The author Amy Chua shows to the reader the different empires and how they expanded and fell. She explains in each chapter how tolerance is the key to successes for every hyper power.
She argues that each empire or dynasty was dominant in their own world. Basically she wants to explain to us the readers’ how to prevent the horrible history that the hyper powers did . If the United States did that it would destroy Americas hyper power . The first hegemon is the empire of the Persians ,which is the “first” hyper power.
The Persian empire ruled roughly 559to 330 BC.The first king was Cyrus he was very clever with his words and how he was with his people. Darius the “great” did a lot of financing with the empire that strengthened the Persian economy. The emperor Xerxes was the one who made the empire fall his govern time was called the “Despotic” Reign (485-465 BC), the next ruler of Persia would be Alexander “the great” .
He had a different perspective than the last kings but he respected Cyrus . This was the start of the Greeks. The Persian respected the religious practices of other people in their society. The first kings tolerated everything because that was the key to succeed and grow the empire.Darius contributed to build Persepolis. He also set a currency and taxed everybody.
Some people would pay him not in money but in different goods. Most of the emperors had their group of elite s that gave advice to the emperors how to govern their empire. The roman empire was a very important time in history . According to Chua she states that the achaemenid empire was better than the roman. the achaemenid empire was all about wars but the roman were smart about everything they were idealist.
The empire started in 753 BC by Romulus. The ruler Trajan was from the origin of Spain his mother was Spanish father was roman.Mostly many rulers were not roman anybody with a education could be a emperor. He established a program that lend money to the farmers and conquered some land. Rome alliance a lot and that put them into power more and grew their economy.
The social structure of Rome was ironic they stereotyped people but they were not racist ? They thought that the way to success and keep the roman empire going was to accept people. More people they had more power they would gain. Religion played a good role in the empire falling due to intolerance. The Christian were hated by the Romans and Jews because the religion was spreading all over the empire.
The political system in Rome was aristocratic the richest would govern the empire regularly . Their economy was based on slave labor agriculture in the Mediterranean region was their major income. The farmers would have surpluses from their crops so the government was in charged of it just like today in America. The Chinese empires were very intolerant but in some ways tolerant . China was considered warring states until the great first emperor Qin shi huangdi Unified china in 221 BC. He ordered the building of the great wall of china .
The wall would protect the empire of Huns that would raid them .He also implied a uniformed written script. He was a very violent and cruel emperor he killed anyone who deceived him. When the Han Dynasty fell and fragmented the empire. Tai Zong convinced his father to go against the sui’s and his mischievous plan conceived. He was considered a a really good leader.
Later china has a female emperor the widow of the emperor Gao zong. ,Empress Wu . The only reason they accepted her was because she was the reincarnation of a passed monk. Huang min was the most tolerant of all the emperors ,china was all about foreign things. By this time Buddhism was a really great part of china.
An Lushun rebellion was all about military power. China later wanted the Chinese culture to be restored so purity had to be done. The emperor Zong targeted a lot of foreign religions’ and cultures. Buddhism was the only religion that survived the purification.
A regional commander planed to take out the zong family and he killed all of the boys till the last boy emperor. Their political system were aristocratic and sometimes autocratic mostly aristocratic. Taxes were implied to the citizens to build the wall . The women married for economic reasons . One emperor gave his wife’s family a lot of political power just for love
