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Nice History, Mediocre Commentary
“ Amy Chu's virtue is simply that she is a good researcher in social sciences. She collects facts and gives them in an entertaining manner. Her fault is that she tries to be a commentator as well and does so in a clumsy manner. This can be seen in her other great work World On Fire.
An amazon user wrote this on 2009-09-25.
Her basic point is that empires are based on tolerance. Of course this does bear a remarkable suspicion of "being nice makes you rich". But at the same time it does have a point. Even conquerors do not rule totally without their subjects consent for it is to difficult, and obviously trading empires(as opposed to millitary ones)do not as someone has to buy from them. At the same time her point is hammered home a wee bit to hard. It doesn't address properly that tolerance might have philosophical limits(which are not the concern here) and prudential ones(which are). It does address that there must always be enough cohesion to balance a given states tolerance. However can seem that it does not address that well enough to my mind. Furthermore it does not seem to give proper attention to the point that tribalism is probably a stronger pull then Imperial Grandeur simply because most people like their cousins better then their Emperor. And of course the dark side of tribal instinct is intolerance. Finally it does not address the possibility that the reverse of Chu's theory is equally true: growth brings immigrants just as much as immigrants bring growth. In short her message is incoherant though not without good advice.
What is more interesting is the history which is well worth the time for their own sake. Chua has the love for rags to riches stories that she showed in World On Fire. She gives the fascinating tales of several obscure states(all empires were once obscure states) that rose to glory and the strategies they used to attain domination. She also gives stories of the interesting people that helped attain that rise. Finally she tells the weakness through which they fell.
One good point that was made toward the end was the point that commerce in modern times is a more reliable source of power then conquest. There is more then a little truth to that, although there have been commercial empires from time immemorial, perhaps before there were military ones. Be that as it may, the modern era has made the purse at least in some instances mightier then the sword.
In any case my estimate is that you should not read this story for political advice. It is not necessarily bad advice but it is somewhat shallow. Read this book to learn about and enjoy the past. Read it to find how different nations have risen to glory. And how they fell.
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1 of 3 members found this review helpful.
Another propaganda piece for HURTING Americans
“ Sad to say but I checked this out at my local library. I regret wasting my time reading it. An asian immigrant's child, who has a cushy job at Yale, tries to tell Americans to embrace multiculturalism. Her "facts" are not logical or convincing but self serving. I or any Americans I know do not long to be a citizen of a Hyperpower state. We want a Free, Peaceful, Harmonious homeland. If she really believes what she states perhaps she should be telling China to begin massive immigration. She could update her book for the many nations of latin america. Perhaps they will offer good jobs and rights to immigrants so they can benefit from this groundbreaking work. She also should look up the actual laws for immigration America had in effect from the early 1900s til 1965. This was also the time of American growth into a world leader. I could go on and argue with more facts about her book but why bother. If you buy multiculturalism then you don't need this book as it is a sad support for the idea. If you don't buy multiculturalism, then I am sure you will skip this propaganda. ”
An amazon user wrote this on 2009-09-06. -
1 of 1 members found this review helpful.
History with a broad brush
“Amy Chua has produced the most comprehensive analysis to date of the "problem of empire." In her sweeping work, she considers the empires of Persia, Genghis Khan, the Tang Dynasty, the British Empire, the Roman Empire, the Dutch Empire, Medieval Spain, Nazi Germany and the United States. Throughout, her emphasis is on how conquerors have treated the conquered - did they slaughter them? Enslave them? Assimilate them culturally, religiously and linguistically? Did they offer them citizenship? Positions in the government? Her overall argument is that how an empire treats its subjects ultimately determines the staying power of the empire - because the costs of subjugating those who don't WANT to become Roman, British or even American, may ultimately be too high and lead to an empire's internal and external collapse.
An amazon user wrote this on 2009-06-23.
It's a big story and might be useful for teaching undergraduates, giving them a feel for the different empires and allowing the professor to draw big sweeping generalizations. It's also useful for us solipsistic Americans to realize we're not the first empire, this isn't the first time globalization has occurred, and that ultimately there's really nothing THAT unique about the historic juncture at which we find ourselves.
I suppose in any analysis of this scope, it's easy to nitpick specific facts as being incorrect. In my case, I'm concerned by the way she depicts the Roman Empire as tolerant - certainly the early Christians along with a man from Nazareth would be likely to disagree. Certain military practices carried out by Roman soldiers (including salting the earth so as to destroy its utility for subsequent generations and taking foreign women as slaves into one's household) actually would be prosecutable as genocide today.
Throughout, she neglects the whole agent-structure problem. In other words, for each empire she depicts, if they WERE in fact "tolerant" , were they so because of some ideological or moral compulsion to be so, or because the circumstances necessitated it (from the beginning, were the costs of compelling assimilation simply too high)?
Also, sometimes I think she strives too hard to find differences between "good empire" and "bad empire" and in doing so, she neglects the entire literature critiquing colonialism. For example, she describes Romanization as a sort of benevolent program whereby citizenship and its benefits were "extended" to subject peoples - drawing a contrast between what the Chinese did, what the Romans did and what the Nazis did. Here, she admits that both the Chinese and the Romans regarded themselves as `superior' to other `inferior peoples' but maintains that there was something fundamentally different about THIS relationship than one based on Aryan supremacy. I'm not so sure about that.
I realize one can't do everything in a book, but overall I think her argument would have been more convincing had she couched it in less absolute terms.
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1 of 5 members found this review helpful.
A thesis unsupported
“This is a book that falls flat almost right away. The author (who is not an historian) wants to say that empires who embraced tolerance for "foreigners" within their borders were more sucessful than those that didn't. Okay so far. She also says that these same empires often failed due to too much tolerance/diversity. Here she runs into trouble due to lack of proof. For instance, she claims that Christians in the Roman Empire as they got more power & influence began to persecute minorities and thus led to the decline of empire. Unfort., Chua never says how this can be poroven, and never demonstrates how it occured. The book is quite simplistic this way in almost every chapter.
An amazon user wrote this on 2009-05-27.
In her intro, Amy tells how smart she is. Really. And she also says how disappointed her dad was when she came in second place in some school contest. One can only guess how disappointed he'd be if he read this.” -
2 of 2 members found this review helpful.
Adding perspective to how we look at culture
“Day of Empire is in fact a follow up but also contextual to Amy Chua's previous best-seller, World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability. Amy Chua, even in her titles, does not mince words. Her books are not easy reads, but very good ones for a couple of reasons: solid scholarship is presented in fluid language, and, she speaks from the belly of the beast--having served as a corporate law associate at a prestigious NY international law firm and pursued studies and taught in the most challenging environments.
An amazon user wrote this on 2009-03-15.
I was attracted to her work from a twofold perspective. First was my growing concern as an expatriate about the decline of the US image in the world at large and the implications of rhetoric about empire in the environment of the previous US administration. Secondly, I have been becoming exceedingly critical of the intercultural field of which I am a part in that it does not seem to identify well its own cultural values and limitations when it comes to dealing with culture in the larger social frameworks. These concerns have been accentuated by the current economic crises which seem to be, not in a small part generated by the US version of capitalism--the American Dream turned nightmare for many around the globe.
Perhaps I am expecting too much, but here the case in point is the fact that there is very little historical and social perspective on culture that emerges from or is embodied in our intercultural work. Most of what we do is based on the model of individual salvation (economic as well as spiritual) which undergirds the export and marketing of democracy and free enterprise beyond our shores. In many respects it is a US export. We train people to understand cultural values and acquire behaviors that will make them live, work and profit more successfully when immersed in alien social networks and making alien connections. The assumption is that if enough people know when and how to kiss, bow or shake hands, to tell a yes from a no, and process diverse body language, etc, everything will be hunky-dory (easy street) from there on in.
This is not a dishonorable objective, it is just too small. If the choice is between sink or swim in a foreign sea, there seems little time for creating the big picture understandings of how the undercurrents of culture function. Surrounding the islands of cultural values that we discover are the reefs and shoals of stories and the social structures that need to be navigated. Diving deeper into the dynamics of history and polity as explored in this book would help us better understand our work.
Chua examines empires in their historical succession from the Persians to the Americans, assigning the deepest analysis to those she defines as world-dominant or hyperpowers as distinguished from superpowers which coexist without full dominance, and nation states. Her list of hyperpowers also includes the Romans, Tang China, the Mongols, the Dutch and the British. While more briefly examining their policies, she gives shorter shrift to important but shorter reach empires such as Moorish Spain and the Ottomans, as well as to failed efforts such as the Third Reich and Imperial Japan.
Chua's thesis is relatively simple, and each case of empire is explored and analyzed in its light. Cultural diversity is the key element. Strategic ethnic and religious tolerance and managing diversity have been key to creating, building and sustaining empires, and diversity itself and its tolerance is ultimately implicated in their decline and dissolution. This is not the only factor in the rise and demise of empires. Military might, shifting demographics, plague, technology, degraded environments and incompetent leadership all play their part.
The management of diversity is not just the absence of hostility to and suppression of certain groups. As a matter of fact these are alive and well in all stories of empire--there have and continue to be underdogs. However, how the general strategies of toleration, assimilation, persecution and expulsion of minorities are used, when, where and with whom pretty much documents the trajectory of imperial ascendency and decline to this day. Imperial high points and golden ages occur when the brightest and best, of whatever origin, are accepted and, in the best sense of the word, exploited. Significant failures of inclusion ultimately lead to the dissolution of empire. Cracks in ascendancy most commonly begin to occur when stressors set in, initiating a slide of the ruling or dominant ethnicity to heightened ethnocentrism and suppression of the different. Beliefs and policies of racial purity or superiority break the often fragile connections with other groups. These then either actively rebel or support other elements in destroying the imperial hegemony.
Chua's metaphor for imperial sustainability is "glue." She asks what is the glue that held together the empires of the past and when did it come unstuck. Rome proffered citizenship until they felt that a flood of new peoples with intolerable, inassimilable habits arrived; the Dutch, and British (except toward Catholics) offered internal religious tolerance to refugees from Europe's religious wars. In the case of the Dutch, and then the British, internal tolerance was never transferred overseas to people of color and the Commonwealth was too little, too late. The American Dream attracted the brightest and the best from all over the world, witness the author's own accomplished family of Filipino Ethnic Chinese.
The future of the US hyperpower is the open question which the closing pages of the book address. She examines the case of superpowers like China and the European Union as candidates for hyperpower status. Each has assets and liabilities, as does the USA. Would the world be better off with multiple superpowers rather than a hyperpower? Only time will tell, but certainly the present crisis asks us to examine all cultural assumptions from a variety of perspectives, including, but far beyond personal cultural competence.
Amy Chua is also an excellent and prolific lecturer and many of her presentations are available in full on the Internet.”
