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Tolerance is Key for Dominance
“It is another wonderful book written by Amy Chua. The central thesis of the book is that a country has to be tolerant in order to reach global dominance. However, tolerance is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for becoming a dominant empire. The other conditions could include geography, large population, natural resources, leadership, etc.
An amazon user wrote this on 2009-12-20.
I completely agree with the fact that in order to be dominant a country has to be tolerant. What separates a dominant country from others is its access to top talent in technology, science, military, trade, business, and other areas of human activities. Historically, none of the dominant countries had a monopoly on the top human capital. In order to become dominant, societies had to attract and motivate the world's best and brightest people. These people would contribute to their societies to the maximum of their abilities only if they felt that the societies valued them despite the fact that these people had customs and traditions different from those of the core ethnic groups.
Fear was another alternative for motivating people. But as history demonstrated time and again, it could motivate people only for relatively short periods of time. As soon as people had a chance to escape from this "motivator" they would do it by seceding from the empires, by defecting from them, or simply by intentionally failing to reach their full potential in order not to attract attention of the authorities.
Tolerance is important not only for building dominant empires but also for building great companies, sports teams, and other organizations. Just take a look at some of the "dominant" teams in soccer, the most popular global sport. In addition to players representing host countries, the best teams include players from all continents but Antarctica. For example, AC Milan, Manchester United and Barcelona were recent winners of the UEFA (European) Champions League, one of the most prestigious competitions in the soccer world. These teams had 8, 12 and 8 foreign players, respectively, among 18 players selected for the final games. These players would not have joined the teams unless they felt that they would be accepted there.
The same is true for the business world. Most globally "dominant" companies often have at least several foreign managers, who have skills complementary to those of managers from the host countries. For example, Intel Corporation, a dominant producer of microprocessors, has senior managers who came not only from the United States, but also from India, Israel and the United Kingdom.
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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 6 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.”
