鴉片戰(zhàn)爭與中國屈辱歷史的開端

The Opium War and the End of China’s Last Golden Age

By Stephen R. Platt

Illustrated. 556 pp. Alfred A. Knopf. $35.

《帝國的黃昏：鴉片戰(zhàn)爭及中國最后的黃金時代的終結(jié)》The Opium War and the End of China’s Last Golden Age

裴士鋒(Stephen R. Platt)著

有插圖。556頁。阿爾弗雷德·A·克諾夫(Alfred A. Knopf)出版。售價35美元。

A century before its finest hour, the British Empire went through what may have been its darkest. After China declared a war on drugs in 1839, confiscating well over 1,000 tons of opium from dealers — mostly British — in Canton (modern Guangzhou), the cartels pressured their government back in London into demanding that Beijing repay them the full street value of their narcotics. When the emperor refused, a squadron of Britain’s most up-to-date warships arrived in 1840 to brush aside the Celestial Empire’s junks and blast its coastal towns into ruins. British troops slaughtered civilians up and down China’s coast. “Many most barbarous things occurred disgraceful to our men,” one officer confessed. Critics compared the opium trade to the recently banned slave trade. The London government almost fell. In China, the Opium War gradually came to be seen as the beginning of a century of humiliations at Western hands.

在最鼎盛時期前的一個世紀，大英帝國經(jīng)歷了可能是該國歷史上最黑暗的一個階段。1839年，中國對鴉片宣戰(zhàn)，在廣州從大多數(shù)來自英國的交易商那里收繳超過1000噸鴉片后，卡特爾向倫敦的政府施壓，要求北京以黑市價格全額對毒品作出賠償。當中國皇帝拒絕后，英國一批最為先進的戰(zhàn)艦在1840年擊潰天朝的帆船，將海邊城鎮(zhèn)炸為廢墟。英國部隊在中國海岸線沿岸屠殺平民。“我們的人做出了許多最為野蠻、可恥的行徑，”一名軍官坦誠。批評人士將鴉片戰(zhàn)爭比作當時新被禁止的奴隸貿(mào)易。倫敦政府幾乎崩潰。在中國，鴉片戰(zhàn)爭漸漸被人們視為在西方列強手中一個世紀屈辱的開端。

As the West’s entanglement with China has deepened since the 1990s, so too has fascination with the Opium War, and every China-watcher will want to read Stephen R. Platt’s fascinating and beautifully constructed new book. It is a worthy prequel to “Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom,” his fine account of the Taiping Rebellion, which claimed an estimated 20 million Chinese lives between 1850 and 1864.

隨著西方與中國自1990年代以來的糾葛加深，外界對鴉片戰(zhàn)爭也愈發(fā)癡迷，每個中國觀察家都會想閱讀裴士鋒引人入勝、文筆優(yōu)美的新書。這本書是他對太平天國運動的出色陳述——《天國之秋》(Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom)值得一讀的前傳。太平天國運動在1850年至1864年之間，奪取了約2000萬中國人的生命。

Unlike most accounts of the Opium War, “Imperial Twilight” focuses not on the conflict itself but on its background, going back to the Chinese decision in the 1750s to restrict Western trade to the single port of Canton. The usual highlights, like Lord Macartney’s trade embassy of 1793, are all here, but so too is a parade of less well-known but equally important episodes and a procession of gloriously eccentric characters. At one end, we have obsessive adventurers like Thomas Manning, who sneaked across the border from India into Tibet in 1811 armed with little more than a waist-length, jet-black beard and a dyspeptic Chinese interpreter — and yet managed to engineer an audience with the 6-year-old Dalai Lama. Manning was overwhelmed: “His beautiful mouth” was “perpetually unbending into a graceful smile. … I could have wept through strangeness of sensation. … I was absorbed in reflections when I got home.” At the other end are the red-in-tooth-and-claw British and American merchants in Canton who, forbidden to bring Western women with them, reverted to childhood, playing leapfrog at all hours of day and night.

與大多數(shù)對鴉片戰(zhàn)爭的描述不同，《帝國的黃昏》關(guān)注的不是這場沖突本身，還聚焦在背景上，將故事拉回了中國在1750年代將西方貿(mào)易限制在廣州一個港口的決定。例如馬戛爾尼勛爵(Lord Macartney)1793年的貿(mào)易使團這樣常見的重要事件都在書中可以找到，但其中也展示了一些較為不為人知，但同樣重要的事件，以及一批享有盛名的古怪人物。一方面，書里有一些令人著迷的冒險家，像是托馬斯·曼寧(Thomas Manning)，他在1811年偷偷從印度邊境進入西藏，身上的裝備只有長及腰間的黑色胡須，以及一位壞脾氣的中國翻譯——然而卻設法謁見了年僅6歲的達賴喇嘛。曼寧徹底被折服了：“他那美麗的嘴唇”是“永遠都彎成了優(yōu)雅微笑。……我能因為奇異感而哭泣。……我回到家里后深深沉浸在了自我反省中。”另一方面，書中還寫到了廣州“紅牙血爪”的英國和美國商人，他們被禁止攜帶西方女性隨行，于是回到了孩童時的狀態(tài)，日日夜夜、無時無刻不在玩耍跳蛙游戲。

Some of Platt’s villains, like the Scottish drug lords William Jardine and James Matheson, are worthy of soap opera. Others, Britain’s Prime Minister Lord Melbourne, for example, take the banality of evil to new depths. Worlds apart from Rufus Sewell’s urbane, ironic portrayal of Melbourne in the PBS television series “Victoria,” Platt’s Lord M unleashes the Opium War on China apparently with scarcely a second thought. There is pathos aplenty as Charles Elliot, the British superintendent of trade in Canton, falls apart under Chinese pressure in 1839, eventually beginning to doubt his own sanity. Good men do bad things, roads to hell are paved with good intentions and golden opportunities are missed. In short, “Imperial Twilight” is a ripping yarn.

裴士鋒書中的反派角色，例如蘇格蘭毒梟威廉·渣甸(William Jardine)和馬地臣(James Matheson)的故事堪稱肥皂劇。其他人，例如英國首相墨爾本勛爵(Lord Melbourne)讓平庸之惡達到了新的深度。裴士鋒的M勛爵與盧夫斯·塞維爾(Rufus Sewell)在PBS電視劇集《維多利亞》(Victoria)中對墨爾本勛爵溫文爾雅、充滿諷刺性的呈現(xiàn)存在天壤之別，在書中，M勛爵顯然是不假思索地對中國發(fā)動了鴉片戰(zhàn)爭。書中還有英國時任駐廣州商務監(jiān)督查理·義律(Charles Elliot)這樣的悲情人物，1839年，他在中國的施壓下崩潰，最終開始對自己的神志產(chǎn)生懷疑。好人做壞事，通往地獄的道路由好意鋪就，人們卻錯失了黃金機會。簡而言之，《帝國的黃昏》是一個絕妙的故事。

And yet Platt’s story also has a thesis, even if he makes it explicit only in his final few pages. “It is important to remember just how arbitrary and unexpected the outcome of this era really was,” he says. The war was “not part of some long-term British imperial plan. … Neither did it result from some inevitable clash of civilizations.” Rather, “Imperial Twilight” is overflowing with individuals precisely because it is the individuals who drove everything. In the age-old debate over the historical roles of Very Important Persons and Vast Impersonal Forces, Platt comes down firmly on the side of the people.

然而，裴士鋒的故事也有論點，盡管到了最后幾頁才明確闡明。“這個時代的結(jié)果是有多么隨意和出人意料，記住這一點是很重要的，”他說。鴉片戰(zhàn)爭“不是大英帝國的某種長期計劃。……也不是某些文化沖突不可避免的結(jié)果。”相反，《帝國的黃昏》里面充滿了各個人物的詳細故事，是因為就是這些人推動了一切。在就“重要人物”和“巨大的超個人力量”的歷史作用所展開的古老辯論中，裴士鋒堅決地站在了人的這一邊。

“If Charles Elliot had not let his panic get the best of him when he so dramatically overreacted to Lin Zexu’s threats,” Platt speculates. “Or if Lin Zexu himself had been more open to working with, rather than against, Elliot; if they had cooperated on their shared interest in bringing the British opium smugglers under control. Or if just five members of the House of Commons had voted differently in the early hours of April 10, 1840 — we might be looking back on very different lessons from this era.” And just in case we misunderstand, Platt closes with a coda on the business relationship between the Chinese merchant Houqua and the American John Murray Forbes, which “had always been informal, based on trust and affection.” Everything could have been different — and better.

“如果義律沒有被恐慌打敗，在面對林則徐的威脅時做出如此之大的過激反應，”裴士鋒推測道。“或者，如果林則徐本人更愿意與義律合作，而不是反對他;如果他們基于共同利益展開合作，控制英國鴉片走私者。或者如果只有五位下議院議員在1840年4月10日早晨投了不同的票——如今我們回顧那個時代的時候，便有可能得到非常不同的教訓。”為了避免我們產(chǎn)生誤解，裴士鋒用中國商人伍浩官和美國人約翰·默里·福布斯(John Murray Forbes)之間的商業(yè)關(guān)系作為總結(jié)，“一直是非正式的，基于信任和感情。”一切本可能有所不同——而且本可能更好。

“Imperial Twilight” is a masterpiece of the “If Only” school of history, which holds out the tantalizing prospect of a world that, with the right choices, could be made perfect. Edmund Morgan’s magnificent “American Slavery, American Freedom” is a classic of this kind, insistently hinting that if a few people in 17th-century Virginia had chosen differently, the cancers of slavery and racism would not have entered America’s bloodstream. So too, in a different way, is Niall Ferguson’s “The Pity of War,” arguing that Britain could have avoided entering World War I — in which case there would have been a European war but not a global one, the British Empire would have survived, and fascism and Communism would never have taken off.

《帝國的黃昏》是“要是……就好了”(If Only)歷史學派的杰作，這個學派帶來了一個誘人的世界景象：如果做出正確的選擇，就可以做到完美。埃德蒙·摩根(Edmund Morgan)的巨著《美國的奴隸制，美國的自由》(American Slavery,American Freedom)是這類作品中的經(jīng)典，它堅定地表示，如果17世紀弗吉尼亞州的一些人做出了不同的選擇，奴隸制與種族主義的癌癥就不會進入美國的血液。奈爾·弗格森(Niall Ferguson)的《戰(zhàn)爭的憐憫》(The Pity of War)有異曲同工之妙，它認為英國本可以避免參加第一次世界大戰(zhàn)——在這種情況下，會發(fā)生一場歐洲戰(zhàn)爭，但不是全球戰(zhàn)爭，大英帝國可以幸存，法西斯主義和共產(chǎn)主義永遠不會興起。

In the right hands, like Platt’s, this produces superb history, explaining why the actors acted as they did while also showing that they did not have to do so — and could in fact have made a better world. And yet too often one ends up feeling that the authors’ own narratives do not quite bear out their theory, and that the Very Important Persons’ choices are always constrained by Vast Impersonal Forces that they rarely understand, let alone control.

裴士鋒這樣出色的作者可以運用這種方法寫出極好的史書，解釋為什么歷史舞臺上的演員會有那樣的表現(xiàn)，同時也證明他們其實不是必須這樣做——事實上，他們本可以創(chuàng)造一個更美好的世界。然而，人們常常會覺得，作者的敘述并沒有完全證實他們的理論，而且關(guān)鍵歷史人物的選擇總是受到巨大客觀力量的限制，他們幾乎無法理解這種力量，更不用說去控制它了。

In this case, Britain’s industrial revolution was transforming the balance of global power in the early 19th century. It was not inevitable that Britons would use violence to exploit this, but the revolution constantly threw up situations where violence was an option. We might think of each crisis as a roll of the dice. In 1802, war between Britain and France almost spilled over into China. In 1808, British marines seized Macao, but withdrew peacefully. Tempers flared again in 1814, and in 1816 the H.M.S. Alceste fired on a Chinese fort, killing a reported 47 soldiers. None of these incidents had anything to do with opium, but in 1831 the drug dealers tried to provoke a war when Chinese officials trampled their shrub garden and insulted a portrait of King George IV.

在鴉片戰(zhàn)爭的例子中，當時，英國工業(yè)革命正在改變19世紀初全球力量的平衡。英國人動用暴力從中獲利，這種事并非不可避免，但革命會不斷制造令暴力成為可選手段的情況。我們可以把每次危機都看做是在擲骰子。1802年，英法之間的戰(zhàn)爭幾乎蔓延到中國。1808年，英國海軍奪取了澳門，但又和平撤出。1814年，緊張局勢再度升溫，1816年，英國船只亞嘑士地號(H.M.S.Alceste)向中國的一座要塞開火，據(jù)稱導致47名士兵喪生。這些事件都與鴉片沒有任何關(guān)系，但是在1831年，中國官員踩踏英國毒販的灌木花園并侮辱喬治四世國王(George IV)的肖像后，毒販們試圖挑起戰(zhàn)爭。

It was not written in stone that Britain and China would get the particular war they did. Cooler heads could have prevailed in 1839, although by the same token, hotter heads could have prevailed at any time since 1802. And even if 1839 had passed off peacefully, crises would have just kept coming. British merchants would have kept pushing to open China (in the late 1850s, they did bring on a second war). Compromises would not have satisfied the Jardines and Mathesons, and the likelihood that no British government would ever have decided that violence was its least bad option seems vanishingly small.

中英兩國的開戰(zhàn)不是必然的。1839年，本可能是冷靜的頭腦占上風;盡管基于同樣的道理，自1802年以來，任何時候都可能有更狂熱的頭腦占上風。即使1839年在和平中度過，此后危機也會不斷發(fā)生。英國商人一直在推動中國的開放(在1850年代后期，他們確實引發(fā)了第二次戰(zhàn)爭)。妥協(xié)不會讓渣甸和馬地臣們心滿意足，并且英國難免總會出現(xiàn)一個政府認為，暴力是糟糕的選擇中最好的一個。

Stephen Platt has written an enthralling account of the run-up to war between Britain and China during a century in which wealth and power were shifting inexorably from East to West. But if this history holds a lesson today — as wealth and power shift equally inexorably back from West to East — it is surely the same one that Karl Marx identified just a decade after the Opium War, that men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please.

在一個財富和權(quán)力不可阻擋地從東方轉(zhuǎn)向西方的世紀里，英中兩國走向了戰(zhàn)爭，裴士鋒對此做了動人的描述。但是，如果在這個財富和權(quán)力同樣不可避免地從西方轉(zhuǎn)向東方的時代，這段歷史還能給人們提供什么教訓，那肯定是卡爾·馬克思(Karl Marx)在鴉片戰(zhàn)爭十年后做出的結(jié)論——歷史是人類自己創(chuàng)造的，但他們并不能隨心所欲地創(chuàng)造歷史。