Day of Empire_ How Hyperpowers Rise to Global Dominance--And Why They Fall - Amy Chua [92]
To put it mildly, the Dutch never succeeded in turning Indonesians or Ceylonese into loyal subjects of a great Dutch empire. Indeed, the Dutch never pursued an empire of that kind. It fell to England to try to fit together the unlikely combination of Enlightenment principles, European ethnocentrism, and a Roman strategy of empire building, creating a world of British subjects who filled the ranks of Britain's armies, administered Britain's territories, emulated Britain's manners, and contributed more or less willingly to Britain's imperial fortunes.
SEVEN
The Ottoman, Ming, and
Mughal Empires
Before turning to the Dutch Republic's successor, Great Britain, let us take a brief look outside the West. This chapter offers a snapshot of three non-Western societies— the Ottoman, Ming, and Mughal empires—that rose to impressive heights of power in the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries but never came close to achieving world dominance. In all three cases, the empire reached its pinnacle of power and prosperity during its most tolerant era. Conversely, intolerance in every case acted as a cancer, limiting the empire's success and precipitating its decline.
THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE
The astonishing meteoric rise of Islam beginning in the seventh century was accompanied almost from the beginning by inter-Muslim fragmentation and warfare. Like Christianity, on which it was based, Islam could be at once remarkably ethnically and racially tolerant—open to anyone of any skin color or walk of life—and fundamentally intolerant when it came to religion. There was only one God and one Truth.
Throughout the Middle Ages, the Islamic world was occupied by intense internal schisms—including the split between Shiites and Sunnis, which would prove as bloody as the war between Catholics and Protestants, as well as rivaling dynasties, caliphates, and sects vying for control of the Muslim world. In 750 in Damascus, every member of the ruling Umayyad family except one prince was massacred by the rival Abbasids. Despite this internecine strife, powerful regional empires rose and fell in the Muslim world. Of these great Islamic empires, the largest and longest-lasting was the Ottoman.
Founded by the Turkish House of Osman, the Ottoman Empire survived from roughly 1300 to the First World War. At its peak, its territory stretched from the edge of Vienna to the Red Sea, from North Africa to the Balkans. One of the most striking features of the Ottoman Empire was its religious tolerance.
The empires of Islam, even while episodically slaughtering both Muslim and non-Muslim “heretics,” had a long history of tolerance. Almost a thousand years before the Dutch Republic became the first European state to incorporate tolerance into its governing principles, conquering Muslim rulers of the eighth century famously permitted Christians and Jews to continue worshipping as they chose—as long as they recognized the supremacy of Islam. In part, this was shrewd policy, but it also reflected the Islamic principle of protection for the “Peoples of the Book”—that is, Christians and Jews, fellow monotheists whose writings were considered by Islam to contain elements of revelation. The Ottoman Turks built on this tradition, ruling with calculating tolerance over an extraordinarily racially and religiously diverse region.1
Interestingly, the Ottoman rulers were keenly aware that through their relative tolerance they were profiting at the direct expense of their intolerant Christian rivals. In particular, they saw Sephardic Jews, with their extensive trade contacts in the Mediterranean, as potential revenue producers for the empire. In 1492, upon hearing of Spain's expulsion decree, Sultan Bayezid II issued proclamations of welcome to the exiles and ordered the governors throughout his empire “not to refuse entry to the Jews” but rather to given them a “gracious welcome.” Those who did not do so