Making Americans
造就美国人

English settlers in America might have intended to transmit the traditions of the mother country to subsequent generations. This didn’t exactly happen—partly because the settlers disagreed amongst themselves about which of those traditions deserved preservation, and partly because the experience of life in North America challenged many of the traditions they did want to preserve. The disagreement and the adaptation together led, eventually, to a political revolution.

来到美洲的殖民者们也许曾经试图让来自祖国的传统在他们的后代身上延续下去,但这最终未能实现——部分是因为这些殖民者无法就哪些传统值得被保留达成一致,部分是因为在北美的生活经历让许多他们曾希望保留的传统受到了挑战。他们的这些分歧和适应行为最终导致了一场政治革命。

Malcolm Gaskill puts it bluntly: “Migrants did have one thing in common: they were no longer in England, and they had to get used to it.”

Malcolm Gaskill直言不讳地写道:“这些移民的确有一个共同点:他们不再生活在英格兰了,而他们必须去适应这种新生活。”

His new book tracks what happened to the English in their three (very different) principal areas of settlement: Virginia, New England, and the Caribbean. He also keeps an eye on what the English who stayed at home—financing these expeditions and attempting to rule them from afar—thought and did, especially in competition with the Spanish, who had settled large swaths of the New World a long time before their geopolitical rivals in London really got started.

他的新书追踪了弗吉尼亚、新英格兰和加勒比这三个(差别非常大的)主要殖民区域中发生在这些英国殖民者身上的历史。在书中,他同样关注了那些为这些殖民者的远征提供财力支持,并试图在遥远的英国统治他们的英国人的所想所为,尤其是他们与西班牙人之间的竞争——西班牙人早在他们伦敦的地缘政治对手开始向“新大陆”进军之前很久就已经在那里占据了大片土地。

This gives Between Two Worlds: How the English Became Americans a lot to do, but the author, a professor of early modern history at the University of East Anglia, manages his unruly topic by considering each of the first three settler generations in turn.

这些内容让写作《两个世界之间:英国人是如何成为美国人的》这本书成了一项繁重的任务,但本书作者,一位在东安格利亚大学研究早期现代史的教授,通过分别研究最初的三代殖民者,成功地处理了他所面对的这一难以驾驭的课题。

Gaskill deals in his prologue with the inauspicious 16th century beginnings of the project, remarking that the English understandably modeled their efforts on the recent conquest of Ireland, the wild tribes of which reminded them of their own pre-Roman-conquest ancestors and of the North American peoples.

Gaskill在本书序言中讨论了16世纪初英国人开拓北美殖民地时所遇到的不顺利的开端,并提到英国人当时的殖民行为仿照的是他们最近对爱尔兰的征服,这并不稀奇,那里的蛮族部落让他们想起了自己的祖先在“罗马征服”之前的样子和现在的这些北美原住民。

The first settlement, at Roanoke, “Virginia” in 1585—named for Elizabeth, the Virgin Queen, of course—vanished from the earth like Prospero’s insubstantial pageant. To this day, we don’t know what happened to its more than 100 inhabitants.

他们1585年在以“童贞女王”伊丽莎白命名的“弗吉尼亚”的罗阿诺克建立了第一个殖民地,后来就像莎翁笔下普罗斯彼罗的虚幻盛宴一样从地球上消失了。直到今天,我们还是不知道那一百多位居民身上发生了什么。

The years 1607 to 1640 mark Gaskill’s first generation of permanent settlers. Of the four million English in 1600, thousands would journey to the New World during this period. Half of them went to the West Indies, slightly more than a third to the Virginia/Chesapeake area, only 15 percent to New England.

从1607年到1640年,Gaskill所定义的第一代永久殖民者来到了北美。1600年生活在英国的四百万人口中,有数千人将在这一时期踏上前往“新大陆”的旅途。他们中的一半去了西印度群岛,略多于三分之一去了弗吉尼亚/切萨皮克地区,仅有15%去了新英格兰。

Motives varied, but as the “southerly” movement of the new arrivals suggests, the prospect of a mild climate fit for rich plantations and an interest in “resisting Spanish Catholics—the dark lords of an American empire”—figured prominently in English ambitions.

虽然动机各不相同,但这些新来者们向南方的迁移说明,对适宜大型种植园的温和气候和“抵抗美洲帝国的黑暗领主——西班牙天主教徒们”的兴趣是英国人的主要野心所在。

To wrest land from the infidels of Spain and from pagan indigenes—better still, while converting the latter to Protestant Christianity—reconciled, at least to the satisfaction of the English, desires for both liberty and empire. (Two centuries later, Thomas Jefferson’s formula, “the empire of liberty,” would address the same paradox, albeit in very different terms.)

至少对于英国人来说,从西班牙异端以及异教的土著人手中夺取土地——要是能同时将后者转变为新教基督徒就更好,这恰好将英国人既追求自由又寻求建立帝国统治的两个目标统一了起来。(两个世纪之后,托马斯·杰弗逊提出的“自由帝国”一词也回应了同一悖论,虽然是以一种非常不同的形式。)

Upon ascending the throne in 1603, James I followed a two-track strategy with Spain. He made peace while endorsing some New World plantations. King James’ restraint in New World settlement bespoke not only diplomatic caution but also the worry (prescient, as it would happen) that large English settlements in the New World might upset England’s place “in the hierarchy of nations.”

自从1603年登上王位,詹姆士一世就以一种“双轨策略”来对付西班牙。在向“新大陆”的一些种植园提供支持的同时,他也维持着与西班牙之间的和平关系。詹姆士国王在“新大陆”殖民事业上的克制不仅仅显示出他在外交上的谨慎,同时也表现出他的一种担忧:英国在“新大陆”的大规模殖民活动可能会打乱本国在“国家的层级体系”中所处位置(之后发生的事情也证明了这一担忧的确很有先见之明)。

The New World tail might someday wag the Old World dog. He took care not to use the Crown’s money for investment, leaving colonization to private speculators who nonetheless remained under royal control. Hence the Virginia Company and the Plymouth Adventurers, both established in 1606.

“新大陆”的发展终有一天会对“旧大陆”构成尾大不掉之势。他小心翼翼地避免使用皇室的钱进行投资,将殖民活动留给那些仍然处于皇室控制之下的私人投机客们。正是在这种背景下,弗吉尼亚公司和普利茅斯探险者公司同时在1606年成立了。

The former reached the Chesapeake Bay under the command of Captain John Smith the following year, founding Jamestown and meeting resistance above all from the Indian chiefs or Paw-Paws, who recognized a rival form of worship when they saw one. As Gaskill puts it, “Indian suspicion on one side, and a haughty sense of entitlement on the other, guaranteed an Anglo-Indian future steeped in misery and bloodshed.”

弗吉尼亚公司的船队在John Smith船长的指挥下于次年来到了切萨皮克湾,他们建立了詹姆斯敦,并且遇到了一些印第安首领(也称Paw-Paw)【校注:根据原书,此处应为paw-waw,印第安人中的神职人员】的抵抗,他们把任何与他们有着不同崇拜的人都视为敌人。正如Gaskill所写道的,“一边是多疑的印第安人,而另一边则是英国人傲慢的特权感,这为之后盎格鲁-印第安人之间血腥而悲惨的历史埋下了伏笔。”

And this notwithstanding the marriage of the entrepreneur John Rolfe to “Pocahantas” (her real name, Mataoka, concealed from the English), optimistically renamed “Rebecca,” after the Biblical mother of two nations. She died less than a decade later, after a publicity tour of England, taking the rather faint hope of peaceful intermarriage and Christian conversion of the Indians with her.

尽管来自英国的企业家John Rolfe娶了土著公主“宝嘉康蒂”(她的真名Mataoka却不为英国人所知),并且她还起了一个富有乐观精神的新名字“Rebecca”——圣经中两个民族的母亲【编注:据《旧约·创世纪》,利百加(Rebecca)为以撒(Issac)之妻,生孪生子雅各(Jacob)和以扫(Esau),分别为以色列人和以东人(Edomites)的始祖,有些说法认为阿拉伯人是以东人后裔。】,但仅仅过了不到十年,她在一次宣传性质的英国之旅后就去世了,同时也带走了本就十分渺茫的和平联姻以及将印第安人转变为基督徒的希望。

The real answer to lasting English settlement in America was political thought. “Adventurers had to learn that merely installing English settlements in America was not enough,” Gaskill writes. “They had to identify things that made England work socially, politically, and economically and reproduce them. Peopling the land was the key.”

英国人在美洲维持长期殖民的真正答案在于政治思想。“探险者们必须懂得,仅仅在美洲建立英国殖民地是不够的,”Gaskill写道。“他们必须找出那些让英国在社会层面、政治层面和经济层面得以运转下去的东西,并将这套东西移植到新大陆上,让其生根发芽。在这片土地上繁衍生息才是关键。”

If ever a people were, in Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s famous phrase, forced to be free, it was the English in North America. More specifically, they were forced to think, and to think politically. It was a habit that would eventuate in independence and republicanism, nearly two centuries later.

如果历史上确有一群人——用卢梭的名言来说——是被迫成为自由人的,那说的就是北美洲的英国人了。更准确的说,他们是被逼着去思考政治问题。这个习惯最终在大约两个世纪之后孕育出了美国的独立和共和主义。

The Indian nations and tribes, who had been engaged in fierce geopolitical struggles amongst themselves for centuries, quickly saw the danger of any substantial territorial encroachments by the newcomers. At best, the white strangers might be deployed against traditional enemies.

那些已经陷入彼此之间的地缘政治斗争长达几个世纪的印第安民族和部落们,很快就发现了新来者们带来的巨大的领土入侵威胁。对他们来说,在最好的设想之下,可以利用这些白种陌生人攻击自己的宿敌。

Incidentally, one of the merits of Between Two Worlds is its treatment of the Indians—a treatment free of the American triumphalism of the old accounts, and also of the condescending sympathy for “Native Americans” fashionable in the past half-century.

顺便提一下,《两个世界之间》这本书的优点之一就是其中对印第安人的处理——它摆脱了陈腐的美国必胜心理,同时也摆脱了过去半个世纪中流行的那种带有优越感的对“美洲原住民”的同情心态。

Gaskill describes but makes no attempt to justify the sudden attack on Jamestown masterminded by the apparently friendly Powhatan chief, Opechancanough, whose men murdered 387 unsuspecting settlers in March 1622, then mangled the carcasses.

Gaskill仅仅是描述了由那位之前表现得明显很友好的Powhatan部落酋长Opechancanough所策划的对詹姆斯敦的突袭,而完全没有试图为其辩护,在这场发生于1622年3月的突袭中,Opechancanough酋长的部下们杀死了387名毫无戒心的殖民者,之后还将他们的尸体砍得支离破碎。

After that, “Throughout the Atlantic world, men decided that Indians could not be trusted.” Settler eminences now began to speak not of intermarriage, peaceful trade, and conversion but of the right of war and the law of nations exercised against savages.

在那之后,“在整个大西洋世界中,人们决定不再信任印第安人。”殖民地的精英们不再谈论与印第安人通婚、和平贸易或者说服他们皈依基督教,而开始谈论战争权利以及针对野蛮人的国际公法。

As for the Plymouth Adventurers and their descendants, the New Englanders faced analogous circumstances but with a different set of Indian nations, in a harsher climate; and they arrived with more intense religious aspirations. A band of Protestant dissidents landed at “New Plymouth” in 1620, settling in territory where the local tribe had been eradicated by disease.

而对于普利茅斯探险者公司及其后继者们,这些新英格兰人所面临的处境与弗吉尼亚公司非常类似,只是他们所面对的是一些不同的印第安民族,和更加严酷的气候,而他们在到达时也怀揣着更加强烈的宗教愿望。一群持异见的新教徒在1620年到达了“新普利茅斯”,并在一个被疾病所消灭的当地部落所在地建立了殖民地。

Interestingly, Gaskill notes that the Mayflower Compact was no “democratic constitution but a company contract to bind the strangers to order upon landing, a quick fix before formal authority was established.” (Many of the Pilgrims were Dutch.)

有趣的是,Gaskill提到,“五月花号公约”实际上并不是什么“民主宪法,而是一份为了让那群陌生人上岸之后能够服从命令的公司合同,是在正式权力机构建立之前的一条权宜之计”。(这些最初的移民中很多都是荷兰人。)

In the same vein, he points out that this and similar settlements in New England didn’t establish beachheads for political liberty; John Winthrop’s 1630 Salem founding was a theocracy supervised by God’s vicegerent, Mr. Winthrop.

同样地,他还指出,该殖民地和新英格兰地区的其他殖民地所建立的,并非是政治自由的桥头堡;John Winthrop于1630年在塞勒姆建立的殖民地是一个在上帝的代理人——也就是Winthrop先生本人——监督之下的神权政体。

The settlements were democratic only in Tocqueville’s social sense: No titled aristocrats made the trip. By “liberty” the settlers meant, in the frank words of one, a world free of bishops.

这些殖民地仅仅在托克维尔所说的社会意义上,才有些民主的样子:越洋而来的人群中不存在拥有头衔的贵族。对于这些殖民者而言,借用他们中某人的坦率说法,“自由”仅仅意味着一个没有主教的世界。

As for the West Indies, settlers worried less about Indians than about the heat, the hurricanes, and the disease-carrying mosquitoes. There, a new aristocracy began to take shape, based on slaves who were imported from Africa to work in a climate Europeans could not bear to work in. By the 1630s the Virginia settlers were beginning to do the same thing. The portentous social distinction between South and North had begun to take shape.

对于那些来到西印度群岛的殖民者们,相比印第安人,更加困扰他们的是炎热的天气,狂暴的飓风,还有蚊虫带来的疾病。在那里,一种新的贵族政治开始成型,而它的基础则是从非洲引入的黑奴,只有他们才能在欧洲人无法忍受的气候里劳作。而到了1630年代,弗吉尼亚的殖民者们也开始做同样的事情。北美大陆的南部和北部之间令人不安的社会差异开始逐步成型。

Having made his peace with Spain, James I faced increasingly sharp resistance to his rule from Protestants at home, their suspicions roused especially by the king’s attempts to marry his eldest son to one Catholic princess after another (success came in 1625, when the future Charles I wedded Henrietta Maria of France). By the time the second generation of English Americans took charge, relations with Indians had become foreign relations, slavery was giving rise to a set of New World aristocrats, and civil war loomed in England itself.

在与西班牙握手言和之后,詹姆士一世国王面临着来自国内新教徒日益锐利的抵抗。国王不断地试图让自己的长子迎娶一位又一位天主教公主的行为(最终在1625年,未来的查理一世成功地迎娶了法国的Henrietta Maria公主)特别激起了他们强烈的质疑。第二代英裔美洲殖民者登上历史舞台之后,他们与印第安人之间的关系已经成为了一种外交关系,而奴隶制则成就了一批新大陆的新贵,与此同时,内战的阴霾开始笼罩在英国上空。

With the war, second-generation colonists, writes Gaskill, “were forced to examine their consciences and allegiances to decide what being English meant and what it meant to belong physically and spiritually to America.”

Gaskill写道,随着英国内战的进行,第二代殖民者“被迫去审视他们的良知和忠诚,以确定英国人的身份究竟意味着什么,以及在肉体和精神上都归属于美洲又意味着什么。”

The First English Civil War— which pitted a new and more absolutist monarch, Charles I, against Oliver Cromwell and his Puritan “Roundheads”—stirred existing factions in North America, engaging them not only in the political thought forced upon the first generation but in regime-changing political thought. These passions mixed with passions aroused by the already worsening settler-Indian relations.

第一次英国内战——这次内战让一位更加崇尚专制的新国王查理一世陷入了与奥利弗·克伦威尔和他的清教徒“圆颅党”们的斗争——搅浑了北美英国殖民者之间本已存在的分歧,这让他们不仅仅需要面对上一代殖民者们被迫进行的政治思考,还需要作出与政权更替有关的新政治思考。而更糟的是,这些感情还与被已经持续恶化的殖民者和印第安人之间的关系所激起的感情杂糅在了一起。

Puritan victory in England meant that it became, briefly, more like New England. A new Reformation was imposed, this one described as a “Reformation of manners,” including capital punishment for adultery and what Gaskill calls “a united front against popery.” (The draconian law against adultery never saw rigorous enforcement—probably a good thing for the sake of continued English population growth. One emigrant to Virginia wrote that the deer in his new country were as numerous as cuckolds in England.)

简单地说,清教徒的胜利意味着英国变得更像新英格兰了。清教徒们实施了一次新的宗教改革运动,这次叫做“礼俗改革”,包括对通奸行为实施死刑以及Gaskill所说的“对罗马天主教的联合抵制。”(惩罚通奸行为的严厉法律从来没有被严格执行过——也许对于人口的持续增长来说,这反而是件好事。一位来到弗吉尼亚的移民曾写道,在他的新国家里,鹿的数量几乎和英国戴绿帽子的男人一样多。)

Puritan victory did not bring dismantlement of the king’s wartime bureaucracy, which the Puritans simply took over, continuing extralegal absolutism but in clerical garb. The new republic saw the abolition of the House of Lords, the established church, and the monarchy, but the empowered Cromwell and Parliament had no more intention to frame a liberal republic than had the Puritan fathers of New England.

清教徒们的胜利并没有清除掉服务于国王的战时官僚体系,他们直接接管了这个体系,并继续维持着凌驾于法律之上的专制主义,只是站在它背后的换成了一群穿着牧师衣服的人。新的共和政府废除了议会上院,废黜了国教和君主,但是大权在握的克伦威尔和议会并不比那些建立了新英格兰殖民地的清教徒们更希望建立一个自由的共和国。

Although a bit lax in enforcing the adultery laws, both England and New England went after suspected witches, with England initiating the attacks and (surprisingly, given subsequent accounts) surpassing the New England courts in handing down convictions. At least New England magistrates “insisted on proof of a satanic pact,” unlike their more ardent English-Puritan counterparts.

虽然在执行惩罚通奸的法律上有些松懈,但在英国国内和新英格兰都掀起了搜捕女巫的运动,这事情最初在英国发起,且英国法庭判定的有罪女巫多于新英格兰的法庭(与后世的记录相对照,这一点很令人吃惊)。至少新英格兰的地方法官们会“坚持要求拿出女巫与魔鬼订过契约的证据”才会定罪,而不像他们更加富有激情的英国清教徒同僚们那样随意。

Fleeing in defeat, Royalists went to the West Indies, sometimes to Virginia. When Parliament threatened to pursue them across the water, they allied themselves with local champions of self-government as putative advocates of—what else, if not the tradition of the English common law (for which the Stuarts and their allies had previously shown little regard).

在经历了失败之后,英国的保皇党们逃向了西印度群岛,也有一些去了弗吉尼亚。当议会威胁要跨过大西洋追捕他们时,他们与当地的自治拥护者们结成了同盟,并把他们假想为——除了英国普通法的传统之外,还能是别的什么呢——的拥护者(但斯图亚特王室及其同盟者在之前可并没有对这一传统表现出多少尊重)。

Cromwell’s designation as “Emperor of the West Indies” put English republicanism, such as it was, on the side of statist centralization. Because the monarchy had sold off most of its lands under the Tudors, the new statists had no choice but to obtain revenues through taxation.

克伦威尔的“西印度群岛皇帝”头衔将英国本已破败不堪的共和主义完全变成了中央集权。由于王室已经在都铎时期卖掉了大部分土地,新来的中央集权者们别无选择,只能通过征税来获得收入。

Back along the Chesapeake, Catholics and Protestants fought each other in Maryland, with Protestants from as far away as Massachusetts joining the fight, which the Protestants eventually won at the Battle of Severn (near Annapolis) in 1655.

再看切萨皮克湾沿岸,天主教徒和新教徒们此时正在马里兰打得不可开交。新教徒一边的参战者甚至有从马萨诸塞远道而来的,最终于1655年在赛汶河(靠近安纳波利斯)战役后获得了最终的胜利。

By the time of Cromwell’s assassination in 1658, New England and Virginia had established themselves economically. Trade began to eclipse religiosity in both places. As it did in England: Charles II, crowned in 1660, proved considerably more latitudinarian in doctrine and in morals than were the Puritans.

到1658年克伦威尔被刺杀时,新英格兰和弗吉尼亚已经能够在经济上自食其力了。在这两个地区,贸易的影响力都已大大超过宗教。在英国也是如此:1660年登上王位的查理二世表明自己在宗教和道德方面比之前的清教徒们要开明得多。

Increased trade also brought greater demand for slaves, especially in the West Indies; not only Africans but English prisoners, Scottish rebels, and the ever-beleaguered Irish were “barbadosed.” Charles II did prove disappointing to merchants in one important respect: Needing revenues as much as his father and as much as Cromwell, he renewed the stiff regulation of trade.

贸易的繁荣同样刺激了对奴隶的更大需求,在西印度群岛尤其如此。不但是非洲人,甚至连英国犯人、苏格兰反叛者和那些一直处于英格兰围困下的爱尔兰人都被放逐到了巴巴多斯充当奴隶。查理二世的确在一个重要的方面让商人们大失所望:他和他的父王还有克伦威尔一样,需要大量的收入,所以他恢复了之前对贸易的严厉管制。

As Gaskill observes, the English civil/revolutionary wars proved to Americans that their difficulties with the mother country arose not simply as a result of defective regimes—monarchs and parliaments alike exacted revenues and demanded obedience—but as a result of the empowerment of the modern state, quite apart from its regime form. A century later, their descendants’ Declaration of Independence excoriated not only the monarch/tyrant but also the Parliament for, among other things, sending tax collectors to eat out their substance.

正如Gaskill所观察到的,英国的革命和内战向美国人证明:他们与祖国之间的问题不仅仅出于有缺陷的政权——不论是君主还是议会,都向他们榨取大量的收入,并且要求他们的绝对服从——而更是肇源于现代国家的权力,不仅仅是政体形态的问题。一个世纪之后,他们的后人发表的“独立宣言”中不仅仅严厉地声讨了暴虐的君主,也同样声讨了英国议会派遣税务官来剥削他们财富的行为。

Increased trade also spelled trouble for the Indians. The more prosperous the American English became, the more numerous they were; the more numerous they were, the more land they wanted. In Virginia, especially, where plantation owners had locked up the best land, new settlers pressed westward.

贸易的繁荣同样给印第安人带来了麻烦。北美的英国人越是兴旺,他们的人数就会变得越多;而他们的人数越多,就会想要越多的土地。特别是在弗吉尼亚,那里的种植园主们已经圈定了最好的土地,而新来的殖民者则不得不向西去开拓新的土地。

Meanwhile the British Empire set down its own, grander, imperial policy. In the words of diarist John Evelyn:

与此同时,大英帝国则确定下了它自己更加宏大的帝国政策。用日记作者John Evelyn的话来说就是:

Whoever Commands the Ocean Commands the Trade of the World, and whoever Commands the Trade of the World Commands the Riches of the World, and whoever is Master of that Commands the World it self.

谁控制了海洋,谁就能控制全世界的贸易,而谁控制了全世界的贸易,也就控制了全世界的财富,而他也就成为了整个世界的主宰。

Charles II resumed the strategy that had been set down decades earlier by the disgraced Francis Bacon, that of “merg[ing] politics, profit, and natural philosophy”—the conquest of nature for the relief of man’s estate, and particularly the British estate.

查理二世重新采用了由失势的弗朗西斯·培根【译注:培根于1621年被控贪污受贿,被判罚金和监禁,后来虽被豁免,但政治生涯却因此终结】在几十年前所定下的策略,也就是“将政治、利益和自然哲学合而为一”——通过征服自然来解放人的状况,特别是英国人的状况。

By now, about 60,000 English settlers lived in New England. Metacom, or “King Philip” of the Wampanoags, began a major war against them. “This was for the second generation what sea crossings and scratch-building had been for the first: a hardening, defining experience.”

此时已有大约6万名英国殖民者生活在新英格兰。Metacom,即万帕诺亚格部落的“菲利普王”发动了一场针对这些英国人的大规模战争。“对于第二代殖民者们来说,这场战争的意义就像是乘船渡海和白手起家对于第一代殖民者的意义一样:这是一次定义并强化他们身份的经历。”

Using what we now call guerrilla tactics, the coalition of Indian tribes fought through the bitter winter of 1675-76, taunting their captives with the question, “Where is your God now?” Gaskill describes the “extravagant cruelty” of Indian and Englishman alike: “Indians tortured because martial ritual required it, the English to obtain intelligence.”

通过使用今天被称为游击战的战术,印第安部落联军在1675-76年的寒冬里奋勇作战,并讥讽他们的俘虏,问他们“现在你的上帝去哪儿了?”Gaskill在描述印第安人和英国人时都使用了“过分残忍”这个相同的字眼:“印第安人折磨俘虏,因为这是他们尚武仪式的要求,而英国人折磨俘虏则是为了获得情报。”

Two thousand settlers died before the Indian coalition surrendered in July 1677. Sporadic Indian raids continued, and the colonists duly noted that their British brethren had offered no protective aid aside from parish collections, “which were mere gestures.” Nor did the British prove any more helpful in Maryland, where settlers put down a similar uprising.

在1677年7月印第安联军投降之前,有两千名殖民者死于这场战争。此后,印第安人零星的袭击仍在持续,而这些殖民者们也很好地意识到:他们的英国同胞除了搞一些教堂募捐之外,并没有为他们提供什么别的保护,“而这完全是一些象征性的帮助。”而在马里兰,英国人也并没有证明自己能够提供更多的帮助,那里的殖民者们也镇压了一场类似的印第安人起义。

By the third generation, writes Gaskill, “experience set the colonists apart, creating opposition internally and with England.” Struggles with Indians continued; in the north the tribes began to ally with the French, another Catholic enemy. Catholic James II ascended the throne in 1685, after Charles II died, intensifying the worries of Anglo-American Protestants.

到第三代殖民者的时候,“在北美不同地区的经历将这些殖民者们分隔开来,在他们内部和他们与英国之间造成了对立。”Gaskill写道。与印第安人的斗争仍在继续;在北部,印第安部落开始与英国殖民者的另一个天主教敌人法国结盟。信奉天主教的詹姆士二世于1685年查理二世死后登上英国王位,而这进一步加剧了盎格鲁-美利坚新教徒们的担忧。

West Indian and Virginian settlers added to their slave populations and simultaneously to their worries about slave rebellions. Along the Chesapeake, in the 1680s alone the slave population rose from 4,500 to 12,000. This increase also decreased incidences of manumission; a people engaged in demographically-based dominance of the Indians had no intention of being overwhelmed by emancipated African slaves.

西印度群岛和弗吉尼亚的殖民者增加了他们的奴隶数量,而这也同时加剧了他们对奴隶叛乱的担忧。在切萨皮克湾沿岸,仅仅在1680年代奴隶数量就从4500人上升到了12000人。而这种数量增加也降低了奴隶解放运动事件的几率;一群忙于在人口数量上对印第安人形成优势的殖民者绝不希望自己在数量上被那些被解放的非洲奴隶们超过。

No solution—even in theory—to any of these ethno-political or religio-political dilemmas was available to Americans until a writer of the time, John Locke, began publishing. A political regime founded upon the principle of equal natural rights could form the basis of racial and religious peace in a political community that actually framed laws to conform to that principle.

即使从理论上说,当时也没有任何办法能够帮助美国人解决这些民族政治和宗教政治难题,直到那个时代的一位作家开始著书立说,他就是约翰·洛克。如果一个政治共同体的法律确实能遵从平等的自然权利原则,那么它那建立在此原则之上的政权就能够为种族间和宗教间的和平提供基础。

Gaskill mentions Locke in passing but mistakes his natural rights philosophy for “pragmatism.” What made the third generation of Americans react against the excesses of the last witch-hunting spasm, in 1690s Salem, was not pragmatism but an understanding of Christianity that Americans in New England were the first to begin to integrate into their laws.

Gaskill在书中顺带提到了洛克,但却将他的自然权利哲学误认为是“实用主义”。面对1790年代塞勒姆掀起的最后一场追捕女巫的过分风潮,第三代美国人奋起反对,而促使他们这么做的并不是什么“实用主义”,而是基于对基督教义的理解,新英格兰的美国人也率先将这种理解整合到了他们的法律中。

Writes Gaskill: “Boston’s Brattle Street Church was founded in 1698 not upon scriptural literalism, the ‘New England way,’ or a covenant, but upon nature, reason, and inclusiveness”—in other words, upon a combination of Christianity and Lockean philosophy. What remained of the older generations, he concludes, was a legacy of “extraordinary courage.”

Gaskill写道:“波士顿Brattle街教堂建立于1698年,它的建立并非基于‘新英格兰式’的圣经字面主义,或基于一个宗教誓约,它的基础是自然、理性与包容。”——换句话说,它建立在基督教和洛克哲学的结合之上。他总结道,老一代人为新的殖民者们所留下的遗产仅仅是他们“非凡的勇气”。

The commercial republic of the future would prove battle-ready, to the dismay of its enemies for centuries to come.

这个未来的商业共和国将会证明它已经做好了战斗的准备,而这将让它此后数个世纪的敌人们都感到沮丧。

翻译:Veidt(@Veidt)
校对:沈沉(@你在何地-sxy)
编辑:辉格@whigzhou

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