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Cargando... East to west; a journey round the world (1958)por Arnold J. Toynbee
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In February 1956 Arnold Toynbee, just retired after more than 30 years at the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London, set out on a 17-month journey around the world. He wanted to visit Asia & Latin America. We travel with him to Ecuador, Peru, New Zealand, Australia, Vietnam, Manila, Hong Kong, Japan, India & the Middle East. The journey is very worthwhile. Toynbee was a great historian, known best for his 12-volume A Study of History, completed in 1961. What made him famous was his comfortable style. Thus to travel with him through the world of his day, is to see that world in a fresh & vivid way No se han encontrado descripciones de biblioteca. |
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Google Books — Cargando... GénerosSistema Decimal Melvil (DDC)910.41History and Geography Geography and Travel Geography and Travel Accounts of travel and facilities for travellers Circumnavigation of the EarthClasificación de la Biblioteca del CongresoValoraciónPromedio:
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As he traveled around the world with his co-author wife as retirees, meeting face to face with people and places they knew more of than the people they were meeting who lived there, he could be shocked and inspired anew. The trip is through predominantly non-European regions.
For example, in traveling Indonesia, he points out that this vast population converted peacably to Islam without being conquered by Arabs. And its population practices are a beacon to all religions.
While many historians have mined the mother lode of irony, Toynbee has a way of making it ring. Of the Umayyads, Toynbee writes: "One of the greatest of ironies of all history is the fate of the house that Muhammad built. Muhammad had a great fall. The unsuccessful prophet succumbed to the temptation to succeed as a statesman and a strategist. Yet, in seeking and winning worldly success in Medina, Muhammad was unwittingly working for his adversaries in Mecca....Mu'awiyah was one of the greatest masters, known to history, of the artful, patient type of statesmenship. He ranks with Augustus, Philip of Macedon, Liu Pang, and Cavour...Within twenty-nine years of Muhammad's death, the state that Muhammad had founded, and that his successors had swiftly expanded into a vast empire, became the undisputed spoil of Mu-awiyah the son of Hind: that redoubtable Meccan merchant-princess who had been Muhammad's bitterest enemy. Unlike Muhammad, Mu'awwiyah founded a dynasty--the house of Umayyah--which lasted for ninety years and ruled the world from Multan and Tashqand to Aden, and from Aden to Gibraltar and Narbonne." [214]
Toynbee visited the pleasure palaces of the Caliphs, noting the absence of any religious affiliations, and with their mosaics of half-naked houris. [216] He lauds their tolerance and love of beauty. ( )