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In a little over two centuries, America has grown from a regional power to a superpower, and to what is today called a hyperpower. But can America retain its position as the world’s dominant power, or has it already begun to decline?

Historians have debated the rise and fall of empires for centuries. To date, however, no one has studied the far rarer phenomenon of hyperpowers?those few societies that amassed such extraordinary military and economic might that they essentially dominated the world.
Now, in this sweeping history of globally dominant empires, bestselling author Amy Chua explains how hyperpowers rise and why they fall. In a series of brilliantly focused chapters, Chua examines history’s hyperpowers?Persia, Rome, Tang China, the Mongols, the Dutch, the British, and the United States?and reveals the reasons behind their success, as well as the roots of their ultimate demise.
Chua’s unprecedented study reveals a fascinating historical pattern. For all their differences, she argues, every one of these world-dominant powers was, at least by the standards of its time, extraordinarily pluralistic and tolerant. Each one succeeded by harnessing the skills and energies of individuals from very different backgrounds, and by attracting and exploiting highly talented groups that were excluded in other societies. Thus Rome allowed Africans, Spaniards, and Gauls alike to rise to the highest echelons of power, while the “barbarian” Mongols conquered their vast domains only because they practiced an ethnic and religious tolerance unheard of in their time. In contrast,

Nazi Germany and imperial Japan, whilewielding great power, failed to attain global dominance as a direct result of their racial and religious intolerance.
But Chua also uncovers a great historical irony: in virtually every instance, multicultural tolerance eventually sowed the seeds of decline, and diversity became a liability, triggering conflict, hatred, and violence.
The United States is the quintessential example of a power that rose to global dominance through tolerance and diversity. The secret to America’s success has always been its unsurpassed ability to attract enterprising immigrants. Today, however, concerns about outsourcing and uncontrolled illegal immigration are producing a backlash against our tradition of cultural openness. Has America finally reached a “tipping point”? Have we gone too far in the direction of diversity and tolerance to maintain cohesion and unity? Will we be overtaken by rising powers like China, the EU or even India?
Chua shows why American power may have already exceeded its limits and why it may be in our interest to retreat from our go-it-alone approach and promote a new multilateralism in both domestic and foreign affairs.

Amy Chua smartly condenses the complex histories of the Persian, Mughal, Dutch, and other empires into an irresistible argument: that empires expand through toleration and contract through close-mindedness. As with any shrewd and elaborate argument, the getting there is half the fun.”
―Robert D. Kaplan, Atlantic Monthly correspondent, visiting professor in national security at the U. S. Naval Academy, and author of Balkan Ghosts and Imperial Grunts

"Scintillating history, breathtaking in scope and chock-full of insight. Amy Chua argues persuasively that the real key to acquiring and maintaining great power lies in the ability to attract and assimilate, rather than to coerce or intimidate.”
―Andrew J. Bacevich, author of The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War

“Amy Chua is a law professor, but in this book she writes as a sage historian. She draws lessons from the past that one who cares about the future cannot afford to ignore.”
―Amitai Etzioni, author of Security First: For A Muscular, Moral Foreign Policy

“From ancient Achaemenid Persia to the modern United States, by way of Rome, Tang China and the Spanish, Dutch and British Empires, Amy Chua tells the story of the world's hyperpowers -- that elite of empires which, in their heyday, were truly without equal. Not everyone will be persuaded by her ingenious thesis that religious and racial tolerance was a prerequisite for global dominance, but also the slow solvent of that cultural "glue" which holds a great nation together. But few readers will fail to be impressed by the height of this book's ambition and by the breadth of scholarship on which it is based.”
―Niall Ferguson, Laurence A. Tisch Professor History, Harvard University, and author of Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order.

ONE
THE FIRST HEGEMON


The Great Persian Empire from Cyrus to Alexander

When Cyrus entered Babylon in 539 B.C., the world was old. More significant, the world knew its antiquity. Its scholars had compiled long dynastic lists, and simple addition appeared to prove that kings whose monuments were still visible had ruled more than four millenniums before.
―A. T. Olmstead, History of the Persian Empire, 1948


I should be glad, Onesicritus, to come back to life for a little while after my death to discover how men read these present events then.
―Alexander the Great, quoted by Lucien in “How to Write History,” circa AD 40


The word paradise is Persian in origin. Old Persian had a term pairidaeza, which the Greeks rendered as paradeisos, referring to the fabulous royal parks and pleasure gardens of the Achaemenids―the kings of the mighty Persian Empire who ruled from roughly 559 to 330 BC. Indeed, the earliest Greek translators of the Old Testament used this term for the Garden of Eden and the afterlife, as if to suggest that the Achaemenid paradises were as close as man had come to replicating heaven on earth. (1)

The Achaemenid paradises were famous throughout the ancient world. Their riches, it was said, included every tree bearing every fruit known to man, the most fragrant and dazzling flowers that grew anywhere from Libya to India, and exotic animals from the farthest reaches of an empire covering more than two million square miles. There were Parthian camels, Assyrian rams, Armenian horses, Cappadocian mules, Nubian giraffes, Indian elephants, Lydian ibex, Babylonian buffalo, and the most ferocious lions, bulls, and wild beasts from throughout the kingdom. Not just formal gardens, the paradises were also centers for horticultural experimentation, zoological parks, and hunting reserves. A royal hunt in a single paradise could yield four thousand head. (2)

In this respect, the Achaemenid paradises were a living metaphor for the Achaemenid Empire as a whole. Founded around 559 BC by Cyrus the Great and spanning more than two centuries, the Achaemenid Persian Empire was, even by today's standards, one of the most culturally diverse and religiously open empires in history. The Achaemenid kings actively recruited the most talented artisans, craftsmen, laborers, and warriors from throughout the empire. In 500 BC, Persepolis was home to Greek doctors, Elamite scribes, Lydian woodworkers, Ionian stonecutters, and Sardian smiths. Similarly, the Achaemenid military drew its colossal strength from Median commanders, Phoenician sailors, Libyan charioteers, Cissian cavalrymen, and hundreds of thousands of foot soldiers from Ethiopia, Bactria, Sogdiana, and elsewhere in the empire. (3)

For most Westerners, antiquity refers solely to classical Greece and Rome. But the Achaemenid Empire was the first hyperpower in world history, governing a territory larger than all the ancient empires, including even Rome's. Achaemenid Persia dwarfed―in fact conquered and annexed―the great kingdoms of Assyria, Babylonia, and Egypt, ruling at its peak as many as 42 million people, nearly a third of the world’s total population. (4) How could a relatively small number of Persians govern so vast a territory and population? This chapter will suggest that tolerance was critical: first in allowing the Persians to establish their world？dominant empire, then in helping them maintain it.


WHERE IS BACTRIA, AND SHOULD WE BELIEVE HERODOTUS?

As early as 5000 BC, the great plateau that is now modern Iran was already populated. Its early inhabitants had some curious family practices:


[A]mong the Derbices, men older than seventy were killed and eaten by their kinsfolk, and old women were strangled and buried…Among the Caspians, who gave their name to the sea formerly called Hyrcanian, those over seventy were starved. Corpses were exposed in a desert place and observed. If carried from the bier by vultures, the dead were considered most fortunate, less so if taken by wild beasts or dogs; but it was the height of misfortune if the bodies remained untouched. …[F]arther east, equally disgusting practices continued until Alexander's invasion. The sick and aged were thrown while still alive to waiting dogs. (5)


Starting in the second millennium BC, these friendly peoples succumbed to the Aryan conquest. The term “Aryan,” despite the Nazis’ later twisting, is essentially a linguistic designation referring to a variety of peoples who spoke eastern Indo？European languages or dialects and migrated from southern Russia and central Asia into India, Mesopotamia, and the Iranian plateau. How the Aryans overpowered the preexisting societies is unclear, but within a few hundred years they had established kingdoms in eponymous territories throughout the region: for example, the Medes in Media, the Bactrians in Bactria, and the Persians in Persis or Parsa. (6)

The Persians themselves consisted of a number of tribes and clans, of which the Achaemenids were one. In time, the Achaemenids would extend Persian rule to the other Aryan kingdoms. Indeed the name Iran derives from the Persian word Eransahr, meaning “Empire of the Aryans.” The Achaemenid Empire was, however, far larger than modern？day Iran. Its provinces or satrapies, with their archaic names, correspond to some modern headline-making regions in the Middle East and central Asia. Babylon, for example, which the Achaemenids conquered in 539 BC, stood in what is now Iraq, approximately sixty miles from Baghdad. Sogdiana was located in modern Uzbekistan. And Bactria, so significant in the Achaemenid Empire, maps roughly onto present-day Afghanistan. (7)

A note about sources: The Achaemenid rulers left virtually no written histories of their own empire. The ancient Persians transmitted the triumphs and deeds of their kings primarily through oral traditions. The few written records we have from the Achaemenid kings consist principally of royal inscriptions―for example, Cyrus’s cylinder or Darius’s trilingual engravings on the cliffs of Behistun. Unfortunately, these inscriptions are not narrative accounts of actual events. Rather, they are abstract exaltations of royal power and virtue and more than a little propagandistic. Cyrus’s cylinder, for example, proclaims, “I am Cyrus, king of the universe, great king, mighty king, king of Babylon, king of Sumer and Akkad, king of the world quarters.” (8)

As a result, most of what we know about the Achaemenid Empire comes from a very limited number of Greek sources, including Xenophon’s Anabasis, Aeschylus's Persians, and, most important, Herodotus’s Histories. Most of these classical authors lived in the latter half of the Achaemenid period and presumably based their accounts in part on oral testimonies and Persian legends passed on over the years; here again, it may be difficult to separate historical fact from political propaganda.

Additionally, depending on the era, the Greeks were the enemies, subjects, or conquerors of the Persians. Thus, Greek authors were not necessarily the most impartial expositors of Persian history―imagine Saddam Hussein writing A History of the United States, 1990-2006. As a result, Greek references to Persians as “barbarians of Asia,” or the frequent Greek portrayals of the Achaemenid kings as decadent and gluttonous, should be taken with a grain of salt. An exceptional case may be Herodotus, who wrote about the Persians with such little hostility, relative to that of his contemporaries, that Plutarch accused him of being a “friend of the barbarians” (philobarbaros).9

In general, there are enough corroborating sources from different perspectives, often supported by archaeological evidence, to feel comfortable with most of the basic facts about the Achaemenid Empire. Where there are doubts, discrepancies, or differing interpretations among historians, I will point them out.


TOLERANCE AND THE RISE OF THE ACHAEMENID EMPIRE

The story of the Achaemenid Empire begins with C

In a little over two centuries, America has grown from a regional power to a superpower, and to what is today called a hyperpower. But can America retain its position as the world’s dominant power, or has it already begun to decline?

Historians have debated the rise and fall of empires for centuries. To date, however, no one has studied the far rarer phenomenon of hyperpowers―those few societies that amassed such extraordinary military and economic might that they essentially dominated the world.
Now, in this sweeping history of globally dominant empires, bestselling author Amy Chua explains how hyperpowers rise and why they fall. In a series of brilliantly focused chapters, Chua examines history’s hyperpowers―Persia, Rome, Tang China, the Mongols, the Dutch, the British, and the United States―and reveals the reasons behind their success, as well as the roots of their ultimate demise.
Chua’s unprecedented study reveals a fascinating historical pattern. For all their differences, she argues, every one of these world-dominant powers was, at least by the standards of its time, extraordinarily pluralistic and tolerant. Each one succeeded by harnessing the skills and energies of individuals from very different backgrounds, and by attracting and exploiting highly talented groups that were excluded in other societies. Thus Rome allowed Africans, Spaniards, and Gauls alike to rise to the highest echelons of power, while the “barbarian” Mongols conquered their vast domains only because they practiced an ethnic and religious tolerance unheard of in their time. In contrast,

Nazi Germany and imperial Japan, while wielding great power, failed to attain global dominance as a direct result of their racial and religious intolerance.
But Chua also uncovers a great historical irony: in virtually every instance, multicultural tolerance eventually sowed the seeds of decline, and diversity became a liability, triggering conflict, hatred, and violence.
The United States is the quintessential example of a power that rose to global dominance through tolerance and diversity. The secret to America’s success has always been its unsurpassed ability to attract enterprising immigrants. Today, however, concerns about outsourcing and uncontrolled illegal immigration are producing a backlash against our tradition of cultural openness. Has America finally reached a “tipping point”? Have we gone too far in the direction of diversity and tolerance to maintain cohesion and unity? Will we be overtaken by rising powers like China, the EU or even India?
Chua shows why American power may have already exceeded its limits and why it may be in our interest to retreat from our go-it-alone approach and promote a new multilateralism in both domestic and foreign affairs.