「米英連邦」の模索

――第二次世界大戦初期におけるアーノルド・Ｊ・トインビーの世界秩序構想――

抄録

Scholars have widely investigated the history of concepts of world order in the 20-century. Among those works, there has been literature on the history of world order in the mid-20th-century. This paper seeks to contribute to this scholarly trend by focusing on Toynbee’s vision of the post-war world order during the early period of WWII. Arnold J. Toynbee (1889–1975) is a British historian best-known for his book A Study of History. Accordingly, researchers have focused on his intellectual activities as a renowned historian and have paid little attention to another aspect as an expert on International Relations until recently. Therefore, while existing scholarship revealed some aspects of Toynbee’s intellectual activities in international relations, it did not adequately explore Toynbee’s arguments on world order during WWII. This paper approaches this hitherto neglected aspect of Toynbee. In particular, it unearths his vision of the post-WWII world order by drawing on such primary sources as articles, private papers and memoranda.

Toynbee was also a prominent scholar in international relations between the 1920s and the early 1950s in Britain and beyond. From 1925 to 1954, serving as Director of Studies at Chatham House, he published numerous relevant articles and books. Among these works, his Survey of International Affairs earned a significant reputation. As the chances of WWII increased, Toynbee dedicated much effort to organising the research network of British scholars to analyse international affairs. After the outbreak of the war, Toynbee was particularly dismayed by the surrender of France by Nazi Germany. He believed that world integration by Nazi Germany or English-speaking states would be achieved in future international relations. Therefore, Toynbee advocated for the necessity of forming a world order centred on the United States and the United Kingdom to counter German domination.

In the course of this paper, we will learn that during WWII, Toynbee thought the British-American leadership would be the foundation for the post-war world order. The study demonstrates that although Toynbee’s vision was designed to resist the existential threat of Nazi Germany to some extent, he also elucidated post-war world order from various perspectives at a global level: political values and regimes, international economic system, land-sea based geopolitics, and Anglo-American connection. It also argues that Toynbee held an imperial internationalist vision of world politics, endorsing the European mandate system created after WWI as auspices of human rights and the rule of law in less developed areas and projecting it into post-war international relations. In conclusion, closely examining this argument enables us to enhance our understanding of the history of the mid-20-century discourse on world order.