经济学人下载: 未上锁的世界(1)

Books & arts 

文艺板块

Globalisation 

全球化

Ports in a storm 

风暴中的港口

Unlocking the World. By John Darwin. 

《打开世界》。作者：约翰·达尔文。

In liverpool, a French observer marvelled in 1907, “one feels one is in contact with America, Australia, west Africa, the Far East, at the same time as with Germany and France. There one is at the commercial centre of the world.” 

1907年，一位法国观察家在利物浦惊叹道；“一个人感觉自己在与美国、澳大利亚、西非、远东地区接触，同时也与德国和法国有联系。这个人所在之处就是世界商业中心。”

This remark neatly captures the subject of John Darwin’s new book. He tracks a century of what he calls “steam globalisation”, when steamships and railways drove a dramatic acceleration in the exchange of goods, people, ideas and money across the world. Faster and cheaper transport seemed to shrink the globe; the volume of world trade and foreign investment soared. Mr Darwin shows how major port cities were both products of these transformations and agents of change. In the great opening up of the world that is his subject, the port cities were the hinges. 

这句话巧妙地抓住了约翰·达尔文新书的主题。他追踪了长达一个世纪的所谓的“蒸汽全球化”，当时蒸汽船和铁路加剧推动了世界范围内货物、人员、思想和金钱的快速流动。更快、更便宜的交通运输似乎拉近了世界的距离；世界贸易和外国投资额猛增。达尔文先生展示了主要港口城市如何既是这些变革的产物，又是变革的推动者。在他所研究的世界大开放中，港口城市是枢纽。

The current era of globalisation, the author notes, is not unique but the latest in a series that have built on each other in a cumulative, though not neatly linear, fashion. In the mercantile system that sprang up in the wake of the voyages of Ibn Battuta, Christopher Columbus and Vasco da Gama, Asia was the world’s workshop and Europe relatively peripheral. 

作者指出，当前的全球化时代并不是独一无二的，而是一系列曾经的全球化变革在彼此的基础上相互累加（尽管不是恰好的线性累加）而形成的最新时代。在伊本·巴图塔、克里斯托弗·哥伦布和瓦斯科·达伽马航海后兴起的商业体系中，亚洲是世界工厂，而欧洲则相对处于外围。

Then coal, readily available in Europe, fuelled what historians have called the “Great Divergence” of the 18th century, whereby Europe (and later North America) came to dominate. By describing the evolution and sometimes decline of a number of major port cities, most compellingly London, Bombay, Singapore and New York, Mr Darwin shows how this process worked. 

当时，欧洲随处可见的煤炭，助长了历史学家所说的18世纪的“大分流”，欧洲（以及后来的北美）在这一时期占据了主导地位。通过描述一些主要港口城市的演变和有时的衰落，包括最具竞争力的是伦敦、孟买、新加坡和纽约，达尔文展示了这一过程是如何运作的。