Amy Chua: Frances foreign minister had just declared that the us was a hyperpower and the first

questions the question I got was how long are we going to stay at hyper power and Is china going to
overtake us, is EU going to overtake us so I decided to focus on hyper powers.

How long did it take you to write the book?

Amy Chua: Four or five years non stop.

I believe it after reading the book. You are a professor of law but this is really comparative history, a
very rich comparative history.

Amy Chua: Theres a theme in it, its about tolerance and that is something that we talked about in
the law and also, my field is really rule of law and law in developing countries nation building and
there is a nation building, an empire building question in the book as well.

Lets talk about what the book is telling us, what is a hyper power.

Amy Chua: A hyper power is first of all, a really rare thing. Its not just an empire, not just a
superpower, I am referring to these remarkably few societies in all of history that amassed such
extraordinary economic and military might that they basically towered over all their rivals and
essentially dominated the world so France Minister was the one that coined the term in 1999. He
declared that the United States has become the worlds single hyperpower dominant in all
categories economically militarily technologically and culturally. France is not going to have it. Just
to give you an example, the united States during the cold war was not a hyper power because back
then it had a formidable rival the former Soviet Union, of roughly comparable strength.

Its very important to understand that we are really talking about relative power at the time when
the hyper power existed.

Its unusual, the much more normal state of affairs in history is to have lots of a multipolar world, we
havev lots of states rising and falling they are battling wiwth each other. I discovered this in m
research, its really unusual to have a situation, the starts have to be aligned, where one power that
kind of towers over everybody else.

Tolerance also needs to be explained. We are obviously familiar with the term in todays world in
todays discourse but its not a term you normally would think of applying to, e.g. Genghis Khan.

I am glad you asked because to jump ahead a little bit, my thesis is that the one thread that links all
the hyper powers of history and they are not that many. Is that every hypoer power history, rose to
global dominance through tolerance. Tolerance was indispensable so I am using the term I dont
mean tolerance in the modern human ideal right sense. By tolerance, I dont mean equality or even
respect. Rather by tolerance, I just mean letting lots of different kinds of people. Even if you dont
particularly like them or respect them, live partcipiate prosper and rise in your society regardless of
ethnicity race nationality and even if its for instrumental reason, its a relative concept . in my book,
what matters is really just a nation is more tolerance than its rivals, not whether its tolerance in
somr sort of absolurte universal sense.

What I think you are suggesting especially In the early hyper powers is that tolerance is a key to the
power that gives us the hyper power.

Yes, it seems at first surprising but theres actually a really simple explanation. Basiccally, remember
my thesis my book is only about hyper powers. How do you beat world dominance. There are lots of
ways to achieve great world. But how do you dominate the world. The idea is that in order to
dominate the world, a s ociety has to be at the cutting edge frontier of the worlds technological
economic and military frontier. And you need in order to have that, tyou have got to be able to pull
in the worlds best and brighterst because at any gien point in history, the worlds most valuable
human capital whether in terms of intelligence or creativity drive, skills physical strength, the worlds
most valuable human capital is never going to be found within any one ethnic group or within any
one religion so to pull away from your rivals on a global scale, you have to be able to pull in the bests
and brightest from the world. In ancient times, it was really simple. This kind of strategic tolerance
was the only way you could build a huge military. If you limit your army to pure blooded Spartans,
your armies are going to be inherently limited in size. How many pure blooded Spartans are there?
But if you open up your military to warriors of any nationality or race, you can amass a really huge
military and thats what the committed Persians did and what Rome did.

Were you surprised when you find this, when you go back t the Persian Empire and find that Darius
was tolerant? Was this unexpected?

I was completely surprised. First of all, I think most of us in the united states. When we think of
antiquity, we think of Greece and Rome. I knew very little about the commended Persian Empire. It
was only when I was searching through history with research assistants, that I found the Persian
empire founded in 550 BBC by Cyrus the great. I had no idea that the kingdom totally ruled 1/3 of te
world population.(40 million). It swallowed up and just annexed the great kingdoms of Mestoptiema,
Syria, efypt, babayloina and the Greek city state and it was huge. I never really heard of it but again,
to be clear, its not that Darius the Great was tolerant in our human right sense. This man impaled
people and poke their eyes out. There were slaves, it was a very brutal society. I only mean,
tolerance in the sense that he let everybody into his military. He took craftsmen and warriors and
builders from eveyr parat of his kindom. And they basically amassed the largest war machine the
world has ever seen. In that part is sort of intuitive, it was surprising at first how else do you bubild
the biggest army.

Irs really the romans who go farthest to achieving hyperpower then and sort of addressing this
problem in a more substantial way. That is how you actually control theh large numbers of prople
that come under your domain right.

Hyper powers face special probbblems because they extend ehtir rech over so many diverse
populations. So starting with Persia, what I mean by tolerance is Darius the great aand Ctrus the
great build hse giant armies but they also really were religiously tolerant. Other rival kings, when
they conquer a land, they would sort of suppress local cults and they try to impose their own gods to
show their power. Cyrus the great very shrewdly, the Persians did the opposite, they actually
allowed local people to follow their own custom speak their own lanaugage worship their ow gods
and he embraced local gods because tthat gave him legitimacy so that kind of tolerance was one
way of making conquered people more compliant. They are less likely to rebl but Rome went so
much further in two ways. 1st, there was no ethnic ceiling in Rome. In Persia, all of the governors and
certainly, the people in the very highest position of authority, they were all Persian. Not so in Rome.
The Romans permitted educated men of any race or nationality to rise to the very highest position of
authority including the position of Emperror. E.g. Septimius severus was a north African. He was an
emperor. He was married to a Syrian, very colour blind. 2nd way that Rome was even more
masterfully tikertnt in this strategic way is that ROME MANAGED TO romanize all of these
conquered people., the Persians had a terrible time., they conquered people. The greeks still felt
greek the Egyptians still felt egypitan. They certainly didnt feel proud to be part of the Persian
empire. Thats why the empire uqicly kind of split apart. It was only military might that held it
together. Rome, by granting citizenship to Gauls and Britons and African made everybody feel roman
that was it was also sort of a form of assimilation accompanied y this kind of tolerance. Thats why
they lasted so long.

Reading t he book,m I had to recall what I had learnt in Latin, Super soon romanus I am a citizen of
Rome.

People said that from eveyr corner of the empire. Its absolutely fascinating . from north Africa
morocco, they felt it and they dressed like Romans., it was a great honour to be part of the empire.

If you were a citizen of Rome, there were limits to what the roman government could do to you. If in
our time, you couldnt be rendered because you had rights as a citizen of Rome.

Right, its both very modern and very pre modern. Its pre modern its important to remind
ourselves that this is antiquity. The romans kept many many slaves, woman didnt have any rights,
its a pre-modern society. The citizenship, those who got it, again was colourblind. They had lots of
rights, ot like those in the US consstitutions. The right not the be crucified, rights to hold property,
rights to make contract, rights to have almost like certain hearings before things could happen to
you.

One of the interesting parts o f the book for me was your consideration of the various Chinese
dynasties and one in particularly, actually confirmed the criteria that you hadesetablished. Talk a
little about that because most of the others were not that way.

I always grew up on thining that you know china is just all Han china. Its a quintessentially ethnically
defined country and throughout all of history, China was sthis barbarian vs Han Chinese thing has
been dominant. The great wall of china very symbolic closing china. We have enough people already,
keep the barbarians out. It turns out that the one dynasty that came closest to a hyper power, partly
because there were very waek other rivals, europre was nothing. At that time (7th century), it was
Tang/Tong DYNASTY CHINESE. But I think most americans dont know about, its not as famous as
the Ming/Ching but Tang Dynasty china was actually founded by somebody that by our standards
today was half Chinese. He was like half turikish, mpart barbarian from the norty. This was the
dynasty, I wwould say the only dynasty, where the emperor were openly hegemonic. They extended
their reach to Persia, basically in Veitnam. Tehey took over central asia. Thek key here is that they
redefined the Chinese kingdom. They took on sort of Turkish titles and Chinese titles. It was very
tolerant in the sense it was the most tolerant of foreigners. Turkish influences Perisna Arabic. These
are part of Chinese society. Xi an was the most cosmopolitan capital. If you go there noew, there are
mosques and chrisstian church. They have all kind of fifferent religion. That is fascinating. The
goalden age of