Toynbee: Study Of History
INTRODUCTION I. THE UNIT OF HISTORICAL STUDY
HISTORIANS generally illustrate rather than correct the ideas of the communities within which they live and work, and the development in the last few centuries, and more particularly in the last few generations, of the would-be self-sufficient national sovereign state has led historians to choose nations as the normal fields of historical study. But no single nation or national state of Europe can show a history which is in itself self-explanatory. If any state could do so it would be Great Britain. In fact, if Great Britain (or, in the earlier periods, England) is not found to constitute in herself an intelligible field of historical study, we may confidently infer that no other modern European national state will pass the test.
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This glance backwards from the present day over the general course of English history would appear to show that the farther back we look the less evidence do we find of self-sufficiency or isolation. The conversion, which was really the beginning of all things in English history, was the direct antithesis of that; it was an act which merged half a dozen isolated communities of barbarians in the common weal of a nascent Western Society. It remains to consider the two latest chapters: the geneses of the Parliamentary System and the Industrial System - institutions which are commonly regarded as having been evolved locally on English soil and afterwards propagated from England into other parts of the world. But the authorities do not entirely support this view.
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Civilizations are intelligible fields of historical study [...] which have greater extension, in both space and time, than national states or city or city-states, or any other political communities.