It’s truly mind-boggling to me that, for all the content that’s dumped onto the Internet (and then echo-chambered throughout various sites), you can’t find one of historian Arnold Joseph Toynbee’s most famous quotations online.

I’ve actually found it, but only incidentally, in a 1995 journal article archive. In an attempt to digitally safe-keep it, I’m going to reproduce it here, with some of the context:

This mood of triumph prevailed throughout the following centuries: “Here we are on the top of the world, and we have arrived at this peak to stay there – forever! There is of course a thing called history, but history is something unpleasant that happens to other people.” That is how Arnold Toynbee, in his childhood memories, remembered the mood at Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee in 1897.

The pertinent part is that “History is something unpleasant that happens to other people.” Meaning that, as most history is recounted via cataclysmic events like wars and social upheavals, the illusion sprung up in the late 19-Century West (particularly Europe) that a more stable, progressive existence was an insulation against world events. It’s a perfect encapsulation of the mindset in an elite tier of global living, versus what happens everywhere else.

There may or may not be an extension to Toynbee’s reminiscence, citing the U.S. Civil War. Something about, had he been a Southerner boy at the same time, he “should not have felt the same”. As with the main quote, this one is practically nonexistent online; best I could find was a sketchy blog comment. I do remember it personally though, from some past reading; but I’m not dead certain that Toynbee actually originated it (it might have been Southern historian C. Vann Woodward). So I’ll leave that citation as I’ve just laid it out.

Sure, I could run down to the library or bookstore and crack open a book on these subjects. But this is the Internet Age — I shouldn’t have to touch a dead tree by this stage.