01. 商人和吏员

 1. 商人和吏员

1. Merchants and Mandarins

 

 

来自西方的商人在古代晚期就出现在中国沿海地区。

唐朝的早期记录显示，在番禺市，即现在的广州，以及在西方直到20世纪末的广州，都有一个世界性的人群。

在遥远的北京，统治者对其领地边缘的野蛮人采取了一种崇高的、往往是仁慈的看法。

形成了这样一种观念：那些被排除在天朝之外的人，一定是被迫到天朝来进行进贡和朝拜的仪式的。

 

Traders from the West appeared off the coasts of China in late antiquity. Early records from the Tang dynasty tell of a cosmopolitan throng in the city of Panyu, now known as Guangzhou, and in the West until the late twentieth century as Canton. In far-off Beijing, rulers took a lofty and often benevolent view of barbarians on the fringes of their domains. The notion developed that those excluded from the celestial realm must perforce have come to it to perform rituals of tribute and obeisance.

 

这段遥远的历史是值得研究的。

它的许多方面在一千多年的战争和革命中产生了共鸣，一直到现代。

它还表明，外国人来到十九世纪的中国，既不像历史学家有时描述的那样奇怪，也不像那样史无前例。

 

It is worth looking into this distant past. Many aspects of it resonate across more than a thousand years of war and revolution down to modern times. It also demonstrates that the arrival of foreigners in nineteenth-century China was neither as strange nor as unprecedented as is sometimes depicted by historians.

 

在公元618年至907年的唐朝，广州是中国南方城市中最繁荣的城市。

它是一个边陲小镇，位于野蛮人居住的荒野之中，瘟疫肆虐。

不过，在它周围，生长着大量的荔枝、橙子、香蕉和榕树。

在它的三面墙内，生活着20万人。

根据阿拉伯编年史家Abu Zayd al-Sirafi的说法，在第九世纪，其中约有12万人是外国商人。

他赞扬了中国的法治，并钦佩其国家财政的简单性，这种财政建立在人头税和统治者对盐和茶的垄断之上，他解释说，盐和茶的特性是许多疾病的解药。

阿布-扎伊德对中国人的制造天才感到惊叹。

他写道，在上帝的所有创造中，没有人比他们更擅长雕刻和工艺。

他们用象牙和金属、玉石、木材和贵重矿物进行加工。

 

In the Tang dynasty, between AD 618 and 907, Guangzhou was the most prosperous of the country’s southern cities. It was a frontier town, set amid wilderness populated by savages and rife with plague. Around it, though, grew plentiful lychees, oranges, bananas and banyans. Within its triple walls lived 200,000 people. In the ninth century some 120,000 of them were foreign merchants, according to the Arab chronicler Abu Zayd al-Sirafi. He praised China for its rule by law and admired the simplicity of its state finances, which were based on a poll tax and on the ruler’s monopoly of salt and tea, whose properties, he explained, were an antidote for many ills. Abu Zayd marvelled at the Chinese genius for manufacturing. In all of God’s creation, he wrote, no people were more skilled at engraving and craftsmanship. They worked in ivory and metal, jade and stone, wood and precious minerals.

 

然而，并不是所有的都是优雅和精致的。

艾布-扎伊德对中国人在排泄后不用水清洗而自行擦拭的习惯表示痛惜，而他挑剔的天性则对中国人在吃饭前不清洁双手和牙齿的做法感到反感。

至于中国人在月经期间与妇女发生性关系的做法，他们对有组织的卖淫活动的容忍，以及他们对寺庙中为此目的提供的有吸引力的男孩的倾向；对于这些，阿布-扎伊德沮丧地移开了眼睛。

Not all was grace and refinement, however. Abu Zayd deplored the Chinese habit of wiping themselves after defecation instead of washing with water, while his fastidious nature recoiled at their failure to clean their hands and teeth before eating. As for the Chinese practice of having sex with their women during menstruation, their tolerance of organised prostitution and, indeed, their propensity for attractive boys provided for that purpose in the temple quarters; from these Abu Zayd averted his eyes in dismay.

 

九世纪的广州充满了商业气息。

壮观的景象在等待着游客，街道上熙熙攘攘的陌生人说着陌生的语言。

有一种说法是，它的港口塞满了婆罗门人、波斯人和马来人的船只，数量之多难以计数，他们满载着芳香剂、毒品和珍贵物品。

他们带来了芬芳的热带木材和令人垂涎的药物，以换取丝绸、成箱的瓷器和奴隶。

中国进口了胶质树脂、檀香、龙脑香、樟脑、广藿香、丁香、乳香和没药。

中国商人为了南方的利润放弃了北方的舒适，他们的收入将总督提升到如此高的地位，以至于他带着六条牦牛尾巴，拥有与天子相称的威严和尊严。

行政部门由太监管理，其中一个太监是 "一个华丽的流氓"，而且贪污腐败盛行。

只要收入流向宫廷，加上发光的珍珠、翠鸟的羽毛和偶尔出现的活犀牛等奢侈品，这个城市就可以任凭自己的礼仪和习俗。

Ninth-century Guangzhou throbbed with commerce. Marvellous sights awaited its visitors and its streets bustled with strangers speaking strange tongues. One account spoke of its port jammed with the argosies of Brahmans, Persians and Malays to a number beyond reckoning, laden with aromatics, drugs and precious items. They brought fragrant tropical woods and much-coveted medicines to swap for bolts of silk, crates of chinaware and slaves. China imported gum resins, sandalwood, aloeswood, camphor, patchouli, cloves, frankincense and myrrh. Chinese businessmen gave up the comforts of the north for the profits of the south, their revenues raising the governor to such high estate that he carried six yak tails and possessed majesty and dignity worthy of the son of Heaven. The administration was managed by eunuchs, one of whom was ‘a gorgeous rascal’, and graft was rife. As long as revenues flowed to the court, along with luxuries such as luminous pearls, kingfisher feathers and the occasional live rhino, the city was left to its own manners and customs.

 

这里有一个外国区，阿拉伯人和僧伽罗人与 "白人野蛮人"、印度佛教徒（他们的寺院里藏着装饰有香水蓝莲花的水池）和来自呼罗珊的什叶派穆斯林混杂在一起，他们为了逃避迫害，在自己的清真寺里做礼拜。

所有的人都服从中午大市场的鼓声召唤，并在日落时分的鼓声中分散到自己的地区。

诗人张籍抱怨说，"夜市上的野蛮人的声音很嘈杂"。

当外国商人等待有利的风向起航回国时，他们被一个被选中的人统治着。

他们享有一些治外法权，但其中的细节却鲜为人知，而这些细节在后来的几个世纪中会成为争论的焦点。

 

There was a foreign quarter, where Arabs and Sinhalese mingled with ‘white barbarians’, Indian Buddhists (whose monasteries hid pools adorned with perfumed blue lotuses) and Shia Muslims from Khorasan, who had fled persecution and worshipped in their own mosque. All obeyed the summons of a drum to the great market at noon and dispersed to their own districts at the boom of the drum at sunset. The poet Chang Chi complained of ‘the babble of barbarian voices in the night markets’. While the foreign traders awaited favourable winds to set sail for home, they were ruled by a chosen worthy. They enjoyed some extraterritorial privileges, but few details of these, which would become contentious in later centuries, are known.

 

中国南方并不是一片平静的土地。

叛乱爆发，盗贼横行，谋杀案频发。

一艘马来船的船长谋杀了向他勒索钱财的总督陆元瑞。

758年，一伙阿拉伯和波斯海盗袭击了这座城市，洗劫了商店，烧毁了房屋，赶走了总督，然后逃到了海南南部岛屿的一个巢穴。

此后的半个世纪里，许多外国船只选择驶向河内而不是广州。

 

Southern China was not a land of calm content. Rebellions broke out, thieves roamed the streets, murders were common. The captain of a Malay vessel murdered the governor, Lu Yüan-jui, who had extorted money from him. In 758 a band of Arab and Persian pirates raided the city, looted its stores, burnt houses and drove out the governor before escaping to a lair on the southern island of Hainan. For half a century afterwards, many foreign ships chose to sail to Hanoi instead of Guangzhou.

 

唐朝时期也并非总是一个轻松的世界主义时代。

自836年起，广州总督陆贞发现外国人和中国人不分彼此地生活在一起，甚至通婚，感到非常震惊。

他制止了这种情况，并禁止外国人购买房屋。

一项诏书强迫突厥维吾尔族穆斯林在任何时候都要穿上他们独特的服装，他们被认为是放债的人，这让他们很反感。

在中国人的偏见分类法中，波斯人是富人，马来人是黑皮肤，因此是丑陋的，东南亚人是裸体的，是不道德的。

年轻的诗人在酒馆里偷看伊朗女服务员，文人欣赏来自中亚的竖琴手和舞者，但九世纪也是 "一个怀疑和迫害外国人的时代"。

Neither was the Tang period always a time of easy cosmopolitanism. Lu Chün, the governor of Guangzhou from 836, was scandalised to find foreigners and Chinese living unsegregated and even intermarrying. He put a stop to that and banned foreigners from buying houses. An imperial edict forced Turkic Uighur Muslims, who were resented as moneylenders, to wear their distinctive costumes at all times. In the taxonomy of Chinese prejudice, Persians were rich, Malays were dark-skinned and thus ugly, southeast Asians went naked and were immoral. Young poets ogled Iranian waitresses in wine-shops, literati admired harpists and dancers from Central Asia, but the ninth century was also ‘an age of suspicion and persecution of foreigners’.

 

对商业和外国人的态度是模棱两可的。

贸易有时被指责为价格上涨和秩序混乱。

一些外来者获得了青睐，并能在政府中任职；通过引入考试制度而出现的新贵族阶级比世袭贵族更加开明。

一些人利用他们的技能，在两个世界之间游刃有余，在商人和他们傲慢的、不信任的中国同行之间调解合同、关税和争端。

在欧洲殖民国家踏上香港和澳门海岸之前的一千多年里，特权对话者的地位已经确立。

 

Attitudes towards commerce and foreigners were ambiguous. Trade was sometimes blamed for rising prices and disorder. Some outsiders gained favour and could rise to office in the government; the new gentry class which emerged through the introduction of an examination system was more open-minded than the hereditary aristocracy. Some used their skills, poised between two worlds, to mediate contracts, duties and disputes among traders and their haughty, distrustful Chinese counterparts. The privileged interlocutor was a position established more than a thousand years before the European colonial powers set foot on the shores of Hong Kong and Macau.

 

即使在九世纪，中国国家也在商业中发挥着指挥作用。

贵族对商业的态度是模糊的，贸易 "从未摆脱政治纠葛"。

这是一个王朝垄断国内商品的时代，如盐、铁、货币和一些基本商品。

官员们将这些视为控制和征收从国外涌入唐朝中国的奢侈品的模式。

八世纪时，皇帝在广州设立了一个商榷专员，其职责是购买国家希望控制的商品，并组织其分销。

外国人应将他们的一些货物作为礼物进贡给天子，以显示对天子的普遍权力的服从。

其余的货物必须存放在政府仓库中，只能在官方监督下在市场上出售。

敢于直接向公众出售其商品的外国商人是很轻率的。

 

Even in the ninth century, the Chinese state took a commanding role in business. Aristocratic attitudes to commerce were ambiguous and trade ‘was never free from political entanglements’. This was an age when the dynasty held monopolies on domestic goods such as salt, iron, currency and some basic commodities. Officials saw these as models for the control and taxation of luxuries pouring into Tang China from abroad. In the eighth century the emperor established a Commissioner for Commercial Argosies at Guangzhou, his duties being to buy up goods which the state wished to control and to organise their distribution. Foreigners were expected to offer some of their goods as gifts in tribute to the son of Heaven and to demonstrate submission to his universal power. The rest of their consignments had to be deposited in government warehouses and could only be sold in the markets under official supervision. It was a rash foreign trader who would dare to sell his wares directly to the public.

 

然后，还有一个恼人的交换和易货的概念。

商业受到以道德、税收、军需法或国家安全为名的规定的阻碍。

八世纪的一项法令禁止向外国人出口或出售挂毯、锦缎、精美的丝绸、刺绣、牦牛尾巴、珍珠、黄金和铁。

当时没有固定的交换媒介。

唐朝古墓中发现了拜占庭金币，据说广州的阿拉伯商人用伊斯兰金币来结算。

官员们不时地决定，这种或那种外国商品可能会削弱、堕落或腐蚀中国的消费者。

这种规定是反复无常的，而且往往是暂时的，但它们使商人很难确定价格或签订合同。

 

Then there was the vexed notion of exchange and barter. Commerce was hampered by regulations which could be imposed in the name of morals, revenue, sumptuary laws or national security. One edict of the eighth century banned the export or sale to foreigners of tapestries, damasks, fine silk, embroidery, yak tails, pearls, gold and iron. There was no fixed medium of exchange: Tang tombs have yielded up Byzantine gold coinage and Arab traders at Guangzhou were said to use gold Islamic dinars to settle accounts. From time to time officials decided that this or that foreign commodity might weaken, deprave or corrupt the Chinese consumer. Such regulations were capricious and often temporary, but they made it hard for merchants to fix prices or make contracts.

 

最后，唐朝的法律规定了仇外心理。

如果一个外国人娶了一个中国妻子或小妾，公元628年的一项法令规定他必须留在中国：在任何情况下，中国女人都不能陪他回家。

如果外国商人在中国死亡，他的货物将被国家封存和没收。

 

Finally, the Tang laws enshrined xenophobia. If a foreigner took a Chinese wife or concubine, a decree of AD 628 obliged him to remain in China: in no case might a Chinese woman accompany him home. If the foreign trader died in China his goods were sealed and confiscated by the state.

 

就像古典希腊的波斯国王要求一蹶不振的城市提供土壤和水一样，中国的统治者希望周围的支流国家象征性地承认他们的最高地位。

皇帝们宣称，不受其恩惠的外国人的到来非但不会威胁到他们的崇高地位，反而会证实他们的地位。

这种高高在上的态度产生的后果一直影响到现代。

 

Like the Persian kings demanding soil and water from prostrate cities in classical Greece, the rulers of China expected symbolic acknowledgement of their supremacy from the tributary states around them. The emperors claimed that, far from threatening their august status, the arrival of foreigners not subject by birth to their graciousness tended to confirm it. This exalted attitude was to have consequences which reverberate down to modern times.

 

在16世纪大发现时代来临之际，中国对欧洲人来说仍然是遥远而神秘的。

它被沙漠和山脉的屏障所包围，被尚未绘制地图的海水所冲刷，是一个为中世纪的浪漫主义者而设的领域。

早期的旅行者，如马可-波罗，在13世纪末从陆路出发，从海路返回，在他的记述中谈到了一个大汗，谈到了奇迹和财富，谈到了鞑靼人的游侠和一个叫做 "仙都 "的夏宫，那里的野兽在树林和喷泉中游荡。

他讲述了一个名为Zaiton的辉煌港口，"所有从印度来的船只都满载着昂贵的货物和价格不菲的宝石以及大珍珠......令人惊叹"。

 

At the dawn of the Age of Discovery in the sixteenth century, China was still remote and mysterious to Europeans. Immured behind its barriers of desert and mountain, washed by the waters of seas yet to be charted, it was a realm made for medieval romancers. The accounts of early travellers, like Marco Polo, who went by land and returned by sea in the late thirteenth century, spoke of a Great Khan, of marvels and riches, of Tatar paladins and a summer palace called Xanadu, where wild beasts roamed amid woods and fountains. He told of a splendid port called Zaiton, ‘for all the ships that arrive from India laden with costly wares and precious stones of great price and big pearls … a marvel to behold’.

 

许多旅行者的故事都是虚幻的。

他们几乎没有关于战争和政治的真实消息，而他们所声称的对中国经济的洞察力也不过是对要求他们缴纳的税收和贡品的简单反应。

他们的记述将中国人的礼仪和习俗描绘成奇怪和罪恶的。

这些外国说书人可以自由地编造和夸张，因为他们知道中国宫廷永远不会阅读他们的作品，而他们的读者也最不可能看到中国，因为它是如此遥远。

 

Many of the travellers’ tales were fantastical. They had little authentic news about wars and politics, and what they claimed to be insight into the economy of China was little more than a simple reaction to the taxes and tribute demanded of them. Their accounts depict the manners and customs of the Chinese as strange and sinful. These foreign storytellers were free to invent and exaggerate, safe in the knowledge that the Chinese court would never read their works and their readers were most unlikely to see China because it was so far away.

 

然而，中国并不是孤立的。

在罗马和帕提亚帝国时期，丝绸之路上的商队将汉朝与中东连接起来。

中国的商船穿梭于亚洲和东非的海岸。

 在七世纪至十世纪的唐朝皇帝统治下，广州港是世界上最繁忙的转口港之一。

在同一时期，西方宗教在中国也有了一定的知名度，西安博物馆中的一块公元781年的石碑就证明了这一点，上面刻有叙利亚语和汉语。

随着帝国的扩张，波斯人和阿拉伯人担任了军事和行政职务。

中国的文化和政治影响扩展到朝鲜和日本。

当欧洲在文艺复兴时期蓬勃发展的时候，如果中国退居二线，那么从远处看，它仍然是一个丝绸和香料的国度，一个在万能的统治者和他的官吏阶层下追求艺术、文学和音乐的高雅文明。

按照当时的大多数标准，中国的经济是世界上最大的。

 

Yet China was not isolated. Caravans along the Silk Road had connected the Han dynasty with the Middle East during the empires of Rome and Parthia. Chinese trading ships plied the coasts of Asia and East Africa. Under the Tang emperors, who reigned from the seventh century to the tenth, the port of Guangzhou was one of the busiest entrepôts of the world. Western religions were known in China from the same period, as a stele in a museum at Xi’an from AD 781 inscribed in Syriac and Chinese attests. As the empire expanded, Persians and Arabs held military and administrative posts. Chinese cultural and political influence expanded to Korea and Japan. If China withdrew into seclusion while Europe flowered in the Renaissance, it was still seen from afar as a land of silks and spices, a refined civilisation pursuing arts, literature and music under an almighty ruler and his caste of mandarins. By most measures of the time, the Chinese economy was the biggest in the world.

 

权力和财富的平衡在16世纪发生了变化。

西欧的国王和王后们变得强大而雄心勃勃；这是英国的亨利八世和伊丽莎白一世、法国的弗朗索瓦一世和亨利六世以及西班牙的菲利普二世的时代。

基督教君主战胜了奥斯曼土耳其人，他们将伊斯兰教的绿色旗帜带到了欧洲的中心。

1529年，苏莱曼大帝放弃了对维也纳的围攻，1571年，一个联盟在莱庞托海战中打败了土耳其人。

形势发生了变化，欧洲国家开始向外看。

这是欧洲统治世界的四个世纪的开始，中国在其中黯然失色。

 

The balance of power and fortune changed in the sixteenth century. The kings and queens of western Europe grew mighty and ambitious; it was the era of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I of England, François I and Henri VI of France and Philip II of Spain. The Christian monarchies triumphed over the Ottoman Turks, who had carried the green banners of Islam to the heart of Europe. In 1529 Suleiman the Magnificent abandoned the siege of Vienna and in 1571 an alliance defeated the Turks at the sea battle of Lepanto. The tide had turned and the European nations began to look outwards. It was the start of four centuries of world domination by Europe in which China was eclipsed.

 

欧洲力量在亚洲的增长不是线性的，它是由当时的中国战略家无法掌握的力量所推动的。

一个关键事件是1640年至1714年期间，西班牙在欧洲大陆的权力因对外战争、通货膨胀、破产和内乱而崩溃。

一个西班牙帝国的历史学家写道："这是一个爬上高处又沉入深渊的国家；它取得了一切，也失去了一切；它征服了世界，但自己却被征服了。

西班牙沉迷于美洲的宝藏，被其虔诚的君主所不理解的经济力量所左右，它仍然在阿卡普尔科和马尼拉之间派出满载丝绸和白银的大帆船。

但它在欧洲在亚洲的冒险中的作用已经结束了。

 

The growth of European power in Asia was not linear, and it was propelled by forces which no Chinese strategist of the time could have grasped. One key event was the collapse of Spanish power in continental Europe between 1640 and 1714 through foreign wars, inflation, bankruptcy and internal strife. ‘Here was a country which had climbed to the heights and sunk to the depths; which had achieved everything and lost everything; which had conquered the world only to be vanquished itself,’ wrote one historian of the Spanish Empire. Addicted to treasure from the Americas, prey to economic forces its devout monarchs did not understand, Spain still sent its galleons between Acapulco and Manila laden with silks and silver. But its part in the European adventure in Asia was at an end.

 

经济变革的第二个受害者是威尼斯共和国，它依靠地中海商业和与国泰的陆路贸易而变得富有。

它的衰退没有西班牙那么严重。

但它从未从葡萄牙航海家瓦斯科-达伽马1498年环绕好望角的航行中恢复过来。

达伽马开辟了一条通往东方的海路，摧毁了威尼斯几个世纪以来对通过黎凡特进行贸易的控制权。

法国哲学家孟德斯鸠说，威尼斯被 "扔到了世界的一个角落"。

今天，中国游客沿着里亚托广场的石板前往马可-波罗的故居，经过曾经停泊着满载东方丝绸和香料的帆船的码头，那里的货币兑换商经营着来自所有已知世界的提货单，一个共和制的寡头统治者用雪莱的话说，建造了 "像通往天堂的魔法织物 "的宫殿。

威尼斯作为一个世界强国已经消失了。

 

The second victim of economic change was the Venetian republic, which had grown rich on Mediterranean commerce and the overland trade with Cathay. Its decline was less steep than Spain’s. But it never recovered from the voyage of the Portuguese navigator Vasco da Gama around the Cape of Good Hope in 1498. Da Gama opened a sea route to the East and destroyed the centuries-old Venetian grip on trade through the Levant. Venice, said the French philosopher Montesquieu, was ‘thrown into a corner of the world’. Today Chinese tourists troop along the flagstones of the Rialto to Marco Polo’s house, past quays where argosies laden with the silks and spices of the east once moored, where moneychangers dealt in bills of lading from all the known world and a republican oligarchy built, in Shelley’s words, palaces ‘like fabrics of enchantment pil’d to heaven’. Venice has vanished as a world power.

 

两个富有进取心的海洋国家，英国和葡萄牙，抓住了他们长期以来寻求的机会，建立了一条通往印度的全水路贸易路线。

1557年，葡萄牙人在中国当局的谨慎同意下在澳门开设了一个基地。

他们的竞争对手英国东印度公司开始在印度建立一个帝国，并将目光转向中国。

法国人和荷兰人也不甘落后。

所有的欧洲列强不时地相互争斗，但即使中国拥有分裂和击败他们的政治技巧，它也没有能力这样做。

 

Two enterprising maritime nations, England and Portugal, seized the opportunity they had long sought for an all-water trade route to the Indies. In 1557 the Portuguese opened a base in Macau with the wary consent of the Chinese authorities. Their British rivals, the East India Company, began to build an empire in India and turned their eyes to China. The French and the Dutch were not far behind. All the European powers fought one another from time to time, but even if China had possessed the political skill to divide and defeat them it was in no position to do so.

 

1600年，晚明帝国似乎正处于其辉煌的顶峰。

这个王朝自十四世纪以来一直统治着中国。

天子从他雄伟的首都北京出发，控制着1.2亿人口，比欧洲所有国家都要多。

世界上没有一个帝国能像他一样。

莫卧儿印度正在解体。

西班牙征服者和外国疾病使墨西哥和秘鲁的阿兹特克和印加帝国成为废墟。

奥斯曼人在退却。

俄国是一个地理上的表现。

日本正处于内战的最后阶段，德川家族的一位强大的幕府将军统一了日本，并在江户，即现代东京建立了他的首都。

在中国，帝国政府受到礼仪的熏陶，由通过严格考试选出的官员进行管理。

富人享受着丰富的文化和经济生活的成果，伴随着和平和秩序感。

晚明时期产生了一些中国最好的绘画和一些最伟大的文学作品。

 戏剧家汤显祖的戏剧《牡丹亭》以一个诗意的官员为主角，《西游记》是一个关于一个和尚和一只猴子在前往印度的路上的比喻性故事，以及《金瓶梅》，一个色情的遐想。

 

In 1600 the late Ming empire seemed to be at the peak of its splendour. The dynasty had ruled China since the fourteenth century. From his majestic capital in Beijing, the son of Heaven held sway over 120 million people, more than in all the nations of Europe. There was no empire like his on earth. Mughal India was breaking up. Spanish conquistadors and foreign diseases had laid waste the Aztec and Inca empires of Mexico and Peru. The Ottomans were in retreat. Russia was a geographical expression. Japan was in the last stages of civil war before a powerful shogun of the Tokugawa clan unified it and set up his capital at Edo, modern Tokyo. In China, the imperial government was hallowed by ritual and administered by officials chosen through rigorous examinations. The wealthy enjoyed the fruits of a rich cultural and economic life accompanied by a sense of peace and order. The late Ming period produced some of China’s finest painting and some of its greatest works of literature: The Peony Pavilion, a play by the dramatist Tang Xianzu, which featured a poetic scholar-official, The Journey to the West, a picaresque tale of a monk and a monkey on the road to India, and The Golden Lotus, an erotic reverie.

 

但是，就在欧洲列强变得自信和强大的时候，中国却陷入了一场危机，一些知识分子认为，中国从未真正从中恢复过来。

腐败、阴谋和堕落削弱了明朝；洪水、饥荒和短暂的冰河时期毁了农民，边疆的麻烦迫使人们增加税收以资助军队；在绝望中，明朝繁荣所依赖的农民和工匠起来反抗。

 很久以后，一些马克思主义者认为，澳门的葡萄牙商人--中国这个巨大的有机体中的微小异物--应该受到指责，因为他们购买了中国的丝绸，并将其换成了白银，而白银正从墨西哥和秘鲁的矿场涌出；由此产生的大量白银流入中国的农业经济，导致了通货膨胀、疯狂的投机过度和繁荣与萧条的循环，当时的儒家学者-行政官员没有能力管理。

在这种情况下，就像西班牙的哈布斯堡王朝一样，中国的皇室倒在了它所不了解的现代性力量面前。

经济史学家对16世纪世界性白银危机的原因和影响仍有争议，但它在中国所有后来的统治者中留下了对外国投机者的怀疑。

 

But just as the European powers grew confident and powerful, China fell into a crisis from which, some of its intellectuals argue, it has never truly recovered. Corruption, intrigue and decadence weakened the Ming dynasty; floods, famines and a brief ice age ruined farmers, trouble in the borderlands forced tax rises to fund the military; in despair the peasants and artisans upon whom Ming prosperity rested rose up in rebellion. Much later, some Marxists argued that Portuguese traders at Macau – that tiny foreign body in the great organism of China – were to blame because they bought up Chinese silk and traded it for silver, which was pouring out of the mines in Mexico and Peru; the resultant huge inflow of silver into China’s agrarian economy led to inflation, wild speculative excess and a boom-and-bust cycle which the Confucian scholar-administrators of the time were incapable of managing. In this telling, like the Spanish Habsburgs, the imperial house of China fell to forces of modernity it did not comprehend. The causes and effects of the worldwide silver crisis in the sixteenth century are still debated by economic historians, but it left a legacy of suspicion of foreign speculators among all subsequent rulers of China.

 

1644年，经过长期的衰落，明朝灭亡了。

来自东北的入侵部落军队征服了这个国家，建立了一个满族战士的王朝。

明朝最后一位皇帝崇祯谋杀了他的妃子，然后溜之大吉，在北京紫禁城附近的一棵树上上吊自杀。

一代又一代的文人把明朝的灭亡当作文化的天启来哀悼。

一些贵族蔑视满洲人。

他们奇怪的语言对于占主导地位的汉族来说是陌生的，他们的习俗被认为是粗俗的。

叛乱不时爆发，而且很有说服力的是，抵抗在南方持续的时间最长。

但被称为清朝的新王朝不仅采用了汉族的价值观和礼仪，还采用了现有的统治精英，从而赢得了人们的忠诚。

这个新政权的统治时间超过了两个半世纪。

 

In 1644, after a long decline, the Ming dynasty collapsed. Invading tribal armies from the northeast conquered the country and installed a dynasty of Manchu warriors. The last Ming emperor, Chongzhen, murdered his consorts, then slunk away to hang himself from a tree near the Forbidden City in Beijing. Generations of literati mourned the fall of the Ming as a cultural apocalypse. Some of the nobility scorned the Manchus. Their strange language was foreign to the dominant Han Chinese and their customs were thought vulgar. From time to time rebellions broke out and, tellingly, resistance lingered longest in the south. But the new dynasty, known as the Qing, won loyalty by adopting not just Han Chinese values and rituals, but the existing ruling elite. This new regime was to rule for more than two and a half centuries.

 

正是在清朝最辉煌的时期，英国国王乔治三世向乾隆皇帝的宫廷派出了使节。

(中国的皇帝都有自己的名字，因此乾隆出生在爱新觉罗-弘冀，1736年登基后采用了他的新名字，意思是 "完美的尊贵"。

）It was during the height of Qing magnificence that King George III of England sent envoys to the court of the emperor Qianlong. (Chinese emperors took regnal names, thus Qianlong was born Aisin Gioro Hongji and adopted his new name, which means ‘Perfect Eminence’, on acceding to the throne in 1736.)

在他漫长的统治期间，乾隆在开放和关闭王国的边界之间摇摆不定。

与野蛮人的关系由内务府、边务府和礼部来管理，以便更好地规定他们的服从程度。

在明朝，耶稣会传教士利玛窦于1601年被允许在北京的宫廷居住。

这些学者牧师将西方的数学、制图学和天文学原理翻译成中文，并将孔子的作品翻译成西方语言。

耶稣会士受到乾隆的祖父康熙皇帝的信任，于1689年起草了《尼布楚条约》的拉丁文本，该条约规定了中国和俄罗斯的边界和商业。

然而，信任在宫廷中是一种最短缺的商品。

 

Throughout his long reign Qianlong vacillated between opening and closing the borders of the realm. Relations with barbarians were regulated by the Imperial Household, the Office of Border Affairs and the Ministry of Rituals, the better to prescribe the degree of their submission. Under the Ming, the Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci had been allowed to reside at the court in Beijing in 1601. The scholar-priests translated the principles of western mathematics, cartography and astronomy into Chinese and translated the works of Confucius into western languages. Jesuits were trusted by Qianlong’s grandfather, the emperor Kangxi, to draft the Latin text of the Treaty of Nerchinsk, regulating borders and commerce between China and Russia, in 1689. Trust, however, was a commodity in the shortest supply at court.

 

到了18世纪末，外国人正在向南方的清帝国的大门逼近。

为了击退他们，官员们紧紧抓住仪式和规则不放，但信念和效果却越来越差。

他们放弃了来访者是来进贡的假象，并承认他们可以在选定的港口与天朝进行贸易。

在其中一个港口，即广州，当地商人于1720年成立了一个行会，被外国人称为Cohong，以垄断与商人的联系，并控制价格、费用和敲诈。

既要向不可避免的事情低头，又要设法管理外国人并从他们身上获利，这种结合成为中国持久的政策。

 

By the late eighteenth century, foreigners were pushing at the doors of the Qing empire in the south. To repel them, officials clung to ritual and rules, with decreasing conviction or effect. They dropped the pretence that the visitors had come to offer tribute and conceded that they might trade with the celestial empire at selected ports. At one of these, Guangzhou, local merchants set up a guild, known to foreigners as the Cohong, in 1720 to monopolise contacts with the traders and to control prices, fees and rakeoffs. The combination of bowing to the inevitable while seeking to manage the foreigners and to profit from them became enduring Chinese policy.

 

1760年，一个气急败坏的皇帝下令，所有贸易必须限制在广州。

外国人只允许在贸易季节居住在那里，这个季节受季风影响，从十月到三月。

此外，他们只能与漕帮打交道，在发生纠纷时只能与漕帮成员沟通。

帝国官员仍然保持着冷漠的隐居状态，没有屈尊去见野蛮人，而且常常不屑于审查他们的请愿书。

对某些人来说，这是为了激发他们的敬畏之心，而对许多中国人来说，这显得很壮观。

在一个西方列强的军事、经济和外交实力不断增长的时代，这是极不明智的。

 

In 1760 an exasperated emperor ordered that all trade must be restricted to Guangzhou. The foreigners were permitted to reside there only in the trading season, which was governed by the monsoons and ran from October to March. Moreover, they could deal only with the Cohong and might communicate only with its members in the event of disputes. Imperial officials remained in aloof seclusion, did not condescend to meet the barbarians, and often disdained to examine their petitions. To a certain cast of mind this was meant to inspire awe and to many Chinese it appeared magnificent. In an age when the Western powers were growing in military, economic and diplomatic might it was extremely unwise.

 

在乾隆的长期统治下，在外国人看来，中华帝国似乎存在于一种政治和官僚的惰性状态。

事实上，中国的历史记录显示，由其哲学家官员组成的政府比人们认为的更加灵活和反应迅速。

但是，东印度公司的野心、荷兰海上贸易的压力、西班牙的残余势力、葡萄牙在澳门的坚定立足点以及来自新独立的美国的船只首次出现在中国南部海岸，都不允许守护者们躺着沉思。

 

During the long reign of Qianlong the Chinese empire appeared to foreigners to exist in a state of political and bureaucratic inertia. In fact, Chinese histories record that government by its philosopher-officials was more flexible and responsive than it has been given credit for. But the ambitions of the East India Company, the pressure of Dutch seaborne commerce, the residual power of Spain, the resolute Portuguese foothold at Macau and the first appearance of ships from the newly independent United States off the south China coast did not allow the guardians to recline and contemplate.

 

1792年，英王乔治三世的政府派遣其最能干的外交官之一马戛尔尼勋爵远航中国。

马戛尔尼是一位爱尔兰贵族，他曾在欧洲巡游，见过伏尔泰，出色地担任过俄国凯瑟琳大帝的特使，并完成了马德拉斯总督的任期，没有丑闻。

他的任务是撬开清帝国的大门，成为英国驻北京朝廷的第一位大使。

其目的是将贸易建立在一个可靠的基础上，并迫使中国加入当时正在形成的国际国家体系。

中国王室并不打算允许这些事情发生。

随后发生的错误喜剧被记录在马戛尔尼自己的日记和他的套房里其他人的叙述中，成为国内漫画家的一场盛宴。

 

In 1792 the British government of King George III dispatched one of its ablest diplomats, Lord Macartney, on the voyage to China. Macartney was an Irish nobleman who had toured Europe, met Voltaire, served with distinction as envoy to Catherine the Great of Russia and completed a term as governor of Madras without scandal. His mission was to prise open the gates of the Qing empire and to become Britain’s first ambassador to the court at Beijing. The aim was to put trade on a sure footing and to compel China to enter the international state system then coming into existence. The Chinese throne had no intention of permitting any of these things to take place. The comedy of errors that ensued was recorded in Macartney’s own journal and the accounts of others in his suite, becoming a feast for cartoonists back at home.

 

马戛尔尼受到了精致的礼遇，但当在场的官员意识到他们的客人并不打算行 "叩头礼"，即在皇帝面前跪下来九叩首的要求时，这种礼遇变成了惊恐。

通过运河向首都进发，他意识到装饰在船队上的旗帜宣称他是向皇室进贡的大使。

 

Macartney was greeted with exquisite courtesy, which turned to alarm as the mandarins in attendance realised that their guest did not intend to perform the ‘kowtow’, the requirement to fall to his knees before the emperor and to prostrate himself nine times. Travelling by canal towards the capital, his lordship became aware that the banners adorning the fleet of junks proclaimed him to be an ambassador bearing tribute to the throne.

 

皇帝在承德（当时被称为热河）的快乐穹顶上处理国家事务，远离北京的炎热和喧嚣。

他将在那里接待这些使者。

与此同时，英国人被带到了北京，在等待朝廷消息的同时，他们被安排住在宫殿里，并就确切的朝拜形式进行谈判。

马戛尔尼采用了一项对等原则，这一原则将永远困扰着中国和西方之间的接触，他坚持认为他对皇帝的尊重将与对他自己的君主的尊重相同。

谈判变得焦头烂额。

 

The emperor was at his pleasure dome at Chengde, known in those days as Jehol, pursuing affairs of state far from the heat and noise of Beijing. He would receive the emissaries there. Meanwhile the English party was conducted to Beijing and given palatial quarters while they awaited word from the court and negotiated over the precise form of obeisance that would take place. Macartney adopted a principle of reciprocity that would bedevil encounters between China and the West for ever after, maintaining that he would pay the same respect to the emperor as he would to his own monarch. The negotiations became fraught.

 

同时，来自乔治三世的礼物，包括水晶吊灯、德比郡瓷器、地球仪、时钟、气压计和太阳系的钟表模型，被安排在被称为圆明园的夏宫中，供乾隆回国后视察。

许多人前来观看，但有些人表示无动于衷；一位朝臣不厌其烦地强调，这些东西不是礼物，而是贡品。

 

Meanwhile presents from George III, including crystal chandeliers, Derbyshire porcelain, a globe, clocks, a barometer and an orrery, a clockwork model of the solar system, were arranged in the summer palace known as the Yuanming Yuan, the Gardens of Perfect Brightness, for Qianlong to inspect on his return. Many came to gape but some professed indifference; one courtier was at pains to emphasise that the items were not gifts, but tribute.

 

这段尴尬的外交插曲被一封来自承德的传票解决了，该传票宣布皇帝将亲切地接见马戛尔尼勋爵，而且为了表彰他的远道而来和带来的礼物，将放宽传统的礼仪。

这似乎是英国威信的一次胜利。

这也是对即将到来的误解和失望的预示。

 

The awkward diplomatic interlude was resolved by a summons from Chengde announcing that the emperor, in his graciousness, would receive Lord Macartney and that the customary protocol would be eased in recognition of the great distance he had travelled and the presents he had brought. It appeared to be a victory for British prestige. It was also a foretaste of misunderstandings and disappointments to come.

 

马戛尔尼和他的套房穿越了长城，于1793年9月中旬到达承德。

在约定的时间，官员们把他领到了自己的位置。

他穿上了他的天鹅绒浴袍，并系上了他的钻石装饰。

当皇帝坐着轿子走过时，马戛尔尼勋爵和所有在场的英国人一样，单膝跪地行礼，而中国人则匍匐在地上。

乾隆登上宝座，同行者跪在他面前，献上一个装有英王乔治三世来信的珠盒，作为回报，他收到了一根玉杖。

在随后的宴会上，八十三岁的皇帝询问了这位英国君主的年龄和健康状况。

大使越来越清楚地意识到，乾隆和他的大臣们都不太清楚英国的确切位置，或对其了解甚少。

然而，他们惊恐地听说了法国大革命的情况，并无意让诸如 "人的权利 "等有害的学说在这个天国扎根。

 

Macartney and his suite traversed the Great Wall and reached Chengde in mid-September 1793. At the appointed time, mandarins led him to his place. He had donned his velvet robes of the Order of the Bath and fastened his diamond decorations. As the emperor swept by in his palanquin, Lord Macartney fell on one knee and bowed, as did all the British present, while the Chinese prostrated themselves in the dust. Qianlong ascended the throne and the peer knelt before him to present a bejewelled box containing a letter from King George III, receiving in return a jade sceptre. At the banquet which followed, the emperor, who was eighty-three, enquired after the English sovereign’s age and health. It was becoming clear to the ambassador that neither Qianlong nor his ministers had a very clear idea of exactly where England was, or knew much about it. They had, however, heard with horror about the French Revolution and had no intention of allowing pernicious doctrines such as the Rights of Man to take root in the celestial kingdom.

 

当马戛尔尼在承德逗留时，他见到了皇室随从中最有影响力的成员，名叫和珅的主要大臣。

作为一个年轻的满族侍卫官，和珅引起了年迈的皇帝的注意。

他成了乾隆的宠儿，并通过勤奋、狡猾和魅力升到了高位和有利可图的地位。

如果马戛尔尼勋爵知道围绕和珅无与伦比的升迁的丑闻，他也没有对其进行评论，而是把他的对话者当作一个英俊而流利的人。

两人在皇家花园和公园里骑马，互相寒暄，以探究对方的真实意图，就像实践中的外交官那样。

马戛尔尼在他的日记中指出，和珅的怀疑是由于英国人对中国有无限的好奇心，但又对中国的历史非常了解。

这是一次预示着在未来几个世纪里，入侵的外国使节和警惕的中国官员之间的相遇。

 

While Macartney lingered at Chengde he met the most influential member of the imperial retinue, the principal minister named Heshen. As a young Manchu guards officer, Heshen had caught the ageing emperor’s eye. He became Qianlong’s favourite and had risen to high and lucrative rank through diligence, guile and charm. If Lord Macartney was aware of the scandalous rumours around Heshen’s unparalleled ascent, he did not dignify them with comment, recalling his interlocutor as a handsome and fluent man. The two went riding around the imperial gardens and parkland, exchanging pleasantries which served to probe each other’s true intentions, as practised diplomats do. In his journal, Macartney noted that Heshen’s suspicions were aroused by the fact that the English were both infinitely curious about China and yet well-informed about its history. It was an encounter which foreshadowed others in the centuries ahead between intrusive foreign envoys and wary Chinese office-holders.

 

在马戛尔尼使团结束时，满清宫廷和它的野蛮访客都保持着礼貌的外表。

大使多次与乾隆会面，皇帝同意检查摆放在圆明园宫殿里的礼物，有一段时间，马戛尔尼勋爵很想相信他可能被允许留在中国。

他很快就打消了这个念头。

他离开的日期已经确定，在回复英王乔治三世的信时，特使收到了乾隆的诏书，即使相隔两个多世纪，这封诏书仍然响彻着注定的辉煌。

 

Both the Manchu court and its barbarian visitors maintained a veneer of courtesy to the end of the Macartney mission. The ambassador met Qianlong several times, the emperor deigned to inspect the gifts laid out in the palace of the Gardens of Perfect Brightness and for a while Lord Macartney was tempted to believe he might be permitted to remain in China. He was soon disabused of the notion. A date was fixed for his departure and in reply to the letter from King George III, the envoy received an edict from Qianlong which even at a distance of more than two centuries resounds with doomed magnificence.

 

英国人要求中国放宽广州的贸易体系，为商业开放更多的港口，按照国际惯例确定关税，并允许一名大使居住在北京。

对乾隆和他的大臣们来说，这些要求是不可能的。

 

The British had asked China to liberalise the trading system at Guangzhou, to open up more ports for commerce, to fix tariffs in line with international practice and to allow an ambassador to reside at Beijing. For Qianlong and his ministers these were impossible demands.

 

在他的答复中，皇帝承认乔治三世提出的 "贡品"，但指出中国 "从不重视巧妙的物品"，而且 "对贵国的产品没有丝毫的需求"。

至于在北京派驻大使的要求，'除了不符合天朝的规定外'，这对'贵国没有好处'。

因此，'贡使'被命令回国，而他们的君主只被要求'按照我们的意愿行事，加强忠诚度，发誓永远服从，以确保贵国可以分享和平的祝福'。

 

In his response the emperor acknowledged the ‘tribute’ proffered by George III but pointed out that China had ‘never valued ingenious articles’ and did not ‘have the slightest need of your country’s manufactures’. As for the request to station an ambassador at Beijing, ‘apart from not being in harmony with the regulations of the Celestial Empire’ this would be ‘of no advantage to your country’. Therefore the ‘tribute envoys’ had been commanded to return home, while their monarch was enjoined simply to ‘act in conformity with our wishes by strengthening your loyalty and swearing perpetual obedience so as to ensure your country may share the blessings of peace’.

 

这份诏书是在几个月前马戛尔尼在渤海湾上岸之前制定的。

他的远征花费了东印度公司7.8万英镑，而东印度公司却一无所获，尽管这位贵族自己还赚了2万英镑的便宜。

这是一次失败。

 

The edict had been drawn up before Macartney’s disembarkation at the Gulf of Bohai months earlier. His expedition cost the East India Company £78,000, for which it got nothing, although the peer himself cleared a handy £20,000 profit. It was a failure.

 

在回家的路上，马戛尔尼写下了一套著名的印象，直到今天还影响着几代西方外交官。

他判断说："中华帝国是一艘古老而疯狂的一流战舰，幸运的是，一连串干练而警惕的军官设法让它在这一百五十年中保持漂浮，并且仅凭它的体积和外观就能让他们的邻居们感到震惊。

但是，如果由能力较差的统治者执政，它就会漂移，并在岸上被摔得粉碎。

他认为，历史是站在进步的一边，而清朝正在进行一种徒劳的尝试来阻止人类知识的进步。

对中国来说，对现代性的抵抗是徒劳的。

 

On his way home, Macartney wrote down a famous set of impressions which have influenced generations of Western diplomats until the present day. ‘The Empire of China is an old, crazy first-rate man-of-war, which a fortunate succession of able and vigilant officers has contrived to keep afloat for these one hundred and fifty years, and to overawe their neighbours merely by her bulk and appearance,’ he judged. But it would drift and be dashed to pieces on the shore when officered by less competent rulers. History was on the side of progress and the Qing, he believed, were conducting a vain attempt to arrest the progress of human knowledge. For China, resistance to modernity was futile.

 

1816年，英国政府派出了由阿默斯特勋爵领导的第二个使团，寻求达成贸易协定。

在英国特使拒绝向乾隆的继任者嘉庆皇帝磕头后，它也被击退了。

宁静而无动于衷，中国的国家之船继续航行。

但中国内外的情况正在迅速变化。

在新统治时期的第一批牺牲者中，精明的和珅虽然过于贪婪，但却被他的对手以腐败为由拉下马，并被慷慨地允许用垫子上的丝线勒死自己。

新皇帝夺取了和珅的宫殿、他的黄金宝藏和他的宝石库，通过无情地固定在礼仪和军规上来巩固自己的权威。

这样一来，王朝就把乾隆和他的主要大臣之间不正当但有效的统治伙伴关系换成了一个空洞的王冠，一个被大权在握的臣子所困扰、对建议充耳不闻的王冠。

对于中国来说，再没有比这更吉利的时机来退回到空洞的专制主义了。

 

In 1816 the British government dispatched a second embassy under Lord Amherst to seek a trade agreement. It, too, was repulsed after the British envoy declined to perform the kowtow to Qianlong’s successor, the emperor Jiaqing. Serene and impassive, the Chinese ship of state sailed on. But things were changing fast inside and outside China. Among the first casualties of the new reign was the astute if over-covetous Heshen, who was brought down by his rivals for corruption and was graciously permitted to strangle himself with a silken cord presented on a cushion. The new emperor seized Heshen’s palaces, his golden treasure and his cache of precious stones, fortifying his own authority by a relentless fixation on ceremonial and sumptuary rules. In this way the dynasty exchanged a perverse but effective ruling partnership between Qianlong and his principal minister for a hollow crown, one preoccupied by over-mighty vassals and deaf to counsel. There could not have been a less auspicious time for China to retreat into empty absolutism.

 

在中国的海岸之外，贸易和金融正在创造现代世界。

第一艘驶往广州的美国船只 "中国皇后号 "于1784年出发，满载银币和来自新英格兰森林的30吨人参根，第二年带着茶叶和丝绸返回纽约。

在接下来的几十年里，来自美国的商人带着中国人寻求的货物穿越太平洋：夏威夷的檀香木、阿拉斯加的毛皮以及在斐济晒干和包装的海蛞蝓。

马萨诸塞州的塞勒姆港因投资者财团资助的贸易而变得富有，这些投资者汇集了他们的资金来资助早期的中国航行。

一个人只要花100美元就可以参与其中；平均为4000美元。

在1819年的一次托运中，最大的投资者支付了100,000美元。

船上除了人参和其他商品外，还有一桶桶银色的西班牙元、生棉、铅和一桶桶的流银。

他们回来时带来了瓷器、茶叶、丝绸、漆器、玳瑁梳子和玩具。

妻子、孩子和朋友们详细要求代表他们在广州购买商品。

一个复杂的系统在塞勒姆发展起来，以经营业务：造船、码头工程、财务、会计和法律、船员、食宿和航海。

美国加入了太平洋贸易，并将永不回头。

 

Beyond China’s shores, trade and finance were making the modern world. The first American vessel to sail for Guangzhou, the Empress of China, left in 1784 laden with silver currency and thirty tons of ginseng root from the woods of New England, returning to New York the next year carrying teas and silks. In the following decades, traders from the United States crossed the Pacific with goods sought by the Chinese: sandalwood from Hawaii, furs from Alaska and bêche-de-mer, or sea slugs, which were dried and packed in Fiji. The port of Salem, Massachusetts, grew wealthy on trade funded by consortiums of investors who pooled their money to finance the early voyages to China. A man could get in on it for as little as $100; the average was $4,000. The biggest investor in one consignment of 1819 paid $100,000. The ships went out with barrels of silver Spanish dollars, raw cotton, pigs of lead and kegs of quicksilver in addition to ginseng and other commodities. They came back with porcelain, tea, silk, lacquer, tortoiseshell combs and toys. Wives, children and friends made detailed requests for goods to be bought on their behalf in Guangzhou. A sophisticated system evolved in Salem to run the business: shipbuilding, dock works, finance, accountancy and law, crewing, victualling and navigation. The United States was in the Pacific Trade and would never look back.

 

在世界的另一端，随着英国人扩大其属地，英国商人寻找机会和发展，英属印度和中国沿海的商业迅速增长。

拿破仑战争分散了伦敦政府的注意力，但在1815年后，英国在亚洲重新开始了前进的步伐。

滑铁卢战役后，法国不再是东方的一个重要对手。

葡萄牙人被削弱到了他们在澳门的立足点。

至于荷兰人，英国曾与他们进行过战争和殖民地交易，他们的黄金时代已经结束。

1824年的英荷条约使英国从印度到南中国海都处于主导地位，并将荷兰限制在东印度群岛。

一个名为新加坡的小贸易站，成立于1819年，由英国统治，标志着他们的势力范围之间的界限。

 

On the far side of the world, commerce between British India and the China coast grew rapidly as the British expanded their possessions and British merchants looked for opportunities and growth. The Napoleonic Wars distracted the attention of the government in London but after 1815 Britain’s forward march resumed in Asia. France ceased to be a serious rival in the east after Waterloo. The Portuguese were reduced to their foothold at Macau. As for the Dutch, with whom Britain had fought wars and traded colonial possessions, their Golden Age was over. The Anglo-Dutch treaty of 1824 made the British dominant from India to the South China Sea and confined the Dutch to the East Indies. A small trading post named Singapore, founded in 1819 and ruled by Britain, marked the boundary between their spheres of influence.

 

因此，在马戛尔尼勋爵上路后不到三十年，在中国统治者几乎不知道的情况下，世界另一端的一个小岛链已成为他们最强大的对手。

所有的欧洲海洋强国都向中国派遣了货船，但英国的海军力量、军事技能和财政资源使伦敦成为事件的仲裁者。

稳步增长的贸易量在珠江三角洲上下游流动。

中国出口的茶叶、丝绸和瓷器被运往欧洲的新消费者手中，欧洲大陆处于和平状态，正处于繁荣的边缘。

 

So, by a combination of developments which were all but unknown to the rulers of China, a small island chain on the far side of the world had become their most powerful adversary, less than three decades after Lord Macartney had been sent on his way. All the European maritime powers dispatched cargo ships to China, but British naval power, military skill and financial resources made London the arbiter of events. A steadily increasing volume of trade flowed up and down the Pearl River Delta. Chinese exports of tea, silk and porcelain were carried to the new consumers of Europe, a continent at peace and poised on the threshold of prosperity.

 

即使在它的高潮和辉煌时期，清朝自己的法令也在不知不觉中增加了英国的影响。

十九世纪头几十年，通过广州出口的中国商品价值是中国进口的两倍以上。

余额由外国人以银币支付。

起初，东印度公司不得不把银子一桶一桶地运到广州。

后来发现，广州的商人坐拥成堆的白银，因为中国政府禁止他们出口他们的现金利润。

所以他们把银子交给了东印度公司，东印度公司的金融专家们发行了可以在伦敦或加尔各答赎回的汇票。

该公司的买家随后用广州的白银为饥渴的英国市场购买茶叶货物，从而一举消除了运输货币的风险，并促进了伦敦作为全球金融中心的发展。

同时，在关税和费用方面交出的巨额资金为官员的腐败行为提供了丰富的机会，并为皇室库房带来了源源不断的收入。

这有助于清朝支付所需的军事开支，以压制中国各地的叛乱和混乱的浪潮。

这些钱让人上瘾。

王朝即使想停止商业也不可能。

 

Even in its high and palmy years the Qing dynasty’s own ordinances unwittingly increased British influence. The value of Chinese exports through Guangzhou in the first decades of the nineteenth century was more than double that of China’s imports. The balance was paid by the foreigners in silver currency. At first the East India Company had to ship silver to Guangzhou by the barrel. Then it turned out that merchants in Guangzhou were sitting on piles of silver because the Chinese government forbade them to export their cash profits. So they handed over their silver to the East India Company, whose financial wizards issued bills of exchange which could be redeemed in London or Calcutta. The company’s buyers then used the silver at Guangzhou to buy shipments of tea for the thirsty British market, thus at a stroke removing the risk of shipping specie and increasing the growth of London as a global centre of finance. At the same time, the immense sums of money handed over in duties and fees threw off rich opportunities for official venality and generated a stream of revenue for the imperial coffers. This helped the Qing pay for the military expenditure needed to hold down a tide of rebellions and disorder across China. The money was addictive. The dynasty could not have stopped commerce even if it had wanted to.

 

最终，这个系统屈服于四种致命的病症。

官员腐败的困扰成为中国政府运作的阻力。

1833年，伦敦的议会结束了东印度公司对贸易的垄断，开放了市场，创造了一个自由竞争的环境。

英中两国的垄断者--东印度公司和广州的漕运商人--从此面临着来自加尔各答和孟买成立的新公司的激烈竞争，这些公司提供较低的利率，并通过繁荣和萧条的不稳定周期投身于商品。

然而，最后的打击来自于被称为继蓝靛和棉花之后印度第三大出口作物的投资和贸易的不断增长，而且显然是不可阻挡的。

这就是鸦片。

 

Eventually this system succumbed to four fatal afflictions. The plague of official corruption became a drag on the functioning of Chinese government. In 1833, Parliament in London ended the East India Company’s monopoly on trade, throwing open the marketplace and creating a free-for-all. The Anglo-Chinese monopolists – the East India Company and the Cohong merchants of Guangzhou – henceforth faced intense competition from new houses founded in Calcutta and Bombay, which offered lower interest rates and plunged into commodities through destabilising cycles of boom and bust. The final blow, however, came through the ceaseless and apparently unstoppable growth of investment and trade in what has been called the third great Indian export crop after indigo and cotton. This was opium.

 

鸦片贸易和相关的中英战争在19世纪主导了中国和西方的关系，给中国人的心灵造成了至今仍未愈合的创伤。

对于马克思主义者和非意识形态的中国爱国者来说，它们仍然是帝国主义罪行的缩影。

对于经济史学家来说，它们提供了一本关于商业和国家权力之间相互作用的教科书，其背景是一个遥远的时代，当时国家之间的行为不受现代国际法的约束，大多数社会的组织方式在今天看来是不可接受的。

 

The trade in opium and the connected Anglo-Chinese wars dominated relations between China and the West in the nineteenth century and inflicted a wound on the Chinese psyche that has yet to heal. To Marxists and to non-ideological Chinese patriots alike, they remain the epitome of imperialist crime. For economic historians, they provide a textbook study of the interplay between commerce and state power, set in a distant time when nations behaved towards each other in ways unrestrained by the corpus of modern international law and when most societies were organised in ways that would be unacceptable today.

 

鸦片不是由英国人引入中国的。

自唐朝以来，中国一直在使用鸦片。

第一批生产鸦片的罂粟可能是随着阿拉伯人和土耳其商人来到中国的。

也许早在五世纪，这种药物的药性就被列入了中国药典，而且它的成瘾性也被人们所理解。

在大约一千年的时间里，人们把它作为一种药物未经加工地食用。

 

Opium was not introduced to China by the British. It had been used in the empire since the Tang dynasty. The first opium-yielding poppies may have come to China with Arabs and Turkish traders. The drug’s medicinal properties were listed in the Chinese pharmacopoeia perhaps as early as the fifth century, and its addictive character was understood. For around a millennium it was eaten unprocessed as a medicine.

 

但在十七世纪，福尔摩沙岛（即现代台湾）的使用者开始将其与烟草混合并吸食。

在此期间，荷兰和西班牙殖民者与中国军队争夺对台湾的控制权；与大陆的交往频繁，吸食鸦片的习惯也随之蔓延。

中国生产了少量的鸦片，但其大部分供应来自印度，一种名为马尔瓦的低级品种，由葡萄牙人通过澳门运出。

 

But in the seventeenth century users on the island of Formosa, modern Taiwan, began to mix it with tobacco and smoke it. During this period Dutch and Spanish colonisers vied with Chinese armies for control of Taiwan; there was frequent intercourse with the mainland and the opium-smoking habit spread. China produced a small quantity of opium but most of its supply came from India, a low-grade variety named Malwa that was shipped by the Portuguese through Macau.

 

1729年，清朝统治者禁止了鸦片的进口。

满洲官员们为鸦片对社会的不良影响而忧心忡忡，尽管这种毒品继续通过油腻的手掌流向中国。

1773年，东印度公司决定与葡萄牙人竞争，付钱给孟加拉的农民种植高质量的巴特那鸦片。

该公司知道其业务是非法的：1796年，它放弃了向中国直接出口。

相反，毒品在加尔各答的拍卖会上被卖给了私人商人。

鸦片箱仍然用公司的船只运送，但鸦片本身却由其他人兜售给中国人，这样做是为了保全面子。

1800年至1818年期间，贸易量稳定在4000箱左右，每箱重140磅。

 

In 1729 the Qing rulers banned the import of opium. Mandarins fretted over its bad effects on society, although the drug continued to flow into China through greased palms. In 1773, the East India Company decided to compete against the Portuguese by paying farmers in Bengal to grow high-quality Patna opium. The company knew that its business was illicit: in 1796 it abandoned direct exports to China. Instead the drug was sold to private merchants at auction in Calcutta. The chests were still shipped in company vessels but the opium itself was peddled to the Chinese by others, saving face all round. Between 1800 and 1818 the trade was stable at an estimated total of about 4,000 chests weighing 140 lb each.

 

然而，从1819年开始，由于英国和葡萄牙商人之间的激烈竞争，价格下降，鸦片贸易蓬勃发展。

王朝下令在广州进行镇压。

外国商人干脆把他们的违禁品库存转移到珠江三角洲的林丁岛附近的浮动船体上。

中国批发商购买鸦片，崎岖不平的唐卡河工用被称为 "快蟹 "的四十多条船将鸦片运到上游，帝国官员将贿赂收入囊中，而中国黑帮和三合会的秘密组织则在内陆分销毒品。

在1822年至1830年期间，交易量增长到每年约18,760例。

根据东印度公司的记录，1830年有400万英镑被运回英国。

其中大部分被转化为鸦片在广州销售，收入被投资于出口到英国的茶叶，英国政府在这方面又获得了330万英镑的关税。

对鸦片的投资、私人利润和政府的贸易收入成为英国在亚洲政策的核心要素。

 

From 1819, however, prices fell due to intense competition between British and Portuguese traders and the opium trade boomed. The dynasty ordered a crackdown in Guangzhou. The foreign traders simply moved their contraband stocks to floating hulks off Lintin Island in the Pearl River Delta. Chinese wholesalers bought the opium, rugged Tanka rivermen carried it upstream in forty-oared boats known as ‘fast crabs’, imperial functionaries pocketed bribes, and Chinese gangsters and Triad secret societies distributed the drug inland. Between 1822 and 1830 the trade grew to an estimated 18,760 cases a year. The East India Company recorded that £4 million was sent back to England in 1830. Most of it was converted into opium to be sold in Guangzhou, the revenues being invested in teas for export to England, on which the British government reaped a further £3.3 million in tariffs. Investment in opium, private profits and government revenues from the trade became a central element of British policy in Asia.

 

中国发现其国际收支出现了逆转。

在19世纪的头几十年里，它曾获得过盈余，但在1820年之后，它变成了赤字。

历史学家弗雷德里克-瓦克曼（Frederic Wakeman）在20世纪70年代写道，正是鸦片改变了平衡，并最终为后来的印度殖民化提供了资金。

这种商业逻辑如此引人注目，以至于东印度公司在1831年接管了通过加尔各答运输的葡萄牙马尔瓦鸦片；五年后，进口到中国的鸦片价值为1800万银元。

在数量上，1835年贸易量激增到3万箱，1838年达到4万箱。

瓦克曼写道，这是 "十九世纪世界上最有价值的单一商品贸易"。

 

China found its balance of payments going into reverse. In the first decades of the nineteenth century it had earned a surplus, but after 1820 it went into deficit. The historian Frederic Wakeman, writing in the 1970s, concluded that it was opium which shifted the balance and ended up financing much of the later colonisation of India. So compelling was the commercial logic that the East India Company took over shipments of Portuguese Malwa opium through Calcutta in 1831; five years later, opium imports into China were valued at 18 million silver dollars. In volume, the trade surged to 30,000 cases in 1835 and 40,000 in 1838. This was, Wakeman wrote, ‘the world’s most valuable single commodity trade of the nineteenth century.’

 

在中国国内，毒瘾的增长--以及鲜为人知的银币外流的影响--引起了人们的困惑和苦恼。

道光皇帝对毒品对道德的影响表示遗憾，并敦促官员们彰显美德，但轻松致富的诱惑已经腐蚀了他的政府。

市场力量的巨大波动开始扰乱清朝社会的秩序。

农民用铜钱赚取他们微薄的收入，但他们的土地税是用白银计算并汇给政府的。

到1838年，购买一两银子所需的铜币数量从1000枚上升到1650枚；到1842年，上升到2000多枚。

(银锭的重量因地区而异，但通常约为37克或1.3盎司）。

实际税率翻了一番，毁了许多人。

中国长江以南人口最多、税负最重的地区变得动荡不安。

贫困、不和谐和农村叛乱成倍增加。

在共产党的历史观中，苦难催生了毒瘾，而两者都被外国的毒药所助长。

十九世纪中期，中国约有4.5亿人；关于有多少人使用鸦片，几乎没有可靠的估计，但他们的人数增长很快。

耶鲁大学的乔纳森-斯彭斯教授的一项研究计算出，到19世纪80年代，吸烟者的人数可能已经达到人口的10%。

 

Inside China, the growth of addiction – and the little-understood effects of the outflow of silver currency – caused perplexity and anguish. The emperor Daoguang deplored the drug’s impact on morality and urged the mandarinate to manifest virtue, but the lure of easy riches had corroded his administration. Huge swings in market forces began to disrupt the order of Qing society. Peasants earned their pittance in copper cash, but their land taxes were calculated and remitted to the government in silver. By 1838 the number of copper coins needed to buy one silver tael had risen from 1,000 to 1,650; by 1842 it had risen to more than 2,000. (The tael, an ingot of silver, varied in weight by region, but was usually about 37 grams or 1.3 ounces.) The real rate of taxation doubled, ruining many. The most populous and heavily taxed regions of China south of the Yangtze became turbulent. Poverty, discord and rural rebellions multiplied. In the Communist Party’s historical view, misery begat addiction and both were fuelled by foreign poison. In the mid-nineteenth century there were about 450 million people in China; few reliable estimates exist of how many used opium but their number grew fast. A study by Professor Jonathan Spence of Yale University calculated that by the 1880s the number of smokers may have reached 10 per cent of the population.

 

作为回应，道光发起了一场 "合法主义者 "和 "道德主义者 "之间的辩论，以确定政府如何能够管理这一危机。

法家 "认为，禁烟是徒劳的，执行禁烟只会导致腐败，对王朝来说，允许和规范鸦片消费，从而从中赚取收入会更好。

道德家 "认为，遵守法律是儒家秩序的基础，中国可以通过遵守法律来加强王权，实现道德的重生。

 

In response, Daoguang initiated a debate between ‘legalisers’ and ‘moralists’ to determine how the government could manage the crisis. The ‘legalisers’ argued that prohibition was futile, enforcement merely led to corruption and it would be better for the dynasty to permit and regulate opium consumption, thereby earning revenues from it. The ‘moralists’ held that obedience to the law was the foundation of the Confucian order and that China might strengthen the throne and achieve moral rebirth by adhering to it.

 

皇帝自己的本能在于紧缩和控制。

也许他不知道，南方的官员向他发送了关于自然灾害的虚假报告，以确保税收减免，而不是承认或解释小土地所有者因白银通货膨胀和财政负担而陷入的绝望境地。

这不会是北京的统治者最后一次对他们遥远的省份消息不灵通。

在任何情况下，皇帝都被复杂的问题困扰着。

对他来说，"洋泥 "是一种诅咒，但要消除它并不简单。

 

The emperor’s own instincts lay with austerity and control. Perhaps he did not know that officials in the south sent him false reports of natural disasters in order to secure tax remissions rather than admit or explain the desperate straits to which small landowners were reduced by silver inflation and their fiscal burden. It would not be the last time that rulers in Beijing were badly informed about their distant provinces. In any case, the emperor was vexed by complications. It was plain to him that ‘foreign mud’ was a curse, but it was not simple to eradicate it.

 

经济学上没有定论，考虑到19世纪中国的数据标准，可以原谅其统治者的糊涂。

然而，帝国主义的批评者在鸦片贸易中看到了一个典型的剥削例子。

马克思在19世纪50年代认为，西方列强依赖毒品贸易来抵消其从中国的进口，并沉迷于其收入以满足自己的支出。

因此，从中国流出的大量银币正在消耗中国的经济，并推高了国内的银两价格，造成了中国农村的苦难，同时也缓冲了欧洲的贵族们。

 

The economics were inconclusive and, given the standards of data available in nineteenth-century China, its rulers can be forgiven for being fuddled. Critics of imperialism, however, saw in the opium trade a classic example of exploitation. Marx argued in the 1850s that the Western powers depended on the drug traffic to offset their imports from China and were addicted to its revenues for their own expenditure. It followed that the huge outflow of silver currency from China was draining its economy and pushing up the domestic price of the silver tael, causing rural misery in China while cushioning the rentiers of Europe.

 

事实并非如此简单。

中国的银价也受到世界性的金属短缺的影响。

在帝国内部，清朝官员为了应对云南省铜矿的产量下降，通过铸造更便宜的硬币使铜币贬值，白银的价值飙升。

这相当于贬值，并导致铜钱的流通量激增。

格雷沙姆法则，即 "劣币驱逐良币"，开始发挥作用，白银变得如此抢手，以至于越来越少。

最后一个复杂的问题是，对白银流动的计算被扭曲了，因为有些白银从未实际离开过中国，因为在广州的西方鸦片和茶叶经纪人通过在伦敦交换的票据结算。

 

It was not as simple as that. The silver price in China was also affected by a worldwide shortage of the metal. Within the empire, silver soared in value after Qing officials debased the copper currency by minting cheaper coins in response to falling production at the copper mines in Yunnan province. This amounted to devaluation and to a surge in the circulation of copper cash. Gresham’s law, which states that ‘bad money drives out good,’ came into operation and silver became so sought-after that it grew scarce. A final complication was that calculations of the flow of silver were distorted by the fact that some of it never physically left China because western brokers in opium and tea at Guangzhou settled their accounts by bills exchanged in London.

 

权衡辩论双方的论点后，道光决定支持道德家。

抛开复杂的问题，皇帝认为麻醉品不仅会腐蚀他的臣民，而且还会带来无法控制的金融波动和侮辱性的野蛮人对天朝帝国的侵占，他认为这肯定能被击退。

 

Weighing the arguments on both sides of the debate, Daoguang decided to back the moralists. Sweeping aside complexity, the emperor saw a narcotic not only corrupting his subjects but also introducing uncontrollable financial volatility and insulting barbarian encroachment on the celestial empire, which, he believed, could certainly be repulsed.

 

1834年，中国和英国几乎发生了冲突，当时被任命为中国贸易第一任监督的纳皮尔勋爵试图打破先例，在给广州总督的正式信函中宣布自己的身份，而不是遵守禁止中国官员与外国人直接接触的规定。

总督命令纳皮尔离开，当他拒绝时，派出一支军舰舰队，阻止皇家海军前来援助他。

贸易停止了。

纳皮尔被疟疾击垮了，商人们担心他们的生意会受到影响，于是他撤退到澳门，在那里去世。

 

China and Britain almost came to blows in 1834, when Lord Napier, appointed as the first superintendent of the China trade, tried to break with precedent by announcing himself in a formal letter to the governor of Guangzhou instead of abiding by the regulations, which forbade direct contact between Chinese officials and foreigners. The governor ordered Napier to leave and, when he refused, sent a fleet of war junks to block the Royal Navy from coming to his aid. Trade halted. Broken by malaria and let down by the merchants, who feared for their businesses, Napier retreated to Macau, where he died.

 

中国人和英国人从纳皮尔的惨败中得出了截然相反的结论。

在北京，皇帝读了他的官员所写的赞叹的奏折，觉得可以轻松地把野蛮人作为人质，迫使他们服从。

在伦敦，政府意识到，在没有足够的兵力进行战争的情况下挑战清朝是草率的。

继续进行贸易符合双方的利益，但这种悲剧性的误解意味着平静期只是休战。

 

The Chinese and the British drew diametrically opposed conclusions from the Napier fiasco. In Beijing, the emperor read the exultant memorials from his officials and felt the barbarians could be held hostage with ease to compel their obedience. In London, the government realised it was rash to challenge the Qing dynasty without having sufficient force at its disposal to fight a war. It was in the interests of both sides for trade to continue, but this tragicomic misunderstanding meant that the period of calm was only a truce.

 

英国和中国并没有宣战。

他们渐渐地进入了战争。

1838年，道光任命了林则徐，一位严厉的学者和行政官员，他是一位清正廉洁的人，在广州消灭了鸦片贸易。

今天，林则徐是一位民族英雄，南方各城市都有纪念他的雕像，雕像中的林则徐总是身着官袍，显得严肃而庄重。

林则徐以一份以儒家哲学为基础的奏折赢得了皇帝的青睐，他主张在打击毒品贩子的同时，开明地对待吸毒者，少用死刑。

然而，他的努力的结果是中国的一场灾难。

 

Britain and China did not declare war. They drifted into it. In 1838, Daoguang appointed Lin Zexu, a stern scholar-administrator of incorruptible rectitude, to exterminate the opium trade in Guangzhou. Today Lin is a national hero, memorialised in statues, in which he invariably looks severe and dignified in his robes of office, in the cities of the south. Lin won the emperor over with a memorial grounded in Confucian philosophy, arguing for a campaign against traffickers that would be tempered by the enlightened treatment of addicts and the sparing use of executions. The outcome of his efforts, however, was a disaster for China.

 

林则徐作为钦差大臣抵达广州后，节奏加快了。

他命令地方官员和乡绅对走私者和经销商采取行动，依靠传统的监视和心理胁迫方法，劝说吸烟者自己戒烟。

整个地区开始了调查、逮捕和收缴鸦片的工作。

林则徐用风格化的宫廷语言给维多利亚女王写了一封建议信，告诉她皇帝正 "大发雷霆"，并对野蛮人来到中国销售一种 "有毒的药物 "表示遗憾，他听说这种药物 "是贵国非常严格禁止的。

这是一个错误。

事实上，在维多利亚时代的英国，鸦片并没有被禁止，它是 "当时的阿司匹林和苯二氮卓"，各阶层都以药丸的形式服用，并以鸦片酊（一种掺有酒精的酊剂）的形式服用液体。

它的文学追随者包括诗人塞缪尔-泰勒-柯勒律治，他在恍惚中写下了关于忽必烈汗的著名诗句，还有玛丽-雪莱笔下的维克多-弗兰肯斯坦，他用鸦片酊来麻醉自己的睡眠。

英中两国的不理解再一次是相互的、完全的。

 

Upon Lin’s arrival in Guangzhou as imperial commissioner the tempo quickened. He ordered local officials and the gentry to act against smugglers and dealers, relying on traditional methods of surveillance and psychological coercion to persuade the smokers themselves to abstain. Investigations, arrests and seizures of opium began across the region. Lin wrote a Letter of Advice to Queen Victoria in stylised court language, informing her that the emperor was ‘in a towering rage’ and deploring the arrival of barbarians selling a ‘poisonous drug’ in China which – he had heard – ‘is very strictly forbidden by your country’. This was an error. In fact opium was not prohibited in Victorian England, where it was ‘the aspirin and benzodiazepine of its day’, consumed by all classes as pills and taken as a liquid in the form of laudanum, a tincture laced with alcohol. Its literary adherents included the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who wrote his celebrated verses on Kublai Khan in a trance, and Mary Shelley’s character Victor Frankenstein, who used laudanum to numb himself asleep. Once again, Anglo-Chinese incomprehension was mutual and complete.

 

林则徐告诉广州的中国商人，这些外国人必须无偿交出他们的鸦片库存，并签署保证书，承诺不再从事毒品交易。

这些商人同意交出象征性的1056箱。

林专员不以为然，扣押了两名中国人质，并下令逮捕第二大外国公司的负责人和英国商会主席兰斯洛特-丹特（Lancelot Dent）。

数以千计的中国军队包围了河边的飞地，外国人在那里居住并拥有他们的 "工厂"，这些大院里有住宿、办公室和被称为货仓的仓库。

警报被发送给在澳门的英国贸易监督员查尔斯-埃利奥特（Charles Elliott）上尉。

 

Lin told the Chinese merchants in Guangzhou that the foreigners must hand over their opium stocks without compensation and sign bonds promising never to deal in the drug again. The traders agreed to surrender a token quantity of 1,056 chests. Unconvinced, Commissioner Lin seized two Chinese hostages and ordered the arrest of Lancelot Dent, head of the second largest foreign firm and president of the British Chamber of Commerce. Thousands of Chinese troops surrounded the riverside enclave where the foreigners lived and had their ‘factories’, compounds which housed accommodation, offices and warehouses known as godowns. The alarm was sent to Captain Charles Elliott, the British superintendent of trade, who was at Macau.

 

埃利奥特是一名前海军军官，由外交大臣帕默斯顿勋爵任命，他希望对中国采取更有力的政策。

帕麦斯顿是辉格党的成员，这个政党将改革的热情和对国内议会至高无上的信念与对自由贸易和英国海外权力扩张的奉献相结合。

主要的鸦片商人、合伙人威廉-雅尔丁（William Jardine）和詹姆斯-马西森（James Matheson）都听他的。

帕麦斯顿对公众在维护英国威信方面对其部长的期望有着敏锐的感觉。

他也明白，对中国人来说，"礼节是朝贡制度的精髓"，并禁止艾略特屈从于它。

 

Elliott, a former naval officer, had been appointed by Lord Palmerston, the foreign secretary, who wanted to pursue a more robust policy towards China. Palmerston was a member of the Whigs, a political party which combined reforming zeal and a belief in the supremacy of Parliament at home with dedication to free trade and the expansion of British power abroad. The principal opium merchants, partners William Jardine and James Matheson, had his ear. Palmerston had an acute sense of what the public expected of its ministers in upholding British prestige. He also understood that to the Chinese, ‘protocol was the essence of the tribute system’, and forbade Elliott to submit to it.

 

帕麦斯顿并不是唯一持这种观点的人。

在这个帝国扩张的时代，维多利亚女王的臣民受到一个外国势力的任意起诉是不可想象的。

一个英国人可以期望得到本国政府的保护，无论他是否是像丹特那样的鸦片商人，没有一个大臣会同意英国人必须签署债券，承认中国皇帝的管辖权，并在违反这些债券时接受审判和斩首。

这一原则被称为 "治外法权"，它一直困扰着外国列强和中国之间的关系，直到1949年的共产主义革命结束了它。

对帕麦斯顿来说，就像对艾略特一样，这是一个为战争创造条件的原则。

第一次，中国人面对的是英国王室的代表，而不是东印度公司的雇员。

如果说林专员没有注意到这种区别，那么埃利奥特则很清楚。

他没有绝对的权力，但他有权要求他的旧部，即皇家海军，以及驻扎在印度的英国军队。

 

Palmerston was not alone in his view. During this time of imperial expansion, it was unthinkable that the subjects of Queen Victoria should be subject to arbitrary prosecution by a foreign power. An Englishman could expect the protection of his own government, whether or not he was an opium trader like Dent, and no minister could agree that Englishmen must sign bonds acknowledging the jurisdiction of the emperor of China and submitting to trial and decapitation if they broke those bonds. The principle became known as ‘extraterritoriality’, and it was to vex relations between foreign powers and China until the Communist Revolution of 1949 put an end to it. For Palmerston, as for Elliott, it was a principle which created the conditions for war. For the first time, the Chinese were dealing with a representative of the British crown, not an employee of the East India Company. If that distinction was lost on Commissioner Lin, it was clear to Elliott. He did not have absolute powers but he had authority to call on his old service, the Royal Navy, and on British forces stationed in India.

 

埃利奥特到达广州后，发现自己和他的同胞们被封锁了。

面对与纳皮尔勋爵一样的困境，他投降了。

商人们同意交出20,000箱鸦片，几乎所有的人都被允许离开，前往澳门。

在帕麦斯顿勋爵的愤怒下，埃利奥特承诺英国政府将对他们的损失进行赔偿。

愤世嫉俗的人指出，由于林专员的运动，商人们被困在过剩的鸦片中，他们一定很感激政府的慷慨，并膨胀了他们的库存。

但这是英国人的问题。

林专员给王室写了一份胜利的奏折。

他监督数百名工人销毁了近300万磅的生鸦片，他们在战壕里将鸦片与水、盐和石灰混合，然后将其冲入河中，流向大海，同时专员向南洋的精神祈祷，保佑他的净化之举。

 

Elliott arrived in Guangzhou to find himself blockaded with his compatriots. Facing the same dilemma as Lord Napier, he capitulated. The traders agreed to hand over 20,000 chests of opium and almost all were allowed to leave for Macau. To the rage of Lord Palmerston, Elliott undertook that the British government would compensate them for the loss. Cynics noted that the traders, stuck with a surplus of opium due to Commissioner Lin’s campaign, must have gratefully received the government’s generosity and had inflated their stocks. But that was a British problem. Commissioner Lin wrote a triumphant memorial to the throne. He supervised the destruction of almost three million pounds of raw opium by hundreds of labourers, who mixed it with water, salt and lime in trenches, then flushed it into the river and out to the ocean while the commissioner prayed to the spirit of the Southern Seas to bless his purifying deed.

 

在将英国人赶出广州后，林则徐发现美国商人愿意签署他的债券，并作为中间人参与茶叶和丝绸的合法贸易，从中获利。

专员服从于意外后果法则，将他的猎物追到了澳门，打算永远铲除英国人的无耻行为。

在一个名叫林维熙的中国农民在与英国水手的争吵中被杀后，林的决心更加坚定。

艾略特在支付赔偿的同时，拒绝将任何人移交给帝国司法。

这又是 "治外法权 "的原则。

林则徐命令军舰封锁葡萄牙飞地，而他的士兵在飞地边缘集结。

葡萄牙人的士气迅速崩溃，英国人被告知要离开。

1839年8月24日，艾略特船长和他的同伴们登上他们的船，驶过海湾，在香港南岸最好的深水湾附近停泊，即 "香港"。

 

Having expelled the British from Guangzhou, Lin found that American merchants were willing to sign his bonds and step profitably into the breach as middlemen in the legal trade in tea and silks. Obedient to the law of unintended consequences, the commissioner pursued his quarry to Macau, intent on stamping out British impudence for good. Lin’s resolve hardened after a Chinese farmer named Lin Weixi was killed in a brawl with British sailors. Elliott, while paying compensation, refused to hand anyone over to imperial justice. It was the principle of ‘extraterritoriality’ again. Lin ordered war junks to blockade the Portuguese enclave while his soldiers mustered on its fringes. Portuguese morale crumbled swiftly and the British were told to leave. On 24 August 1839, Captain Elliott and his companions boarded their ships and sailed across the gulf to anchor near the best deep-water bay on the southern coast at Hong Kong, the ‘fragrant harbour’.

 

在伦敦，威廉-雅尔丁怒气冲冲地回来了，政府对炮舰外交充满信心。

在怡和及其同僚的建议下，帕默斯顿勋爵为中国拟定了一份可怕的要求清单。

英国准备了一支由艾略特船长的表弟乔治-艾略特上将指挥的舰队，包括16艘战舰、4艘装甲蒸汽船和运兵船。

他们携带了一支4000人的军队，配备了火炮和速射炮。

 

In London, where William Jardine had returned in wrath, the government put its faith in gunboat diplomacy. Advised by Jardine and his fellow lobbyists, Lord Palmerston drew up a list of formidable demands for China. Britain prepared a fleet commanded by Captain Elliott’s cousin, Admiral George Elliott, of sixteen warships, four armoured steamers and troop transports. They carried an army of 4,000 equipped with artillery and rapid-firing guns.

 

1840年4月7日，托马斯-巴宾顿-麦考利在下议院为辉格党内阁辩论时说，中国沿海的英国人 "属于一个不习惯于失败、屈服或羞耻的国家；属于一个为她的孩子所遭受的错误进行赔偿的国家，使所有听到它的人的耳朵都感到刺痛。

作为回应，年轻的威廉-格莱斯顿（William Gladstone），当时的保守党人，说出了至今在中国广为流传的话。

他说："一场起源更不公正的战争，一场更想让这个国家永远蒙羞的战争，我不知道，也没有读到过，"他还说，英国国旗在中国沿海升起，"是为了保护一种可耻的违禁品交易"。

 

Speaking in the House of Commons for the Whig cabinet in the debate of 7 April 1840, Thomas Babington Macaulay said Britons on the China coast ‘belonged to a country unaccustomed to defeat, to submission or to shame; to a country which has exacted such reparation for the wrongs to her children as has made the ears of all who heard it to tingle’. In response, the young William Gladstone, at that time a Tory, uttered words which are known in China to this day. ‘A war more unjust in its origin, a war more calculated to cover this country in permanent disgrace, I do not know and I have not read of,’ he said, adding that the British flag was hoisted on the coast of China ‘to protect an infamous contraband traffic’.

 

当战争来临的时候，它是漫长的，但却是决定性的。

在1840年和1842年之间，英国赢得了一系列的胜利。

舰队强行进入珠江，轰炸了广州，并对该城市进行了封锁。

英国船只向北航行，威胁到宁波港附近的舟山群岛。

威尔斯利号战舰的炮击使舟山居民仓皇而逃。

英国士兵登陆并升起他们的旗帜。

一位早期的英国游客，乔治-斯汤顿爵士，将舟山港口的魅力与威尼斯的魅力相提并论。

谁拥有了这个小群岛，谁就掌握了通往长江的通道，这是中国最强大的河流。

 

The war, when it came, was drawn-out but decisive. Between 1840 and 1842 the British won a series of victories. The fleet forced its way up the Pearl River, bombarded Guangzhou and imposed a blockade of the city. British ships sailed north to threaten the Zhoushan islands, off the port of Ningbo. A broadside from HMS Wellesley put the inhabitants of Zhoushan to flight. British soldiers landed and raised their flag. An early British visitor, Sir George Staunton, had compared the charms of Zhoushan’s harbour to those of Venice. Whoever possessed the small archipelago commanded the approaches to the Yangtze, the mightiest river in China.

 

起初，英国的侵略行为在皇帝的大议会上引起了震惊。

当舰队继续向北驶向守卫海河的堡垒时，这变成了恐惧，海河是通往北京的水路。

道光做了中国统治者在面临失败时经常做的事情：他当场更换了官员。

曾为自己能使野蛮人屈服而自豪的林专员被解职，并被流放到与俄罗斯接壤的寒带边境地区。

 

At first the British aggression created shock at the emperor’s Grand Council. This turned to fear as the fleet sailed on northwards to the forts guarding the Hai River, the water route to Beijing itself. Daoguang did what Chinese rulers have often done when facing failure: he replaced the official on the spot. Commissioner Lin, who had prided himself on aweing the barbarians into submission, was dismissed and exiled to the wintry borderlands with Russia.

 

一位富有而老练的满族总督琦善接任。

他开始与查尔斯-艾略特谈判。

英国军舰再次向南航行，而特使们则进行了会谈。

英国要求割让香港，支付巨额赔偿金，与王室直接接触，并按英国的条件进行贸易：总之，这是一份迫使旧中国开放并粉碎其价值体系的宣言。

尽管祁山的政治能力很强，但他发现自己所处的困境将在未来几个世纪里被中国与西方的谈判者所复制。

面对一个强大的对手，宫廷里的保守派攻击他，他的皇帝怀疑他是一个绥靖者，他计算错误了。

琦善意识到移交中国领土是最坏的结果，并认为英国人可能会用香港换取更多的钱和新的港口。

但时间并不在他这边；英国人恢复了军事行动，而来自北京的指示需要数周时间才能到达。

1841年1月20日，两位特使达成了《川比公约》，该公约承认了英国的要求，并确定了600万银元的赔偿金。

六天后，艾略特宣布英国对香港拥有主权，尽管他没有权力这样做。

作为回报，英国将交出舟山。

 

A rich and sophisticated Manchu governor, Qishan, took over. He began negotiations with Charles Elliott. The English warships sailed south again while the envoys talked. Britain was demanding the cession of Hong Kong, a huge indemnity, direct contact with the throne and trade on British terms: in short, a manifesto to force open the old China and shatter its value system. For all his political skills, Qishan found himself in a plight that would be replicated in centuries to come by Chinese negotiators with the West. Confronted by a powerful opponent, assailed by conservatives at court, suspected by his emperor of being an appeaser, he miscalculated. Qishan appreciated that the handover of Chinese territory was the worst outcome and felt the English might trade Hong Kong for more money and new ports. But time was not on his side; the British resumed military action and instructions from Beijing took weeks to arrive. On 20 January 1841 the two envoys agreed the Convention of Chuanbi, which conceded the British demands and fixed an indemnity of 6 million silver dollars. Six days later Elliott proclaimed British sovereignty over Hong Kong, although he had no authority to do so. In return, Britain was to hand back Zhoushan.

 

很少有协议能被其委托人如此迅速地、一致地否定。

皇帝大吃一惊，罢免了琦善，并下令将其处死，后来减为没收其财产。

他带着镣铐离开了广州。

伦敦的愤怒，尽管在后果上没有那么严厉，但却因为惊讶而变得更加复杂。

帕麦斯顿勋爵不明白为什么艾略特用舟山换取香港这个 "不毛之地"。

22岁的维多利亚女王称埃利奥特的行为 "莫名其妙"，并说他 "完全不服从他的指示，试图获得他能得到的最低条件"。

就他而言，艾略特是第一个但不是最后一个面临类似指控的英国对华谈判代表。

 

Few agreements have been so swiftly and unanimously disowned by their principals. The emperor, aghast, dismissed Qishan and ordered his execution, a sentence later commuted to the confiscation of his wealth. He left Guangzhou in chains. The ire in London, though less draconian in its consequences, was compounded by surprise. Lord Palmerston could not understand why Elliott had traded Zhoushan for the ‘barren island’ of Hong Kong. The twenty-two-year-old Queen Victoria called Elliott’s conduct ‘unaccountably strange’ and said he ‘completely disobeyed his instructions and tried to get the lowest terms he could’. For his part, Elliott was the first but not the last British negotiator with China to face similar accusations.

 

一个新的特使，英爱两国的军人和外交官亨利-波廷格爵士被任命，英国再次与中国开战。

1841年8月，波廷格带着新的主动精神从印度赶来。

他拒绝与中国的一个小特使交往，坚定了商人的信心，视察了香港的新建筑工程，召集士兵并命令海军指挥官做好准备，不顾两次严重的台风。

他的两栖作战是大胆而迅速的。

英国人占领了厦门和宁波，重新占领了舟山岛，并在1842年5月发动攻势，切断了中国的内河航道，旨在迫使中国迅速投降。

 

A new envoy, the Anglo-Irish soldier and diplomat Sir Henry Pottinger, was appointed and Britain went to war with China again. Pottinger arrived from India in August 1841 with a new spirit of initiative. He refused to treat with a minor Chinese envoy, stiffened the backbone of the merchants, inspected the new building works at Hong Kong, rallied his soldiers and ordered the naval commanders to make ready, disdaining two severe typhoons. His amphibious campaign was daring and swift. The British captured Xiamen and Ningbo, retook the island of Zhoushan and launched an offensive in May 1842 to cut China’s inland waterways, aiming to force a rapid surrender.

 

这场战争令人震惊，并带来了心理上的转变。

在宁波，英国海军的炮火摧毁了其附近的堡垒后，大门被打开了。

波廷格命令他的手下 "清除、运走或毁坏公共财产（其中包括属于皇帝或其官员的任何东西）......以及当局的官邸、粮仓、木材场、军舰和船只。

我将把破坏任何公共建筑的工作做到极致......烧掉其中可能不值钱的、或太重或太累赘的任何家具或其他物品，以便搬走。

他说，这是对虐待英国人的一种报复行为，将成为 "对其他地方的一个例子和警告"。

波廷格听说一艘沉船的幸存者，包括船主的遗孀和两个男孩，被戴上手铐，装进竹笼，在 "聚集在一起的野蛮人的叫嚣和嚎叫声 "中被带到宁波游行，他感到非常愤怒。

 

The war was shocking and psychologically transformative. At Ningbo, the gates were opened after British naval guns destroyed its nearby fortress. Pottinger ordered his men to ‘remove, carry away or destroy public property (in which I include whatever belonged to the Emperor or his officers) … and the official residences of the authorities, the granaries, timber yards, war junks and boats. I would carry this work of destruction of whatever buildings may be public to the extremest point … burning any furniture or other articles found in them that may not be worth, or be too heavy, or cumbersome, for removal.’ It was, he said, an act of retribution for the ill-treatment of Britons that would serve as ‘an example and warning to other places’. Pottinger had been outraged to hear that survivors of a shipwreck, including the master’s widow and two boys, had been manacled, put into bamboo cages and paraded to Ningbo amid ‘the hootings and howlings of the assembled savages’.

 

中国人浪费了他们在宁波的反击战，他们从四川省派来了仅有长刀的部落民兵，冲进了英国人的榴弹炮和地雷，而惊慌失措的新兵们则堆在他们后面，成百上千地被砍倒，直到血流成河。

这场屠杀甚至使那些人感到厌恶。

这样的场面在沿海地区的战场上不断上演。

 

The Chinese squandered their counter-attack at Ningbo by sending tribal levies from Sichuan province, armed only with long knives, to charge into the teeth of British grapeshot and land mines, while panicky raw recruits piled in behind them and were cut down in hundreds until blood ran in the streets. The slaughter repelled even those inflicting it. Such scenes were repeated on battlefields along the coast.

 

残酷是战争的货币，但英国人发现，在中国他们发现了对它的改进，这开始使波廷格和他的指挥官们的心变硬。

一名英国士兵的尸体被发现用自己的剃刀割掉了耳朵和鼻子，并挖掉了眼睛，这促使一名军官对肇事者进行反思，说这是 "他们凶残的最好证明......在他们自己的恐怖处境中，期望几乎立即死亡"。

在镇江，由1600名封臣组成的满族驻军宁可自杀也不投降，先是割断他们妻子的喉咙，使她们免于被强奸，然后谋杀自己的孩子。

当代英国人的描述是，士兵们踩在一堆因毒药而肿胀发黑的中国人尸体上，而尸体则挂在房梁上，漂浮在浅水井中。

波廷格的传记作者指出，他把这些事情储存在脑海中，"意识到他正在处理一种以前没有经历过的冷酷文化。

 

Cruelty was the currency of war, but the British found that in China they had discovered refinements to it which began to harden the hearts of Pottinger and his commanders. The body of a British private was found mutilated with his own razor, which had been used to cut off his ears and nose and to cut out his eyes, prompting an officer to reflect of the perpetrators that it was ‘great proof of their ferocity … amidst the horrors of their own situation, expecting almost immediate death’. At Zhenjiang, the Manchu garrison of 1,600 bannermen killed themselves rather than surrender, first cutting the throats of their wives to spare them from rape and murdering their own children. Contemporary British accounts told of soldiers treading amid heaps of Chinese bodies swollen and blackened from poison while corpses hung from roof beams and floated in shallow wells. Pottinger’s biographer noted that he stored up these things in his mind and ‘realised that he was dealing with a callous culture of a kind not previously experienced.’

 

这种震惊是多层面的。

在中国方面，满族人自杀式的忠诚被一种渐渐产生的怀疑所抵消，即王朝在生存斗争中不能指望自己的汉族臣民。

来自珠江三角洲的流氓跟随英军掠夺和焚烧中国人的家园。

鸦片贸易在西方人和南方沿海城市的所有罪犯、秘密团体和小商人之间建立了联系，这些人对当局的手感到不满。

关于背叛的谣言在满族指挥官中传播开来，他们看到河上的船长、盐业走私者和农村土匪中到处都有间谍。

在镇江自相残杀之前，满族士兵已经对当地人民实施了恐怖统治，杀害了任何被认为是可疑的人。

 

The shock was many-textured. On the Chinese side, the suicidal loyalty of the Manchu clansmen was offset by a creeping suspicion that the dynasty could not count on its own Han Chinese subjects in its fight to survive. Rogues from the Pearl River Delta followed the British army to plunder and burn Chinese homes. The opium trade had created a nexus between the Westerners and all those criminals, secret societies and small merchants in the southern coastal cities who chafed against the hand of authority. Rumours of treachery spread among Manchu commanders, who saw spies everywhere among river junk captains, salt smugglers and rural bandits. Before the self-slaughter at Zhenjiang, the Manchu soldiers had turned on the local people in a reign of terror, murdering any who were thought to be suspicious.

 

因此，政治和军事上的考虑迫使道光与侵略者达成了协议。

夺取香港是一个决定性的损失，第一次鸦片战争的失败标志着帝国主义在中国的统治开始结束。

西方技术战胜了原始的勇敢，训练有素的英国军队迷惑了传统的中国将军。

这场战争并没有推翻清朝的制度，但最终它侵蚀了满清王朝对自己的信心，摧毁了人民对它的信心。

1842年后，中国的统治秩序一直在退却，至少根据共产党的历史，毛泽东在1949年建立了'新中国'。

 

Political as well as military considerations, therefore, compelled Daoguang to come to terms with the invaders. The seizure of Hong Kong was a decisive loss, and defeat in the first Opium War marked the beginning of the end for imperial rule in China. Western technology had won against raw bravery and the well-drilled British military confounded traditional Chinese generalship. The war did not overthrow the Qing system, but ultimately it eroded the Manchu dynasty’s faith in itself and destroyed its people’s confidence in it. After 1842 the Chinese ruling order was in retreat until, according to Communist histories at least, Mao Zedong founded ‘New China’ in 1949.

 

在政治时机上，中国也很不走运。

1842年夏天，英国在阿富汗遭遇灾难性的失败后，需要一场武器的壮举来恢复对其本国统治精英的信心。

在1841-2年冬天从喀布尔撤退的过程中，整个军队损失惨重，波廷格的一个亲侄子被杀，另一个受伤并被扣为人质。

 

China was unlucky, too, in the political timing. In the summer of 1842 Britain needed a feat of arms to restore confidence in its own ruling elite after a catastrophic defeat in Afghanistan. During the retreat from Kabul in the winter of 1841–2 an entire army was lost, one of Pottinger’s own nephews was killed and another was wounded and taken hostage.

 

这是英国政治生活中的一个反动与改革的时期，是贵族与崛起的新阶级之间的较量，也是一场关于统治权是由功绩还是由出身决定的大胆的新辩论--对于那些了解它的人来说，这是与通过考试选拔出来为中国国家服务的功勋精英的一个诱人的比较，即使皇帝的满族人担任着中国的重要职务和指挥。

在战争的后期阶段，英国将其在战场上的野心委托给了世袭贵族。

埃尔金勋爵、一群骑士和一位出身显赫的海军将领，他们都很好地履行了自己的职责，在某些情况下还很英勇；而其在中国沿海的外交官则为包括一位公爵、一位子爵和五位伯爵在内的外交秘书服务。

几乎无法想象19世纪上半叶给予贵族的尊敬、崇拜和非凡的特权，"当时的一位英国历史学家写道。

1842年，威灵顿公爵本人在73岁时重返英国陆军，担任终身总司令，他坚定地认为 "军队不应受到下议院的支配"。

 

This was a period in British political life of reaction versus reform, of a contest between the aristocracy and the rising new classes, and of a bold new debate over whether the right to govern was due to merit or to birth – a tantalising comparison, for those who knew of it, with the meritocratic elite chosen by examinations to serve the Chinese state, even if the emperor’s Manchu clansmen held its great offices and commands. In the latter stages of the war Britain entrusted its ambitions in the field to the hereditary aristocracy: Lord Elgin, a brace of knights and an admiral of distinguished lineage, all of whom did their duty well, and in some cases heroically; while its diplomats on the China coast served foreign secretaries who included a duke, a viscount and five earls. ‘It is almost impossible to picture the deference, the adulation, the extraordinary privileges accorded to the nobility in the first half of the nineteenth century,’ a British historian of the period wrote. In 1842 the Duke of Wellington himself returned as commander-in-chief for life of the British Army at the age of seventy-three, unflinching in his view that ‘the army was not to be dictated to by the House of Commons.’

 

然而，英国在中国的冒险也促进了一个新的精英阶层。

它造就了发家致富的企业家，也提拔了像约翰-鲍林这样的行政人员，他是一位自由主义的多面手，在成为香港第四任总督时才被封为爵士，还有哈里-帕克斯，一位粗鲁的语言学家和外交官，"他是一个典型的自信的、背景平平的人，抓住了帝国提供的机会"。

值得注意的是，许多在东部治理帝国的人或在东部发展的人是苏格兰人或爱尔兰人。

 

Yet Britain’s adventure in China also advanced a new elite. It created entrepreneurs who made fortunes and it promoted administrators like John Bowring, a liberal polymath who was knighted only when he became the fourth governor of Hong Kong, and Harry Parkes, a brash linguist and diplomat, ‘a typical example of the self-confident go-getter of modest background who seized the opportunities afforded by the empire’. Notably, many of the men who governed the empire in the east or who prospered in it were Scottish or Irish.

 

对于英国的中国政策来说，其利害关系不仅仅是一块 "贫瘠的岩石 "和鸦片的利润。

这也是关于权力和控制。

在中国的英国军队由购买委任状的绅士领导，这是威灵顿所支持的制度，他认为这样可以保持军队与社会上层阶级之间的联系，避免出现导致欧洲军事专制主义的那种职业化的军队。

军事力量保障了英国的商业，并扩展了维多利亚女王的领地；它不应该受到民选政治家的干涉。

在阿富汗的一次成功的惩罚性远征和对中华帝国的胜利证明了这种观点。

 

There was more at stake for British policy in China than a ‘barren rock’ and profits from opium. It was also about power and control. The British army in China was led by gentlemen who purchased their commissions, a system upheld by Wellington, who felt it kept a connection between the army and the higher classes of society, avoiding the emergence of the type of professionally officered armies which had led to military despotism in Europe. Military prowess safeguarded British commerce and extended Queen Victoria’s realms; it was not to be interfered with by elected politicians. A successful punitive expedition in Afghanistan and victory over the Chinese empire vindicated this opinion.

 

1842年8月29日，波廷格和三位中国代表在康沃利斯号船上签署了《南京条约》，该条约标志着英国的胜利。

太子少保 耆英、乍浦副都統 伊里布、署理兩江總督 牛鑑。

这些文件是用丝绸装订的。

每位清朝使者都在文件上盖了一个巨大的红色长方形印章，并以精美的书法题写了所需的同意书。

亨利爵士在这一页上写下了他的签名。

在礼节性的交流中，耆英把几个糖李子直接喂到波廷格的嘴里，说这是一个古老的习俗。

 

The Treaty of Nanjing, which sealed the British victory, was signed on 29 August 1842 on board HMS Cornwallis by Pottinger and three Chinese representatives: Qiying, Yilibu and Niu Jian. The documents were bound in silk. Each of the Qing emissaries imprinted them with a great red rectangular seal and inscribed the required assent in fine calligraphy. Sir Henry scrawled his signature across the page. During the exchange of courtesies, Qiying fed Pottinger several sugar plums directly into his mouth, saying this was an old custom.

 

撇开李子不谈，对中国来说，《南京条约》的苦涩没有任何甜味。

它被称为中国现代历史上最重要的条约解决办法。

它将香港岛交给维多利亚女王及其继承人 "永久"，向外国商人开放了五个条约港口，废除了漕运商人的垄断，向中国征收2100万银元的赔偿金，对贸易设定了未明确的 "适度关税"，并通过一项协议正式埋葬了屈从的宏大语言，即今后两国将以平等身份相互称呼。

 

Plums aside, there was nothing to sweeten the bitterness of the Treaty of Nanjing for China. It has been called the most important treaty settlement in China’s modern history. It handed the island of Hong Kong to Queen Victoria and her successors ‘in perpetuity’, opened five treaty ports to foreign merchants, abolished the Cohong merchant monopoly, imposed an indemnity of 21 million silver dollars on China to be paid in instalments, set unspecified ‘moderate tariffs’ on trade and formally buried the grandiose language of subservience with an agreement that henceforth the countries would address each other as equals.

 

该协议被爱国者视为中国和一个外国势力之间的第一个不平等条约。

但所有的条约都是不平等的，因为如果国家之间存在着完美的平衡，就不需要外交协议来维持弱者和强者之间的和平。

清朝的第一个让步条约是1835年在中国的穆斯林边境与可汗签订的，可汗是一个掠夺性的邻国，主导了通往中亚的贸易路线。

该条约向大汗提出了一系列要求，甚至允许他在中国西部的领事代表审理案件并向外国人征税，而治外法权原则正是导致与西方列强冲突的原因。

贸易特许权与俄国在中国东北唯一获准设立的贸易站所给予的特许权相似。

因此，安抚在过去是清帝国的一个工具。

像耆英这样的吏部尚书认为，这将对野蛮人起作用。

但问题是，它并没有起到作用。

 

The agreement was seen by patriots as the first unequal treaty between China and a foreign power. But all treaties are unequal, for if a perfect balance existed between states no diplomatic agreements would be needed to keep the peace between the weak and the strong. The first concessionary treaty of the Qing dynasty had been made on China’s Muslim frontier in 1835 with the Khan of Kokand, a predatory neighbour who dominated the trade route to Central Asia. It conceded a swathe of demands to the Khan, even allowing his consular representatives in China’s far west to try cases and levy taxes on foreigners, the principle of extraterritoriality which caused such conflict with the Western powers. The trade concessions were similar to those granted to Russia at its solitary permitted trading post in northeast China. Appeasement, therefore, had been a tool for the Qing empire in the past. Mandarins like Qiying argued that it would work against the barbarians. The trouble was that it did not.

 

中国已经被英国人打开了大门，但其他国家很快就追随他们。

1843年，约翰-泰勒总统派马萨诸塞州议员卡勒-库欣与齐英谈判贸易特权。

他们签署的条约允许新教传教士进入中国，废除了阻止外国人学习中国语言的企图，并将治外法权让给了美国领事。

法国人随后也来了，他们签订了一份更加严格的条约，迫使皇帝颁布了一项容忍罗马天主教徒的诏书，废除了其祖先制定的对传教士的禁令。

至于英国人，他们有能力在香港建立他们的新属地，而其他人则增加对清朝的压力，因为根据他们自己的条约所附的 "最惠国待遇 "条款，他们将获得与任何敌对国家所赢得的相同利益。

耆英的这一明显无能的外交讨价还价，使清朝失去了与野蛮人相互博弈的机会。

 

China had been wrenched open by the British but other nations soon followed them. In 1843 President John Tyler sent a Massachusetts congressman, Caleb Cushing, to negotiate trading privileges with Qiying. The treaty they signed allowed Protestant missionaries access to China, abolished attempts to prevent foreigners learning the Chinese language and conceded extraterritorial powers to American consuls. The French came afterwards, with an even more exacting treaty which compelled the emperor to issue an edict of toleration for Roman Catholics, abolishing a ban on missionaries instituted by his ancestors. As for the British, they could afford to build up their new possession at Hong Kong while others increased pressure on the Qing, for under a ‘most favoured nation’ clause attached to their own treaty they would receive the same benefits as those won by any rival power. This remarkably inept diplomatic bargain by Qiying robbed the dynasty of any chance to play the barbarians off against each other.

 

尽管有了这一系列的让步，许多中国人认为这是百年屈辱的开始，但外国人并不满意。

耆英说服了皇室，魔鬼在细节中，中国将通过耐心、规则和形式来消磨入侵者。

在19世纪40年代，王朝恢复了它的姿态，外国商人对他们的命运越来越失望，即使怡和洋行派了一支由80艘快船组成的船队来经营鸦片贸易，每年的鸦片贸易量增长到6万箱。

 

Despite this raft of concessions, which many Chinese saw as the start of one hundred years of humiliation, the foreigners were not satisfied. Qiying had persuaded the throne that the devil was in the details and that China would wear down the intruders by patience, rules and formality. During the 1840s the dynasty recovered its poise and foreign traders grew disappointed with their lot, even as Jardine Matheson sent a fleet of eighty clippers to run the opium trade, which grew to 60,000 chests a year.

 

在法庭上，认为中国拥有优越的文明的观点还没有被打破。

但在这十年的末尾，在香港内陆的广西省东部，爆发了一场千禧年式的叛乱。

它由一个有魅力的乌合之众领导，洪秀全，他宣称自己是耶稣基督的弟弟，并宣布了一个大和平的天国。

太平天国反对 "满清恶魔 "的叛乱耗尽了1850年接替道光的咸丰皇帝的统治；虽然它的基督教起源最初吸引了西方的同情，但外国列强很快就把它视为一种威胁，帮助资助和组织清军来镇压它，然后在约2000万中国人丧生的情况下袖手旁观。

 

At court, the view that China possessed a superior civilisation had not yet been shattered. But at the end of the decade a millenarian revolt broke out in eastern Guangxi province, inland from Hong Kong. It was led by a charismatic rabble-rouser, Hong Xiuquan, who declared himself to be the younger brother of Jesus Christ and proclaimed a Heavenly Kingdom of Great Peace. The Taiping rebellion against the ‘Manchu demons’ consumed the reign of the emperor Xianfeng, who succeeded Daoguang in 1850; and while its Christian origins initially attracted Western sympathy, the foreign powers soon perceived it as a threat, helped to finance and organise the Qing armies that put it down, then gazed on while some 20 million Chinese lives were lost.

 

1854年，英国人利用这场混乱，要求重新谈判《南京条约》，要求进入中国所有内陆地区进行商业活动并使鸦片贸易合法化。

帕麦斯顿勋爵重新担任首相，为最大胆的建议提供了许可，而广州的排外清朝总督叶名琛则傲慢、挑衅、冷漠，煽动公众对野蛮人的仇恨，同时显然没有意识到英国政策的变化将导致他的失败和在流亡中死亡。

 

In 1854, the British took advantage of the chaos to press for renegotiation of the treaty of Nanjing, demanding commercial access to all of the Chinese interior and legalisation of the opium trade. The return of Lord Palmerston as prime minister licensed the boldest counsels, while the xenophobic Qing governor at Guangzhou, Ye Mingchen, was haughty, provocative and indifferent, inciting the public to hatred of the barbarians while apparently unaware of the change in British policy which would lead to his defeat and death in exile.

 

1856年，香港总督、新获封爵的鲍林爵士找到了他所寻找的理由，当时叶氏勇士登上了亞羅号，这是一艘中国式的帆船，船主是中国人方阿明，在香港注册，名义上的船长是贝尔法斯特的托马斯-肯尼迪。

它的注册文件已经过期，但鲍林和他的领事哈里-帕克斯（Harry Parkes）将这个细节抛在一边。

海军少将迈克尔-西摩爵士（Sir Michael Seymour）将他的舰队驶入珠江，夺取了守卫广州的要塞，并轰炸了该城市。

叶名琛仍然不为所动，贸易停止，伦敦的议会爆发了一场争吵。

 

The governor of Hong Kong, the newly knighted Sir John Bowring, found the casus belli he sought in 1856 when Ye’s bravos boarded the Arrow, a lorcha, or sailing vessel rigged Chinese-style, that was owned by a Chinese, Fong Ah-ming, had been registered in Hong Kong, and was nominally captained by Thomas Kennedy, from Belfast. Its registration papers had expired but Bowring and his consul, Harry Parkes, brushed that detail aside. Rear Admiral Sir Michael Seymour sailed his fleet up the Pearl River, seized the forts guarding the approaches to Guangzhou and bombarded the city. Ye remained immovable, trade halted and a row broke out in Parliament in London.

 

一年后，在印度兵变导致增援部队延迟抵达后，英国人在法国人的加入下强势回归。

这一次，广州沦陷。

盟国成立了一个联合委员会来统治这个城市，将叶名琛流放到印度，并任命了一个傀儡的中国总督来代替他。

 

A year later the British returned in force, joined by the French, after a delay in the arrival of reinforcements due to the Indian mutiny. This time Guangzhou fell. The allies installed a joint commission to rule the city, exiled Ye to India, and appointed a puppet Chinese governor in his place.

 

一支由埃尔金勋爵指挥的远征军随后向北进发，威胁天津港和首都本身。

这就在这个无能的年轻皇帝的宫廷里引发了一场死硬派和绥靖派之间的斗争。

谨慎的态度占了上风；王朝投降并签署了《天津条约》，其条款是迄今为止最严厉的。

鸦片将被征税和管制，更多的城市被开放给商业，外国贸易被允许深入内地，基督教传教士可以传教，大使们将居住在北京。

最后，"野蛮人 "的汉字被禁止出现在文件中。

 

An expedition commanded by Lord Elgin then headed north to threaten the port of Tianjin and the capital itself. This set off a battle between diehards and appeasers at the court of the ineffective young emperor. Caution prevailed; the dynasty capitulated and signed the Treaty of Tianjin, whose provisions were the harshest yet. Opium was to be taxed and regulated, more cities were opened up to commerce, foreign trade was permitted deep in the interior, Christian missionaries could evangelise and ambassadors would reside at Beijing. As a final touch, the Chinese character for ‘barbarian’ was banned from documents.

 

所有这些已经够丢人的了，但最让人难以接受的是，天朝帝国与蛮族之间的国家关系将在平等的基础上进行。

西方军队在他的门前，俄国人在他的东北边境压迫，咸丰皇帝在坚持礼节的同时，也暂缓了行动。

外国使节只能像进贡一样前来，在护卫下沿着帝国的驿道旅行，他们不能坐轿子或携带武器，而且每隔几年才允许他们进入。

埃尔金勋爵对这种不可言喻的顽固态度感到厌烦，并对他的一群谈判代表（包括《伦敦时报》的一名记者）被谋杀感到愤怒，他向北京进军。

皇帝逃跑了，派他的弟弟恭亲王去谈判。

1860年10月，英法联军将圆明园夏宫、圆明园洗劫一空，并将其烧毁，马戛尔尼勋爵曾在此为中国更明智的统治者展示其商品。

在1860年10月24日由中国、英国、法国和俄国签署的《北京公约》中，英国被永久授予面向香港岛的九龙半岛。

咸丰在第二年夏天去世，享年30岁。

 

All this was shame enough, but the bitterest fruit to swallow was that state-to-state relations between the celestial empire and the barbarians would be conducted on an equal basis. With Western armies at his gates, and the Russians pressing on his northeastern borders, the emperor Xianfeng temporised while he clung to protocol. Foreign envoys might only come as if bearing tribute, travelling along the imperial post roads under escort, they might not ride in sedan chairs or carry weapons, and they would be allowed in only every few years. Fed up with such ineffable intransigence, and enraged by the murder of a group of his negotiators, including a correspondent of The Times of London, Lord Elgin marched on Beijing. The emperor fled, sending his brother, Prince Gong, to parley. In October 1860 the Anglo-French force looted and burned to the ground the summer palace of the Yuanming Yuan, the Gardens of Perfect Brightness, where Lord Macartney had displayed his wares for a more sagacious ruler of China. In the Convention of Beijing, signed by China, Britain, France and Russia on 24 October 1860, Britain was awarded the Kowloon peninsula facing Hong Kong island in perpetuity. Dissipated and worn out, Xianfeng died at the age of thirty the next summer.

 

英国通过战争的胜利夺取了香港岛和九龙的尖端。

英国的下一步收购行动在三十八年后才正式开始，但在这期间，中国变得越来越弱小。

日本加入了它周围的掠夺性强国的行列，衰弱的清朝陷入衰败，精英改革者未能挽救既定的秩序，中国社会被叛乱和社会混乱所扰乱，而国内的鸦片生产增加，进口毒品变得不那么重要。

 

Britain had taken Hong Kong island and the tip of Kowloon through victory in war. The next step of British acquisition would not be formalised for another thirty-eight years, but in the intervening period China became weaker and weaker. Japan joined the predatory powers around it, the enfeebled Qing dynasty sank into decay, elite reformers failed to save the established order and Chinese society was convulsed by rebellions and social chaos, while domestic production of opium increased and imports of the drug became less important.

 

到19世纪末，鸦片贸易在外国列强与中国的斗争中不再发挥关键作用，但它被称为 "现代最长期持续和系统的国际犯罪"。

在中国，经常有人要求英国道歉。

任何英国政府最接近于半官方的道歉是最后一任香港总督彭定康在1997年6月30日英国的告别仪式上，在黑暗和雨中发表的告别演说，当时没有任何中国领导人出席。

彭定康说："这一章是以一些事件开始的，从今天的制高点来看，在下个世纪末，我们在座的各位都不希望或寻求宽恕。

但我们可以注意到，现在生活在香港的大多数人都是因为我们这个世纪的事件而生活在香港，而这些事件在今天是很少有人会维护的。

所有这些都提醒我们，有时我们应该记住过去，以便更好地忘记它。

 

By the end of the nineteenth century the opium trade no longer played a critical part in the struggle between foreign powers and China, but it has been termed ‘the most long-continued and systematic international crime of modern times’. In China, there are frequent calls for Britain to apologise. The closest that any British government has ever come to a semi-official apology was the valedictory speech by the last governor of Hong Kong, Chris Patten, delivered in the dark and the rain at Britain’s farewell ceremony, which was not attended by any Chinese leader, on 30 June 1997. ‘This chapter began with events that, from today’s vantage point, at the end of the following century, none of us here would wish or seek to condone,’ Patten said. ‘But we might note that most of those who live in Hong Kong now do so because of events in our own century which would today have few defenders. All that is a reminder that sometimes we should remember the past the better to forget it.’

 

对中国来说，漫长的19世纪以进一步的屈辱而告终。

这一次，灾难是通过一场为控制朝鲜而进行的不明智的对日战争展开的。

新近组织起来的日本军队在一场高超的陆地战役中击败了清军，日本的海军击败了中国的舰队。

清廷派其主要政治家李鸿章就1895年4月17日签署的《马关条约》进行谈判，该条约的要求包括将台湾和满洲部分地区丢失给日本，承认日本在朝鲜的首要地位和巨额的财政赔偿。

随着清朝的衰落，法国、德国和俄国迫使清朝将港口、城市和铁路的租期延长至99年。

 

For China, the long nineteenth century wound to a close with a further humiliation. This time disaster unfolded through an ill-advised war against Japan for control of Korea. The newly organised Japanese army defeated the Qing forces in a masterful land campaign and Japan’s navy mauled the Chinese fleet. The Qing court sent its leading statesman, Li Hongzhang, to negotiate the Treaty of Shimonoseki, signed on 17 April 1895, whose exactions included the loss of Taiwan and part of Manchuria to Japan, acknowledgement of Japanese primacy in Korea and huge financial indemnities. As the dynasty reeled, France, Germany and Russia compelled it to grant leases of up to ninety-nine years on ports, cities and railways.

 

清朝一直是个谨慎的借贷者。

它在很大程度上使用国内资本来资助其军工厂、炼钢和造船业的扩张。

1861年至1894年期间，它的外债总额估计约为1200万英镑，主要是由香港上海汇丰银行以5%的利率提供的英国银团贷款，以及由德国银行组成的财团提供的类似贷款。

1895年，帝国的财政在对日本的赔款下陷入困境。

清政府面临着一笔连本带利的5,450万英镑的付款。

 

The Qing dynasty had been a prudent borrower. It had largely used domestic capital to finance its expansion of military arsenals, steelmaking and shipbuilding. Its total foreign debts between 1861 and 1894 have been estimated at around £12 million sterling, principally a British loan syndicated by the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation at a rate of 5 per cent and a similar loan from a consortium of German banks. In 1895 the imperial finances buckled under the indemnity to Japan. The Qing government faced a payment that has been calculated, with interest, at £54.5 million.

 

它不可能指望用自己的资源来支付这样一笔钱。

最重要的问题是，这笔款项是以西方国家使用的金本位制的英国英镑支付的，而中国自己仍然以银本位制计算其收入。

在无计可施的情况下，帝国不得不求助于外国金融家，在列强之间掀起了一场为赔偿金筹资的争夺战。

伦敦金融城、法俄银团和德国银行竞相争取贷款。

银行家们召集了他们的外交官来援助。

俄国外交部长维特伯爵认为，为中国的皇室债务提供资金，使圣彼得堡获得了在满洲里的铁路特许权的筹码，建立了其在宫廷的威望，并削弱了英国对中国事务的传统权力。

实际上，在外交部放弃了维多利亚时代的自由放任做法，以外交支持的方式介入后，截至1913年，大部分对华外国贷款都是通过香港上海银行的手。

汇丰银行也是1895年的一个胜利者。

 

It could not hope to pay such a sum from its own resources. Not the least of its problems was that the payment was fixed in British sterling on the gold standard used by the West, while China itself still computed its revenues on the silver standard. Hapless, the empire had to turn to foreign financiers, setting off a scramble among the powers to finance the indemnity. The City of London, a Franco-Russian syndicate and the German banks competed to capture the loans. The bankers summoned their diplomats in aid. Count Witte, the Russian foreign minister, believed that financing the Chinese imperial debt gave St Petersburg leverage to extract railway concessions in Manchuria, built up its prestige at court and weakened the traditional power of Britain over Chinese affairs. In practice, most of the foreign loans to China up to 1913 passed through the hands of the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank after the Foreign Office abandoned its Victorian laissez-faire approach and stepped in with diplomatic support. The Hongkong Bank, too, was a victor of 1895.

 

两次胜利的是日本。

它的军事胜利为现代日本资本主义制度的诞生提供了资金。

赔偿金达到了国家年度预算的三倍以上。

据当时的一位学者说，以当时世界上最主要的货币英镑支付的这么大一笔钱，对日本资本主义产生了 "不可估量的 "影响。

它使日本有可能在1897年采用金本位制，加入到全球大国的行列中。

 

The winner twice over was Japan. Its military triumph financed the birth of the modern Japanese capitalist system. The indemnity amounted to more than three times the annual national budget. A sum so large, paid in sterling, then the world’s leading currency, had ‘incalculable’ effects on Japanese capitalism, according to a scholar of the period. It made it possible for Japan to join the top rank of global powers by adopting the gold standard in 1897.

 

在中国人努力偿还债务的时候，西方的贵族们从他们的贷款利息中获得了安慰。

在这一先例的鼓励下，外国势力后来又对1901年的义和团运动进行了进一步的惩罚性赔偿。

对中国来说，这场灾难已经结束。

以权力平衡的名义，英国政府指示其驻北京公使克劳德-麦克唐纳爵士，要求将九龙的界牌街和深圳河之间的土地以及周围的岛屿租给中国，租期为99年。

根据1898年6月的《北京第二公约》，"新界 "成为香港皇家殖民地的一部分，免租租约于1997年6月30日到期。

在当时，似乎没有人考虑过这个到期日。

李鸿章的名字成了一个耻辱的代名词，在中国决定收回主权时，邓小平本人也援引了这个名字。

 

The rentiers of the West did comfortably out of the coupons on their loans as the Chinese laboured to pay back the debt. Encouraged by the precedent, foreign powers would later impose further punitive indemnities for the Boxer Rebellion in 1901. For China, the disaster was complete. In the name of the balance of power, the British government instructed its minister at Beijing, Sir Claude MacDonald, to press for a lease of ninety-nine years on the land between Boundary Street in Kowloon and the Shenzhen River, together with the surrounding islands. The ‘New Territories’ became part of the Crown Colony of Hong Kong by the Second Convention of Beijing of June 1898 under a rent-free lease expiring on 30 June 1997. At the time, it seems that nobody gave much thought to the expiry date. The name of Li Hongzhang became a byword for shame, and was invoked by Deng Xiaoping himself when China decided to reclaim its sovereignty.

 

二十世纪初，中国经历了几十年的动荡，香港的人口和繁荣也随之增长。

一届又一届的总督修建道路，改善港口，建立学校和医院，监督法院，监视警察，维持欧洲的社会秩序，同时避免干涉中国的习俗和惯例。

和平、商业和繁荣的机会吸引了来自中国南方的定居者在英国的旗帜下不断涌入。

 

Hong Kong grew in population and prosperity as China went through decades of upheaval in the early twentieth century. A succession of governors built roads, improved the port, set up schools and hospitals, watched over the courts, kept an eye on the police and maintained the European social order while refraining from interference with Chinese customs and practices. Peace, commerce and the chance of prosperity attracted a steady flow of settlers from southern China under the British flag.

 

在中国，满清王朝灭亡。

一个共和国成立了，但却陷入了军阀主义和混乱之中。

广州附近的黄埔军校中大胆的年轻军官领导了一场民族主义运动--国民党。

 在内陆地区，共产主义运动蔓延。

在20世纪20年代末，双方互相争斗，而国民党在南京的军阀领地中管理着一个短命的共和政府。

1931年，日本入侵东北，1937年在中国各地发动征服战争，然后站在德国一边加入了第二次世界大战，中国的内战因此中断了。

与日本的战争标志着西方在中国沿海地区统治地位的结束。

香港坚持其作为英国海军和情报行动中心的脆弱地位，但即使是温斯顿-丘吉尔也承认该殖民地注定要失败，它于1941年12月25日落入日本人手中。

 

In China, the Manchu dynasty fell. A republic was set up, only to fall into warlordism and chaos. Bold young officers at the Whampoa military academy near Guangzhou led a nationalist movement, the Kuomintang. Inland, the Communist movement spread. In the late 1920s the two sides fought one another while the Kuomintang ran a short-lived republican administration from Nanjing amid a fractured mosaic of warlord fiefdoms. The Chinese civil war was interrupted when Japan invaded the northeast in 1931, launched a war of conquest across China in 1937, then joined the Second World War on the side of Germany. War with Japan marked the end of Western dominance along the China coast. Hong Kong clung to its fragile post as a centre of British naval and intelligence operations, but even Winston Churchill admitted the colony was doomed and it fell to the Japanese on 25 December 1941.

 

1945年，日本投降后，一支英国舰队驶回维多利亚港，收复该殖民地，尽管美国和中国民族主义者对此颇有怨言。

重建的工作开始了。

但随着香港的稳定，中国又陷入了新一轮的内战。

这场战争以1949年共产党的胜利而告终，战败的军队和难民逃离中国大陆，外国人被驱逐出中国沿海的其他地方。

当中国在毛泽东领导下进入三十年的孤立状态时，香港的中国人的技能和精力推动了中国通过出口和贸易向外扩张。

在英国的统治下，他们建立了一个矛盾的社会--繁华、不平等、注重传统、现代、为其主要的广东文化感到骄傲，并注入了对自身脆弱性的认识。

 

In 1945, after the surrender of Japan, a British fleet sailed back into Victoria Harbour to reclaim the colony, despite grumbling from the United States and the Chinese nationalists. The work of reconstruction began. But as Hong Kong stabilised, China fell into a new round of civil war. It ended with victory for the Communists in 1949, an exodus from mainland China of defeated troops and refugees, and the eviction of foreigners from everywhere else on China’s seaboard. While China passed into three decades of isolation under Mao Zedong, the skills and energy of the Chinese people in Hong Kong drove its outwards expansion by exports and trade. Under British rule they built a society that was contradictory – bustling, unequal, tradition-minded, modern, proud of its mainly Cantonese culture and infused with a sense of its own fragility.

 

香港是资本主义的前哨，是西方的宝贵资产，但对北京的共产党政权来说，它是 "历史遗留问题"。

因此，当毛泽东去世，毛泽东主义试验在20世纪70年代末减弱时，中国的新统治者不可避免地将目光转向深圳河对岸的这座海滨城市。

 

Hong Kong was an outpost of capitalism and a precious asset to the West, but to the Communist regime in Beijing it was ‘a problem left over from history’. So when Mao died and the Maoist experiment waned in the late 1970s, it was inevitable that the new rulers of China would turn their gaze south across the Shenzhen River to the city by the sea.