|
England
英格兰
A once and future realm 永恒王国
The making of the English was a funny business
英格兰人的形成是一件有趣的事情
Dec 13th 2014 | From the print edition of The Economist
译者：老狒狒
The English and Their History. By Robert Tombs. Allen Lane; 1,012 pages. To be published in America by Knopf in February
《英格兰人和他们的历史》 作者：罗伯特·托姆斯，艾伦莱恩出版社出版，1012页。美国版将由克诺夫出版社明年2月出版。
WHAT does it mean to be English? There was a time when one of the perks of Englishness was that you did not have to think too hard about such a question. That time has long gone. The recent referendum on Scottish independence inevitably raised the question of English as well as Scottish identity (and, to a lesser degree, Welsh and Irish). The huge immigration of the past two decades raises the same question in all sorts of complicated ways: about one in nine Britons and one in three Londoners was born overseas. The UK Independence Party, which is really an English national party, will most likely set the tone of politics in the run-up to next year's general election.
生为英格兰人意味着什么？曾经有这么一个时期，英格兰人的一个殊荣就是不必对这个问题想破了脑袋。不过，那个时期已经走远了。前些日子的苏格兰独立公投在把苏格兰人的身份问题摆上桌面的同时，也让英格兰人的身份问题（以及较不严重的威尔士人和爱尔兰人的身份问题）浮出了水面。过去20年的移民大潮以及其复杂的方式所带来的是同样的问题。大约每9个英国人和每3个伦敦人中，就有1人生于海外。英国独立党，这个真正的英格兰民族政党，将最有可能设定明年大选前奏曲的政治调门。
England is one of the few nations without a state: English people cheer forlornly for England in the World Cup but are citizens of the United Kingdom. The boundaries between “Britishness” and “Englishness” are vague: English people are by nature amphibious—you cannot be English without also being British. But the distinctions are nevertheless real. The English would never order a British breakfast or misremember “England expects” as “Britain expects”.
英格兰是少有的几个没有国家的民族之一：在世界杯上无助地为英格兰队加油的英格兰人不过是联合王国的民。“英国”和“英格兰”之间的界限是模糊的。英格兰人生而就有两个身份——不可能在不是英国人的情况下成为英格兰人。但是，区别是真实存在的。英格兰人绝不会点一份英国早餐，绝不会错把“英格兰人希望”误认为是“英国人希望”。
The Act of Union in 1707, which linked England with Scotland and created the United Kingdom, did not create a federal state with new political institutions separate from and above those of England. Rather it created, in Robert Tombs's words, a pantomime horse, with England providing the front legs, setting the common direction in domestic, foreign and imperial matters, and the back legs following, sometimes reluctantly, along.
1707年《联合法案》将英格兰和苏格兰连在了一起，造出了联合王国。但是，并没有创立一个新的政治制度与之迥异并高于英格兰政治制度的联邦国家。相反，用罗伯特·托姆斯的话来说就是，这个法案创造了一匹由英格兰充当前后腿的“舞台马”，一边把握着内政外交和帝国事务的大方向，一边又在后面拖后腿，而且还时常不那么心甘情愿。
“The English and Their History” is the perfect starting-point for anyone who wants to grapple with the complexity of the English question. Mr Tombs has marinated himself in the secondary literature. And he writes beautifully; there isn't a lazy sentence in this text. Mr Tombs's achievement is made all the more remarkable by the fact that he is the leading professor of French history at Cambridge: the guy who is supposed to explain the country's troublesome neighbour to England's future rulers rather than decipher the English to themselves and the world.
《英格兰人及其历史》是想要弄清英格兰问题复杂性之人的完美起点。托姆斯皓首穷经，终成此书。他文笔优美，书中没有一个偷懒的句子。这一成就还因为他是剑桥大学的法国史首席教授而锦上添花。也就是说，作为一个本应向英格兰的未来君主解释他们那个麻烦不断的邻居的伙计，现在反而是在向自己和世界解码英格兰人。
Mr Tombs errs on occasion. He gallops through the Middle Ages and strolls through the Blair years, relying too much on recent historians at the expense of their often wiser predecessors. He is so relentlessly reasonable that you want him sometimes to bare his teeth. But these are minor quibbles compared with his achievement. He not only draws the broad outline of English history with panache, he illustrates it with a remarkable collection of facts. Who knew that, in the 1880s, the English each used more than 14 pounds of soap a year whereas a French person used only six? Or that King George IV had eight boxing champions as pages at his coronation? Or that Friedrich Engels's “Condition of the English Working Class”, which was written in the 1840s, did not come out in English until 1892? He also provides fascinating discussions on what might be termed the art of memory: how the English have interpreted various historic moments—particularly the Norman conquest and the English civil war—and how they have used those moments to construct their national identity.
托姆斯时常犯错。在论及中古时代时，匆匆而过；写到布莱尔时代时，逡巡不前。他过于依赖当代历史学家，而牺牲了那些经常是更加睿智的前辈。他不偏不倚，一碗水端平，以致读者都想让他有时亮出自己的看法。但是，同他的成就相比，这不过是些瑕疵而已。他不仅用宏大的叙述勾勒出英格兰历史的大轮廓，还用一些令人印象深刻的事实解释了这样的历史。倘若不是托姆斯的这些解释，谁能知道：在19世纪80年代时，英格兰人平均每人每年要用去超过14磅的肥皂，而法国人是6磅呢？谁能知道，英王乔治四世即位大典上的卫士中有8位是拳击冠军呢？谁能知道， 弗里德里希·恩格斯写于19世纪40年代的《英格兰工人阶级现状》直到1892年才有英文版呢？他还就什么可称之为记忆艺术提供了一些吸引人的讨论。比如说，英格兰人是如何解读不同的历史时刻的呢？尤其是诺曼征服和英格兰内战的呢？他们是如何利用这些历史时刻去建构民族身份的呢？
What is that identity? The basic answer is that to be English is to be heir to an extraordinary history. England is arguably the world's oldest nation state—it existed as a nation before nationalism existed as a notion—and it boasts some of the oldest institutions. Parliament, the monarchy, trial by jury, the law courts: all can claim deep roots in the Middle Ages. Britain is a relative newcomer by comparison.
这是一种什么样的身份呢？基本的回答就是：成为英格兰人意味着成为一个特殊历史的后代。英格兰或许是世界上最古老的民族国家，她作为一个民族的存在先于民族主义作为一种观念而存在；而且她是某些最古老制度的力行者。议会、君主制、陪审团制度、法庭。所有这一切都可以自称是深深地扎根于英格兰的中古时代。与之相较，大不列颠是一个后来者。
England's history is as remarkable as it is old. England has not been subjugated since 1066. It has not been torn apart by civil war since the mid-17th century. Eleven people died in England's notorious Peterloo massacre; 10,000 died in the Paris Commune. Yet this peaceable kingdom has been remarkably successful in projecting its power abroad. By the mid-19th century it ruled a quarter of the world's population, using some brutality (its navy forced the Chinese to import opium) but mostly light-touch imperialism. In the late 19th century the Indian civil service employed no more than 2,000 people, fewer than the number who work today for Ofsted, the schools inspectorate.
英格兰历史有着别人没有的特点。自1066年以来，英格兰就一直没有被征服过。自17世纪中期以来，英格兰始终未出现内战而使之四分五裂。英格兰臭名昭著的彼得卢大屠杀的死亡人数是11人；而死于巴黎公社的却高达10000人。然而，这个和平的王国始终都能够非常成功地向海外投射力量。到19世纪中期，她统治了世界四分之一的人口，虽然使用了一些残暴的手段（海军曾强迫中国人进口鸦片），但大多数是柔性的帝国主义策略。19世纪末期，印度的文官系统雇佣的人数还不到2000人，这一数字远远少于为当今的学校监管机构——教育标准办公室工作的人数。
England's long history inevitably complicates the notion of Englishness. Whenever you think you have found the essence of the English it changes before your eyes. The Victorians thought it lay in Protestantism. England is now one of the most secular countries in the world. The post-war generation thought they found it in the stiff upper-lip. Princess Diana's death saw grown men blubbing like schoolgirls. England has sometimes been one of the world's most prudish countries, as in the mid-17th and mid-19th centuries, and sometimes one of the most debauched, as in the mid-18th and today. For most of its history England was one of the most decentralised and voluntaristic countries in the world—with self-governing cities, powerful local governments, volunteers keeping the show on the road. Now, it is one of the most centralised and bureaucratic: the proportion of Britain's public spending controlled by the centre is roughly twice that in France, Italy and Japan, and more than three times that in Germany.
英格兰的悠久历史不可避免地会让“英格兰人”这一概念复杂难解。每当你自以为找到了英格兰的精华之所在之时，这种精华会在你眼前变来变去。在维多利亚时代，英格兰人认为这种精华在于新教之中。如今，英格兰是世界上最世俗的国家之一。二战后，英格兰人人自以为在不露声色之中找到了它。但是，黛安娜王妃之死却让人们发现，再拘谨的成年人也会像小女生那样哭成泪人。英格兰时而是世界上最清心寡欲的国家之一，如17、19世纪中期；时而又是世界上最声色犬马的国家之一，如18世纪中期和现在。在其历史的大部分时间中，英格兰曾是世界上权力最为分散又最自治的国家之一，有着自治的城市、强大的地方政府和指明方向的自愿者；如今，她是世界上最中央集权化和最官僚的国家之一，中央政府掌控的英国公共开支比例大约2倍于法国、意大利和日本，3倍于德国。
But some things might surely be described as basic to the national character: a willingness to prick pomposity, distrust for grand theoretical schemes, an instinctive enthusiasm for globalisation, an ability to balance tradition with change or Establishment frippery with Nonconformist efficiency, a fondness for compromise but a willingness to avoid fudging when necessary. England's position as part of an island surely explains a lot of this: the sea simultaneously provides what Shakespeare called “a moat defensive” against the continent and a highway to the rest of the world. So does England's enthusiasm for creating self-governing corporations like Mr Tombs's Cambridge College, St John's. Where else would a professional historian of France have the freedom to write a huge history of England and the capacity to express that history in readable English? Mr Tombs describes his book as “a brick for our common house”. It is a splendid brick—and one that deserves a place on every educated Englander's bedside table.
但是，有些许东西或许真得可称之为英格兰民族性格之根本。它们是：戳破虚假表象的意愿、对于宏大的纸上谈兵的不信任、发自内心的对于全球化的热情、用变化去平衡贸易或者是用积极求变代替墨守成规的能力、对于妥协但不是在必要时有意回避的喜好。确切地说，这是岛国地理使然。海洋所提供的正是莎士比亚所说的那种“漂浮的防御”，一方面可以防御欧洲大陆，另一方面又是通往世界各地的高速公路。英格兰人对于创建像托姆斯的剑桥大学圣约翰学院这类自治企业的热情也是如此。除了在这样的企业中，哪里的法国史教授拥有写作一部宏大的英格兰史的自由呢？哪里的法国史教授拥有用通俗易懂的英语去阐释英格兰历史的能力呢？在托姆斯看来，这本书是“我们共有房屋的一块砖”。只是，这是一块靓丽的砖，一块在每一个有教养的英格兰人的床头橱拥有一席之地的砖。
From the print edition: Books and arts
|
