Day of Empire: How Hyperpowers Rise to Global Dominance--and Why They Fall

by: Amy Chua

Published by: Anchor Books

Reviewed by Muhammed Hassanali

In 1377 Ibn Khaldun finished writing Muqaddimah that outlines his reasons for the rise and decline of empires, and correctly states that the Muslim empire of his time was beginning its decline.

Day of Empire carries in the same tradition of outlining the reasons for an empire’s rise and its eventual decline. This book focuses on “hyperpowers” and defines one as that power which “clearly surpasses that of all its known contemporaneous rivals; it is not clearly inferior in economic or military strength to any other power on the planet; and it projects its power over so immense an area of the globe and over so immense a population that it breaks the bounds of mere local or even regional preeminence.” Entities become hyperpowers because of their “relative tolerance,” which “simply means letting very different kinds of people live, work, and prosper in your society – even if only for instrumental or strategic reasons.”

Next the book delves into the history of a selected group of seven empires to show how tolerance builds hyperpowers and how intolerance destroys them.

The application of hyperpower is vague enough that one may question why some of the empires mentioned deserve to be called hyperpowers while others do not (the book also discusses empires that “might have beens as far as hyperpowers go”). Similarly, the definition of “relativistic tolerance” can be interpreted broadly or narrowly making its application difficult. Considering the examples only raises more questions rather than provides clarity. One may question not only the rational of the inclusions but also that for exclusion. The book states, “I tried to avoid selection bias by…[xxxi]” but unfortunately falls into the very trap it hopes to avoid.

The discussion extends or narrows examples to show that in each hyperpower discussed there was a correlation between tolerance of other people and the rise (or fall) in hyperpower status. The issue is that the analysis is not complete and there isn’t a discussion on demonstrating that in this case correlation is indeed causation.

My main concern with Day of Empire is not that the historical details are sometimes incorrect, or that the case studies selective, or that the discussion is not fully reasoned. It is that the ideas of history presented are a little too simplistic, and therefore not representative in light of the empirical evidence.

Armchair Interviews agrees.