Just finished another Amy Chua book this week as I find some of her work in the past interesting and easy to read. She thinks that the reason why some historical world powers achieved their dominance and size basically was their willingness to be tolerant of diversity and that they eventually fall when they become intolerant. Amy goes through many past empires and say a few that lasted with legacy had the gift of extraordinary tolerance and a ability to harness the skills of peoples from divergent backgrounds.
The book"Day of Empire" is basically the thoughts and suggestion is that past empires became powerful through accepting multiculturalism. She seems to thinks that World War II empires of Germany and Japan failed because they were intolerant instead of their actual downfall from enemies with more man power and technology to wage wars and prevent their rise. Modern warfare is something that Romans,Mongols,Persians,tang China,Spain, and the Dutch didn't have to worry about. even the rise of the British and Americans basically were aided by domination of other lands where the natives didn't have equal access to weaponry. Assimilation of diverse people into the corrupt Roman lifestyle should to be surprising and is really to a sign of any tolerance. 
There is no doubt that empires such as the Persian or Romans made use of successful smart individuals of a small portion of the conquered people. However any people of the conquered that didn't have anything to offer in way of crucial skills were treated as ants by these conquerors and this is something that Amy either glances over nor gives a shit about. Given some of her recent views about how some groups are smarter than others it is not shocking that Amy would defend some of these past empires for their inclusively of the successful one percent of the conquered races of these empires.Amy seems to ignore the slaughter and intolerance Romans showed little mercy to their enemies and hardly a past empire that committed these brutal acts can ever be considered tolerant of anything. A empire that laws some to be subdued and used to abuse tier own people and be elites is a common theme MS Chua should of written more about in this book. There are some knowledgeable s information on Tang China and Amy compares the higher tolerance compared to the Islamic and Byzantine empires at the same time. Eventually the Han Chinese became bigots to the rest of the world and the tension and hatred of Turkic Muslims is still felt today in the Western provinces of China today. Basically the tolerance that is brought up by these former empires basically was used to exploit their positions and make their absolute rule easier and less costly. Amy talks about Americas rise as a hyper power and the challengers to be the worlds leaders in the future which undoubtedly will be either China or India.she thinks the European Union will fail because of its inability to give up national sovereignty and accept hoards of Muslims and educated Indian engineers. Anyway this is a good fast read and takes an interesting view of perspectives to a wide range successes and failures of diverse historical empires from the Mongols to the Mughals.
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