ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to discuss the problems and merits of conceptualizing world history in terms of a plurality of civilizations. After a short historical overview on the interpretation of one of the most popular and inspiring topics of Western historical scholarship, the so-called ‘fall of Rome’, it introduces the reader to the range of highly ideological notions linked to the term ‘civilization(s)’ in contemporary imaginaries. The chapter discusses the role that the concept of civilizations might have for present and future academics ‘engaging in transculturality’. In line with Christopher Dawson’s criticism of racism and extreme nationalism, and also reacting to Oswald Spengler’s culturalistic conception of world history, Arnold Toynbee produced one of the most comprehensive macro-historical studies on civilizations. European as well as Islamic culture/civilization emerged from the Judaeo–Hellenistic syncretistic melting pot of a late antique Mediterranean world that provided the ‘daughter culture’ of Europe with the orbit of Christianity.
