Day of Empire_ How Hyperpowers Rise to Global Dominance--And Why They Fall - Amy Chua [10]
Part Two is about the enlightening of tolerance. In the West, the era of religious wars slowly gave way to the Enlightenment. For the Enlightenment thinkers, tolerance was not merely instrumental; it was a moral virtue, even a duty. Persecution was not only bad strategy; it violated the freedom of conscience. Thus was born the modern ideal of tolerance: no longer merely the prerogative of calculating monarchs, but a fundamental element of the “rights of man.” The Enlightenment ended up both underwriting and undermining a new age of empires. On one hand, the new toleration would make possible the first hyperpowers Europe had seen in over a thousand years; on the other hand, with its principles of universal equality, fundamental rights, and individual liberty, the Enlightenment would make all future empires profoundly problematic.
Chapter Five takes a short look at medieval Spain as a representative pre-Enlightenment European power. Spain was remarkable for its religious diversity, including in its population significant numbers of Muslims and Jews. Yet Spain could not resist the zealotry of the time; religious pogroms, expulsions, and inquisitorial persecution wracked Spanish society, undercutting its prosperity and making Spain a vivid illustration of how Christian intolerance prohibited the great European powers of the medieval era from attaining global dominance.
Chapter Six is about the unlikely rise of the tiny Dutch Republic, the first European state to embrace the new tolerance. In 1579, while the rest of Europe was still engulfed in fanaticism, the Dutch Republic enshrined the principle of religious freedom in its founding charter. Almost overnight, it became a magnet for religious refugees, not just from Spain but from all over Europe. As a direct result, it became far and away the richest nation on earth, with by far the most upward mobility, enjoying “productive, commercial, and financial superiority” and the “rare condition” of global “hegemony.”19
Chapter Seven turns away from the West, for a comparative glimpse at three empires that never achieved world dominance: China's Ming empire, as well as two great Islamic empires, the Ottomans and the Mughals. Returning to the West, Chapter Eight discusses Great Britain, which succeeded the Dutch Republic as Europe's most tolerant society and came to rule “a vaster Empire than has ever been”20—an empire that, if one includes the oceans dominated by the British navy, covered an astonishing 70 percent of the earth's surface. But as they encountered Africans, Asians, and other nonwhites, the British hit the limit of their tolerance. However “enlightened” the British imagined themselves to be, they never overcame their colonial racism, which proved to be a profoundly destructive force throughout the empire.
Part Three takes us from the fall of the British Empire to the modern day. Chapter Nine discusses the role of tolerance in the transformation of the United States from upstart colony to global hyperpower. Chapter Ten discusses two great powers built on principles of intolerance and ethnic purity: Nazi Germany and imperial Japan. Chapter Eleven analyzes the United States’ main rivals today.
Chapter Twelve applies the lessons of the past to the twenty-first century, specifically addressing the debate about an American empire. For two and a half millennia, every hyperpower in history has faced the same two formidable challenges: maintaining the tolerance that fueled its rise and forging common bonds capable of securing the loyalty or at least quiescence of the peoples it dominates. Over the last several years, America's efforts to assert its world-dominant power abroad have exacerbated both these challenges. Ironically, it may be that America can remain a hyperpower only if it stops trying to be one.
THE TOLERANCE
OF BARBARIANS
ONE
The Great Persian Empire