评论
打印
The world in 1913
1913年的世界
The year before the sky fell in
天塌之前的平静之年
1913: In Search of the World Before the Great War.By Charles Emmerson.
《1913年—一战之前的世界研究》查尔斯艾默生著
VIEWED from the capitals of Western Europe, the world looked pretty good in 1913. There were many, it is true, who heard rumblings of war; but this was so often the case in Europe, even after two decades of peace. The Economist was not alarmed. In June 1913 it described the recent entente cordiale between Britain and France as “the expression of tendencies which are slowly but surely making war between the civilised communities of the world an impossibility.”
从西欧大都市人们的视角来看，1913年的世界形势一派大好。确实有许多人听到了战争的叫嚣，但这在欧洲太普遍了，即使是在已经度过了二十年的和平期之后。《经济学人》杂志并没有觉察到战争的预警，1913年6月，它把英法两国最近签署的《英法协约》描述成了“对一种虽然缓慢但不可阻挡的趋势的表达—世界文明国度之间的战争是不可能爆发的。”
We got that wrong. Yet the coming slaughter, which would leave 35m dead or wounded, was not inevitable. Europe was not only peaceful but also richer, healthier and arguably more stable than it had ever been. It was also more interconnected. Kaiser Wilhelm II, King George V and Tsar Nicholas II were cousins and socialised together. The latter two monarchs looked very much alike, and the societies they presided over were also close kin.
我们对形势判断错误。随后的大屠杀导致3500万人口死亡或受伤，但这并不是不可避免。欧洲不仅比以往任何时候更加和平，而且更加富裕、更加健康，甚至按说是比以往更加稳定。各国之间联系更加紧密，威廉二世、乔治五世、尼古拉二世是堂表兄弟，相互往来密切。乔治五世与尼古拉二世长相酷似，他们所统治的国家也关系紧密。
A hybridised elite travelled the continent, patronising its hybridised music and art. A swelling European middle-class went shopping for the same luxuries in London as in Vienna. And Europe's workers at least had the consolation of socialism—as preached by the 553 delegates from 23 countries who gathered in Switzerland in November 1912 to rededicate themselves to peace. Despite expressions of nationalist fervour, in Europe a multi-tiered continental identity was emerging.
一个有多国身份背景的精英人士在欧洲大陆旅行，为有多国风情的音乐与艺术提供赞助。人数不断增长的欧洲中产阶层选购相同的奢侈品，不论是在伦敦还是在维也纳。欧洲的工人得到了社会主义承诺的慰藉，至少国际会议的代表这样宣称—23个国家的553名代表于1912年11月齐聚瑞士，声称要再次献身于世界和平。尽管仍有种族主义的狂热呼声，但是一个多层次的欧陆统一体逐渐呈现。
Charles Emmerson, a young British historian who has previously written a fine study of the Arctic, provides a grand tour of Europe at this fateful time—and then proceeds to Detroit, Buenos Aires, Tehran, Bombay and Tokyo, to 23 cities in all. With barely a nod to the impending calamity, he aims not to explain what caused or was lost to the war, but to retrieve from the partial glare of hindsight the world in which it erupted.
英国的年轻历史学家查尔斯艾默生之前曾写过一部有关北极地区的很好的书籍，他在这个重大时刻游历欧洲，接着继续游历了底特律、布宜诺斯艾利斯、德黑兰、孟买、东京等共23个城市。他只是简要提及了即将发生的大灾难，因为他的目的不是解释战争的起因或损失，而是要通过事后的审视与觉悟，认识灾难爆发之时的世界。
This is no modest undertaking. Mr Emmerson draws from a wide range of sources, including memoirs, billboards and newspapers, to recreate a year that was fairly uneventful. 1913 saw the opening of Stravinsky's “The Rite of Spring” and New York overtake London as the world's busiest port; it was a caesura before great events. Yet Mr Emmerson makes no apology for the geopolitical verisimilitude he describes. Not unlike Marcel Proust's “In Search of Lost Time”, the first instalments of which were published in 1913, his narrative finds coherence in the unremarkable. It can similarly drag; but what emerges is a rich portrait and an important set of ideas.
这可不是简单的工作。艾默生要大范围的查阅资料，包括回忆录、布告板、报纸，这样才能在作品中重现太平无事的1913年。这一年，史特拉文斯基的《春之祭》首次公演，纽约超过伦敦，成为全世界最繁忙的港口城市。这是重大事件之前的宁静。艾默生先生没有为他所描述的真实的地缘政治辩护。马赛尔普鲁斯特的《追忆似水年华》第一部于1913年问世，与这部小说不同，艾默生在平凡的叙述中讲求连贯一致。这其中也会有类似的拖拉冗长，但最终曾现出来的是多姿多彩的描述，是一连串的重要思想。
Humanity was less shaped by the Great War than is often supposed. Rather, the world of 1913 was quite like that of 2013: modern, substantially urbanised and, even as Woodrow Wilson set about slashing import tariffs, thriving on global trade. The report of a bad harvest in Canada could mean a fall on the London stockmarket the next day, and the arrangement of imports of Russian wheat by the end of the week. The European empires augmented these linkages; advertisements in one London paper recommended holidays in Sudan, with travel by “express steamers and sleepcar trains-de-luxe”. Yet challenges to colonial rule in India, South Africa and elsewhere, were becoming louder, partly due to the same global forces.
人性并没有像人们通常所想的那样，由于一战而产生巨大的改变。相反，1913年的世界非常类似2013年的世界：它摩登现代，基本实现了城市化，尽管伍德罗?威尔逊严厉抨击进口关税，但世界经济繁荣发展。加拿大粮食歉收的报道会带来第二天伦敦股票市场的股票下跌，到该周周末会安排进口沙俄小麦。伦敦的一家报纸刊登广告，推荐乘坐“特快汽船、特快豪华卧铺列车”前往苏丹旅行。在印度、南非及其它地方，对殖民统治的反对之声越来越强烈，这部分是由于相同的国际力量。
Though some features of the world in 1913 seem strange—including the riches of Argentina—most are familiar. Yet with that comes a troubling corollary. In the current testing of European unity, the reassertion of the nation state and insecurity engendered by rising powers, the world in 2013 looks a bit discomfitingly like that of 1913.
虽然1913年世界存在的一些特征似乎很奇怪—这包括阿根廷的富裕—但大部分特征都是人们所熟悉的。随之而来的是一种令人感到困恼的推断。目前是对欧洲统一体的测验，是对民族独立的重新坚持，是对大国崛起造成的不安全感的再次断言，这个过程中，2013年的世界与1913年的世界颇有几分类似，另人感到不安。
