Day of Empire Read online

  But ancient Rome had an advantage: It could make the people it conquered and dominated part of the Roman Empire. Defeated peoples from Britain to Eastern Europe to West Africa all became subjects—and in the case of male elites, citizens—of the greatest power on earth. During the Italian Renaissance, Niccolò Machiavelli admiringly observed that Rome had “ruined her neighbors” and created a world empire by “freely admitting strangers to her privileges and honours.”18

  The United States is not Rome. The first mature democracy to become a world-dominant power, the United States does not try or want to make foreign populations its subjects—and certainly not its citizens. When the U.S. government speaks of bringing democracy to the Middle East, it is not contemplating Iraqis or Syrians voting in the next U.S. presidential election. The ironic result of the United States’ dual role as global hyperpower and self-proclaimed beacon of freedom and democracy is rampant anti-Americanism. Today, the United States faces billions of people around the world, most of them poor, who want to be like Americans but don't want to be under America's thumb; who want to dress and live like Americans but are denied visas by the U.S. embassy; who are told over and over that America stands for freedom but see only the American pursuit of self-interest.

  Those calling for an American empire constantly invoke the glory and enduring success of the Pax Romana. But as I hope to show, in its relationship to the world it dominates, modern America is perversely far more like the “barbaric” Mongol Empire than it is like Rome.

  Social scientists have a concept called selection bias, which basically means “proving” one's thesis by picking out cases that support it and ignoring the ones that don't. I tried to avoid selection bias by casting the widest possible net and considering every society in history that could even arguably have qualified as a world-dominant power.

  As a result, some of my examples of world-dominant powers— the Dutch Republic, for example—were not as clearly world-dominant as others, or arguably were not world-dominant at all. To reiterate, however, in my selection of world-dominant powers, I have consciously tried to be overinclusive rather than underinclu-sive, and it actually supports my thesis that the empires that came closest to world dominance also track the pattern I describe: tolerance on the rise to power and intolerance in decline.

  The rest of this book is organized as follows. Part One addresses the premodern hyperpowers. Chapter One begins with Achaemenid Persia and ends with Alexander the Great. Chapter Two is about Imperial Rome. Chapter Three discusses China's Tang Empire, which in its heyday was by far the greatest power in the world and, unlike the better-known Ming dynasty, had openly hegemonic ambitions. Chapter Four examines the Great Mongol Empire.

  Between antiquity and the modern era came the rise of the great religious empires: those of Christendom and Islam. Unlike the syncretic religions of antiquity, which assumed that different peoples would worship different gods, both Christianity and Islam insisted that there was one—and only one—true faith. In this sense, Christianity and Islam were inherently intolerant in a way that ancient religions were not. Whether or not sanctioned by scripture, the result was a millennium of religious strife, bloodshed, and war.

  Part Two is about the enlightening of tolerance. In the West, the era of religious wars slowly gave way to the Enlightenment. For the Enlightenment thinkers, tolerance was not merely instrumental; it was a moral virtue, even a duty. Persecution was not only bad strategy; it violated the freedom of conscience. Thus was born the modern ideal of tolerance: no longer merely the prerogative of calculating monarchs, but a fundamental element of the “rights of man.” The Enlightenment ended up both underwriting and undermining a new age of empires. On one hand, the new toleration would make possible the first hyperpowers Europe had seen in over a thousand years; on the other hand, with its principles of universal equality, fundamental rights, and individual liberty, the Enlightenment would make all future empires profoundly problematic.

  Chapter Five takes a short look at medieval Spain as a representative pre-Enlightenment European power. Spain was remarkable for its religious diversity, including in its population significant numbers of Muslims and Jews. Yet Spain could not resist the zealotry of the time; religious pogroms, expulsions, and inquisitorial persecution wracked Spanish society, undercutting its prosperity and making Spain a vivid illustration of how Christian intolerance prohibited the great European powers of the medieval era from attaining global dominance.

  Chapter Six is about the unlikely rise of the tiny Dutch Republic, the first European state to embrace the new tolerance. In 1579, while the rest of Europe was still engulfed in fanaticism, the Dutch Republic enshrined the principle of religious freedom in its founding charter. Almost overnight, it became a magnet for religious refugees, not just from Spain but from all over Europe. As a direct result, it became far and away the richest nation on earth, with by far the most upward mobility, enjoying “productive, commercial, and financial superiority” and the “rare condition” of global “hegemony.”19

  Chapter Seven turns away from the West, for a comparative glimpse at three empires that never achieved world dominance: China's Ming empire, as well as two great Islamic empires, the Ottomans and the Mughals. Returning to the West, Chapter Eight discusses Great Britain, which succeeded the Dutch Republic as Europe's most tolerant society and came to rule “a vaster Empire than has ever been”20—an empire that, if one includes the oceans dominated by the British navy, covered an astonishing 70 percent of the earth's surface. But as they encountered Africans, Asians, and other nonwhites, the British hit the limit of their tolerance. However “enlightened” the British imagined themselves to be, they never overcame their colonial racism, which proved to be a profoundly destructive force throughout the empire.

  Part Three takes us from the fall of the British Empire to the modern day. Chapter Nine discusses the role of tolerance in the transformation of the United States from upstart colony to global hyperpower. Chapter Ten discusses two great powers built on principles of intolerance and ethnic purity: Nazi Germany and imperial Japan. Chapter Eleven analyzes the United States’ main rivals today.

  Chapter Twelve applies the lessons of the past to the twenty-first century, specifically addressing the debate about an American empire. For two and a half millennia, every hyperpower in history has faced the same two formidable challenges: maintaining the tolerance that fueled its rise and forging common bonds capable of securing the loyalty or at least quiescence of the peoples it dominates. Over the last several years, America's efforts to assert its world-dominant power abroad have exacerbated both these challenges. Ironically, it may be that America can remain a hyperpower only if it stops trying to be one.

  THE TOLERANCE

  OF BARBARIANS

  ONE

  The Great Persian Empire from Cyrus to Alexander

  When Cyrus entered Babylon in 539 B.C., the world was old. More significant, the world knew its antiquity. Its scholars had compiled long dynastic lists, and simple addition appeared to prove that kings whose monuments were still visible had ruled more than four millenniums before.

  — A. T. OLMSTEAD, History of the Persian Empire, 1948

  I should be glad, Onesicritus, to come back to life for a little while after my death to discover how men read these present events then.

  — ALEXANDER THE GREAT, QUOTED BY LUCIEN IN

  How to Write History, CIRCA AD 40

  The word paradise is Persian in origin. Old Persian had a term pairidaeza, which the Greeks rendered as paradeisos, referring to the fabulous royal parks and pleasure gardens of the Achaemenids—the kings of the mighty Persian Empire who ruled from roughly 559 to 330 BC. Indeed, the earliest Greek translators of the Old Testament used this term for the Garden of Eden and the afterlife, as if to suggest that the Achaemenid paradises were as close as man had come to replicating heaven on earth.1

  The Achaemenid paradises were famous throughout the ancient world. Their riches, it was said, includ
ed every tree bearing every fruit known to man, the most fragrant and dazzling flowers that grew anywhere from Libya to India, and exotic animals from the farthest reaches of an empire covering more than two million square miles. There were Parthian camels, Assyrian rams, Armenian horses, Cappadocian mules, Nubian giraffes, Indian elephants, Lydian ibex, Babylonian buffalo, and the most ferocious lions, bulls, and wild beasts from throughout the kingdom. Not just formal gardens, the paradises were also centers for horticultural experimentation, zoological parks, and hunting reserves. A royal hunt in a single paradise could yield four thousand head.2

  In this respect, the Achaemenid paradises were a living metaphor for the Achaemenid Empire as a whole. Founded around 559 BC by Cyrus the Great and spanning more than two centuries, the Achaemenid Persian Empire was, even by today's standards, one of the most culturally diverse and religiously open empires in history. The Achaemenid kings actively recruited the most talented artisans, craftsmen, laborers, and warriors from throughout the empire. In 500 BC, Persepolis was home to Greek doctors, Elamite scribes, Lydian woodworkers, Ionian stonecutters, and Sardian smiths. Similarly, the Achaemenid military drew its colossal strength from Median commanders, Phoenician sailors, Libyan charioteers, Cissian cavalrymen, and hundreds of thousands of foot soldiers from Ethiopia, Bactria, Sogdiana, and elsewhere in the empire.3

  For most Westerners, antiquity refers solely to classical Greece and Rome. But the Achaemenid Empire was the first hyperpower in world history, governing a territory larger than all the ancient empires, including even Rome's. Achaemenid Persia dwarfed—in fact conquered and annexed—the great kingdoms of Assyria, Babylonia, and Egypt, ruling at its peak as many as 42 million people, nearly a third of the world's total population.4 How could a relatively small number of Persians govern so vast a territory and population? This chapter will suggest that tolerance was critical: first in allowing the Persians to establish their world-dominant empire, then in helping them maintain it.

  WHERE IS BACTRIA, AND SHOULD WE

  BELIEVE HERODOTUS?

  As early as 5000 BC, the great plateau that is now modern Iran was already populated. Its early inhabitants had some curious family practices:

  [A]mong the Derbices, men older than seventy were killed and eaten by their kinsfolk, and old women were strangled and buried…Among the Caspians, who gave their name to the sea formerly called Hyrcanian, those over seventy were starved. Corpses were exposed in a desert place and observed. If carried from the bier by vultures, the dead were considered most fortunate, less so if taken by wild beasts or dogs; but it was the height of misfortune if the bodies remained untouched…[F]arther east, equally disgusting practices continued until Alexander's invasion. The sick and aged were thrown while still alive to waiting dogs.5

  Starting in the second millennium BC, these friendly peoples succumbed to the Aryan conquest. The term “Aryan,” despite the Nazis’ later twisting, is essentially a linguistic designation referring to a variety of peoples who spoke eastern Indo-European languages or dialects and migrated from southern Russia and central Asia into India, Mesopotamia, and the Iranian plateau. How the Aryans overpowered the preexisting societies is unclear, but within a few hundred years they had established kingdoms in eponymous territories throughout the region: for example, the Medes in Media, the Bactrians in Bactria, and the Persians in Persis or Parsa.6

  The Persians themselves consisted of a number of tribes and clans, of which the Achaemenids were one. In time, the Achaemenids would extend Persian rule to the other Aryan kingdoms. Indeed the name Iran derives from the Persian word Eränsahr, meaning “Empire of the Aryans.” The Achaemenid Empire was, however, far larger than modern-day Iran. Its provinces or satrapies, with their archaic names, correspond to some modern headline-making regions in the Middle East and central Asia. Babylon, for example, which the Achaemenids conquered in 539 BC, stood in what is now Iraq, approximately sixty miles from Baghdad. Sogdiana was located in modern Uzbekistan. And Bac-tria, so significant in the Achaemenid Empire, maps roughly onto present-day Afghanistan.7

  A note about sources: The Achaemenid rulers left virtually no written histories of their own empire. The ancient Persians transmitted the triumphs and deeds of their kings primarily through oral traditions. The few written records we have from the Achaemenid kings consist principally of royal inscriptions—for example, Cyrus's cylinder or Darius's trilingual engravings on the cliffs of Behistun. Unfortunately, these inscriptions are not narrative accounts of actual events. Rather, they are abstract exaltations of royal power and virtue and more than a little propagandistic. Cyrus's cylinder, for example, proclaims, “I am Cyrus, king of the universe, great king, mighty king, king of Babylon, king of Sumer and Akkad, king of the world quarters.”8

  As a result, most of what we know about the Achaemenid Empire comes from a very limited number of Greek sources, including Xenophon's Anabasis, Aeschylus's Persians, and, most important, Herodotus's Histories. Most of these classical authors lived in the latter half of the Achaemenid period and presumably based their accounts in part on oral testimonies and Persian legends passed on over the years; here again, it may be difficult to separate historical fact from political propaganda.

  Additionally, depending on the era, the Greeks were the enemies, subjects, or conquerors of the Persians. Thus, Greek authors were not necessarily the most impartial expositors of Persian history—imagine Saddam Hussein writing A History of the United States, 1990-2006. As a result, Greek references to Persians as “barbarians of Asia,” or the frequent Greek portrayals of the Achaemenid kings as decadent and gluttonous, should be taken with a grain of salt. An exceptional case may be Herodotus, who wrote about the Persians with such little hostility, relative to that of his contemporaries, that Plutarch accused him of being a “friend of the barbarians” (philobarbaros).9

  In general, there are enough corroborating sources from different perspectives, often supported by archaeological evidence, to feel comfortable with most of the basic facts about the Achaemenid Empire. Where there are doubts, discrepancies, or differing interpretations among historians, I will point them out.

  TOLERANCE AND THE RISE OF THE

  ACHAEMENID EMPIRE

  The story of the Achaemenid Empire begins with Cyrus the Great. Cyrus's origins are shrouded in legend. According to the version favored by Herodotus, Cyrus was the grandson of Astyages, the weak final ruler of the powerful kingdom of Media. When Cyrus was born—to Astyages's daughter and her husband, Cambyses, a Persian from the Achaemenid clan—Astyages ordered his newborn grandson killed, after an ominous dream suggesting that Cyrus would one day depose him.

  The plan failed, as these types of plans always do. Harpagos, whom Astyages had ordered to kill Cyrus, gave the baby instead to a shepherd, who raised Cyrus as his own. Astyages eventually discovered that Harpagos had deceived him and that Cyrus was alive, but his magi advisors reinterpreted his dream so that Astyages feared Cyrus no longer. Cyrus was sent to Persia, where he rejoined his Achaemenid family. Harpagos, however, did not fare as well: Astyages invited him to a banquet, where he served him the flesh of his own son mixed with lamb.10

  A different version of the Cyrus legend has him abandoned by the shepherd but saved and suckled in the wild by a female dog. Yet another says that his mother was a goatherd and his father a Persian bandit. However he got there, Cyrus had by 559 BC become a vassal king under Astyages in Persia. A few years later, Cyrus led a rebellion against Astyages. Assisting him were a number of Persian tribes and clans, most prominently the Achaeme-nids, as well as the same Harpagos who had been served the unappetizing dinner.

  In 550 BC, Cyrus defeated Astyages and took over the Median kingdom and its claims to Assyria, Mesopotamia, Syria, Armenia, and Cappadocia. By 539, Cyrus had conquered both the Lydian kingdom (located in modern-day Turkey) and the formidable neo-Babylonian kingdom. He was now ruler of the largest empire that had ever existed.”

  The strategy Cyrus employed was essentially “decapi
tation”— but of leadership, not of the leader's head. After conquering each new kingdom, Cyrus simply removed the local ruler, typically sparing his life and allowing him to live in luxury, and replaced him with a satrap who governed the territory, or satrapy. The satrap was almost always a member of the Persian aristocracy. Beneath the satrap, however, Cyrus interfered very little with the daily lives of his subject peoples, leaving them their gods and their disparate cultures. He embraced linguistic diversity, including as languages used for official administrative purposes in the empire Aramaic, Elamite, Babylonian, Egyptian, Greek, Lydian, and Lycian. He codified and enforced local laws, keeping in place local authority structures. It was not unusual for high-ranking officials in conquered territories to retain their official positions under Achaeme-nid rule. Babylonian records also show that the same families often dominated business before and after Cyrus's conquest.12

  Perhaps most striking was Cyrus's religious tolerance—his legendary willingness to honor the temples, cults, and local gods of the peoples he conquered. In a sense, it was easier in the ancient world for rulers to allow the worship of multiple deities. Unlike Judaism or Christianity, the religions of the ancient Near East were syncretic. They assumed the existence of many gods, each guarding its own city, people, or aspects of life. But this syncretic world-view did not necessarily imply that one people had to respect or tolerate the religious beliefs of others. On the contrary, many conquering kings of antiquity liked to demonstrate the superiority of their own gods—and assert their own power—precisely by suppressing and destroying rival cults.