When talking about politics, most people tend to be somewhat myopic, reacting only to what happened during the last day, week, month, and maybe even year. Every once in a while people may even compare four year blocks and presidential administrations. But rarely, if ever, do people compare issues of the day across generations or even centuries. And even if these comparisons are made, they tend to be geographically contained (for example, comparing the lives of people in a city over time).
Author and Yale Law Professor Amy Chua goes beyond all of these usual comparisons in her book "Day of Empire: How Hyperpowers Rise to Global Dominance - and Why They Fall". Chua sets her sights on all human civilization and compares and contrasts what she calls "hyperpowers" - "those few societies that amassed such extraordinary military and economic might that they essentially dominated the world".
According to Chua, there have been seven such hyperpowers:
- the Persian Empire of the 6th Century BC to the 3rd Century BC
- the Roman Empire of the 1st and 2nd Century
- the Tang Dynasty of the 7th to 9th Century
- the Mongols of the 12th Century
- the Dutch of the 17th Century
- the British Empire of the 18th and 19th Century
- Present-day United States
As a fan of geopolitics, political science, international affairs, and human culture, I really liked this book. It was easy to read and definitely informative. Chua does a great job getting into some of the details on how hyperpowers welcomed foreign peoples into their arms and used their manpower, brainpower, or economic clout (sometimes all three) to the betterment of the nation. For example, did you know the US government sent job recruiters to Europe during the 18th Century to find able bodied workers willing to move across the ocean and join the American labor force?
Despite my recommendation however, there are a few things I want to point out about the book:
It almost seems like Chua cherry-picked her results. It's easy to set a standard such as "tolerance" and wiggle and fit a few worthy candidates into the qualification. Were the Romans really "tolerant" because they wanted to be, or because it was the easiest way to control land? There is no doubt much of the tolerance Chua discusses is driven by military or economic needs. If you have a fixed labor pool, where else would you get bodies to fight or create things than from other countries?
I also think Day of Empire could have been written as a book on the growing importance of global tolerance and the need for multi-cultural acceptance. Instead of chronologically, the book could have been organized topically and in grades of interaction and tolerance.
Overall, like I said, I liked Day of Empire. And with recent immigration happenings and current events in Arizona and throughout Europe, having a historical outlook on the issues is always a good thing.
