkey. Toynbee writes in the Blue Book that the Ottoman Empire committed genocide against the Armenians. The Blue Book, which is based on the Armenian deportation implemented by the Ottoman Empire in 1915, gradually becomes one of the sources used to prove the allegations of those who accuse Turkey of the Armenian genocide.

The source of the book was Lord Bryce, who gathered information and documents from Armenians and Greeks who had biased views, especially the missionaries in Anatolia during the war years. Years later, when asked about the book, Toynbee replied that he was working at the Foreign Office in London at the time the books were written, that he only fulfilled the duties assigned to him by his superiors, and that all of his writings could be described as war propaganda.

Toynbee, whose government service ended with the end of the war, rejects the offer of permanent civil service. In 1919, he was appointed to the Chair of Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies at the University of London.

It can be said that the changes in Toynbee's thoughts about Turkey and Turks have emerged since 1921. Toynbee, who came to Anatolia as a correspondent for the weekly Manchester Guardian newspaper published in England, witnessed the Turkish massacre by the Greeks during his investigations in the Mudanya region. His wife, Rosalind Toynbee, who was with him during his investigations and witnessed the pain experienced, wrote about the situation in a letter he wrote to his father and in the diaries he kept.

In his letter, in which he conveyed the investigations in Yalova and its surroundings on 24-25 May 1921, he told the Red Cross representative Gehri that what was going on in the region was terrible, how the Greek officers massacred the Turks, that thousands of Turks were brutally murdered even in areas where no military action was organized, and that Greek soldiers were killed in the actions. He writes that Greek gangs organized next to him were used and Christian clergy took part in the massacres.

The fact that Toynbee watches the Turkish-Greek War on the spot and sees the atrocities against the Turks personally, creates a sympathy for the Turks. He reports the brutality of the Greeks to the newspapers. When he returned to England, he wrote his work titled The Western Question in Turkey and Greece. Toynbee's Turkish sympathy draws the reaction of the Greek government as well as the British. As a result of pressure, he left the Korais chair in 1924 and entered the Chatham Society (at the Royal Institute of International Relations), an association for scientific research on international relations, where he worked for 33 years.

Toynbee came six more times after his first visit to Turkey in 1912. It provides an environment for meetings, and discussions with both state administrators and politicians as well as journalists and academics. During his visits to Turkey in 1912, 1921, 1923, 1929, 1948, 1962, and 1968, respectively, he had the opportunity to visit various corners of Anatolia. In his book Experiences, published in 1969, he talked about the richness of the Turkish language and emphasized the need to learn the Turkish language in order to be a true philosopher, but he also regretted that he could not learn Turkish due to a lack of time.

According to some, Toynbee is not only a historian but also a philosopher and seer. The reason for this is that it makes strong predictions for the future. He was more interested in the rise and disappearance of civilizations and cultures rather than the great events in history, so he was also called the historian of civilization. Instead of the old narrow understanding of history, Toynbee wrote an essay on synthetic and explanatory history instead of analytical history and succeeded in addressing the need for a supranational comparative history understanding.

Arnold Toynbee died on October 22, 1975, at the age of eighty-six.