More about Arnold J. Toynbee →
Toynbee, who traveled to the region as a correspondent for the Manchester Guardian, builds his narrative around the Greek military landing at Smyrna in May 1919 and the ensuing conflict in Anatolia, drawing heavily on personal observation. The book documents atrocities committed by both Greek and Turkish forces and examines how Greece was drawn into a disastrous military campaign in Asia Minor with the backing of the Western powers, particularly Britain.
The title itself signals Toynbee’s central argument. The traditional “Eastern Question” had long framed the Ottoman Empire’s decline as a problem for European diplomacy to solve. Toynbee inverts this, arguing that it was Western intervention—through diplomacy, military support, and the export of ideas like nationalism—that had been the truly destabilizing force in the region. He contends that the West neither fully intended nor understood the consequences of its actions, and that Greece had become both an instrument and a casualty of Western policies that lacked coherent purpose. In his analysis, the concept of nationality, imported from Western civilisation into the Orthodox and Islamic worlds, generated conflict rather than order.
While primarily a work of contemporary history and eyewitness reporting, the book also reveals the early outlines of Toynbee’s broader thinking about civilizational contact and breakdown—ideas he would develop far more fully in his later twelve-volume A Study of History (1934-1961). The Western Question in Greece and Turkey remains notable for its willingness to challenge the prevailing sympathies of the British public, its critical perspective on Western imperialism, and its attempt to treat the Greek and Turkish experiences with a degree of evenhandedness unusual for its time.
“Failure cuts deepter memories than success.”
— Arnold J. Toynbee Primary source“The fact that I am neither a Greek nor a Turk perhaps creates little presumption of my being fair-minded, for Western partisans of non-Western peoples are often more fanatical than their favourites.”
— Arnold J. Toynbee Primary source“A cultivated class, for example, finds most difficulty in getting on with another which has acquired part—but only part—of its culture and customs.”
— Arnold J. Toynbee Primary source“The statesmen miscalculated again. Their fellow-countrymen had the means to carry out their policy but not the will; their pawns had the will without the means.”
— Arnold J. Toynbee Primary source“The contact of civilisations has always been, and will always continue to be, a ruling factor in human progress and failure.”
— Arnold J. Toynbee Primary source• Title: The Western Question in Greece and Turkey
• Author: Arnold J. Toynbee
• Type: Book
• Publisher: Constable and Company Ltd.
• Publication time: 1922
• Publication place: London, United Kingdom
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