经济学人下载:魔鬼和那湾蔚蓝深邃的海

The Mediterranean地中海

The devil and the deep blue sea
魔鬼和那湾蔚蓝深邃的海

History’s most important sea 最富有历史意义的海

May 5th 2011 | from the print edition

The Great Sea: A Human History of the Mediterranean. By David Abulafia. Allen Lane; 783 pages; £30. To be published in America in September by Oxford University Press; $34.95. Buy from Amazon.co.uk
《伟大的海：地中海的人文史》 大卫．阿布拉菲亚着。Allen Lane出版社出版，783页，定价：30英镑。将于今年九月在美国由牛津大学出版社出版，定价：34.95美元。

DAVID ABULAFIA’S marvellous history of the Mediterranean is an excellent corrective to oversimplified views of geopolitics. Some people home in on distinctive landmasses, an island such as Crete or a clear shape like Iberia or Anatolia, and assume these have long formed a single cultural or political space, embracing coast and interior, and different from places “across the water”. At the other extreme, romantic types regard a lake or sea as a friendly space where ideas, expertise and merchandise are traded to perpetual mutual advantage. The second view is the more likely. True, the various ports and shores of the Mediterranean influenced one another (if war is regarded as a form of influence), but the impact of hinterlands and of distant powers, like Russia and America, was also huge.

大卫．阿布拉菲亚所著的这本对地中海历史的杰出著述是对那些过分简单化的地缘政治观的绝好纠正。有些人将注意力集中于特定的地块，像是克里特岛这样的某个岛屿，抑或是诸如伊比利亚半岛或小亚细亚半岛等具有清晰轮廓的地理区域，并且主观臆断这些地方很久前就形成了单一的、包括海岸和内陆的、不同于“地中海对岸”那些地区的文化或政治空间。这是一个极端。而另一个极端则是那些饱受浪漫主义熏陶的人则把湖泊或海洋视为思想、技能和货物获得交流从而使交易双方都能恒久受益的宝域。后一种观点更接近现实。的确，地中海沿岸的诸多港口和海岸相互影响（如果战争也被视作一种影响的话），但是内陆地区和那些距离地中海路途遥远的大国，如俄国和美国，其影响力亦不可小觑。