Stronghold of a Bygone Age? Arnold J. Toynbee’s Concept of the Commonwealth in the Age of Decolonisation and the Early Cold War

Recent studies of the history of British international thought have unearthed British racial and imperial imaginations of international space: ideas of imperial federation in the late nineteenth century, the Anglo-Saxon racial utopia for perpetual peace at the turn of the twentieth century, and the imperial aspects of British liberal internationalism in the inter-war period. However, British imperial thought in the age of decolonisation has received considerably less scholarly attention. Drawing on books, articles, and a wealth of hitherto untapped primary sources, this paper sheds new light on this historiographical issue by examining Arnold J. Toynbee’s ideas regarding the Commonwealth in the age of decolonisation and the early Cold War. This study will elucidate the development and impasse of the British liberal concept of empire in the mid-twentieth century. In particular, the research reveals that alongside his critique of Western imperialism and Western-centric views of world politics from his world-historical perspective, Toynbee sought to justify the Commonwealth under the structural change of world order against the backdrop of decolonisation. He envisaged that different civilisations could coexist under the auspices of the Commonwealth, thus depoliticising anti-colonial nationalism and preventing Soviet communist ideology’s penetration into the Third World.