经济学人下载:魔鬼和那湾蔚蓝深邃的海

Marshalling a vast array of intricate detail, Mr Abulafia takes the reader from the age of the Phoenicians and Trojans to the advent of modern tourism. He distinguishes epochs when the sea was kept safe by a single power—the Roman empire, the Royal Navy or the Sixth Fleet—from periods of intense strategic conflict and from times of free-for-all between small powers, slave-traders and pirates.

通过梳理大量错综复杂的细枝末节，阿布拉菲亚先生在本书中带领读者从腓尼基人和特洛伊人的时代一直走到现代旅游业的出现。他把这段历史中各个单一强权独自统治地中海并维护其安宁的时代——无论是罗马帝国、英国皇家海军还是美国第六舰队——跟那些存在着激烈的战略冲突的时代以及各小国，甚至是奴隶贩子和海盗对这片海域展开开放式争夺的时代区分开来。

In most phases of history, Mr Abulafia shows, the Mediterranean was a net exporter of economic and cultural might. In the Middle Ages, for example, city-states in present-day Italy or Spain traded from a position of strength with north European suppliers of textiles and north African sellers of gold. They also established bases in the eastern Mediterranean, exploiting Byzantium’s decline, gaining access to merchandise from farther east. In the modern era the Suez Canal reduced the role of the sea to that of thoroughfare, between the Atlantic and Asia.

阿布拉菲亚先生在书中阐明，地中海地区在大多数的历史阶段都是经济力和文化力的净输出地。比如，在中世纪，坐落于今天的意大利和西班牙境内的那些城市国家在跟欧洲北部地区（注意：作者这里指的不是今天的北欧国家，这是的“北”是相对于意大利和西班牙而言的，指的是当时的尼德兰、佛兰德斯和英格兰等地区——译者注）的纺织品供货商和北非地区的黄金贩子交易的时候是处于强势地位的。他们还趁着拜占庭帝国的衰落在地中海东部地区建立了一些基地，从而获得了从东方世界输入的商品。历史进入现代后，苏伊士运河的开凿降低了地中海的地位，使其更多扮演了连接亚洲和大西洋的海上走廊的角色。

Mr Abulafia enjoys using arcane detail to bolster his arguments. Explaining the rise of Barcelona as a naval power to rival Italian city-states like Pisa and Genoa, he notes the balanced diet of Catalan sailors: more biscuit and cheese than the Venetians, less wine than the Neapolitans, but plenty of garlic, onions and spices to make hard biscuits more palatable.

阿布拉菲亚先生喜欢用鲜为人知的历史细节来支持他的论点。在解释巴塞罗那何以崛起成为一个能与比萨和热那亚等意大利城市国家抗衡的海上强权时，他提到了加泰罗尼亚水兵们平衡的膳食结构：他们比威尼斯人吃更多的饼干和奶酪，但喝酒却比那不勒斯人少，同时他们吃大量的大蒜、洋葱和调味品使得生硬的饼干吃起来更加可口。

Choosing his superlatives carefully, he concludes that the Mediterranean has been “the most vigorous place of interaction between different societies on the face of this planet”. Indeed, its role in the history of civilisation has “far surpassed [that of] any other expanse of sea”. But as the book makes clear, these interactions were not always mutually beneficial.

这位在使用最高级的时候慎之又慎的作者认为地中海一直是“这个星球上不同社会之间相互影响最为积极活跃的地区”。的确，地中海在人类文明史上的地位已经“远远超越了任何其它海域（的地位）”。但是就像本书阐明的那样，这些相互影响并不总是对双方都有益的。