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Globalisation
全球化
Ports in a storm
風暴中的港口
Unlocking the World. By John Darwin.
《打開世界》。作者：約翰·達爾文。
In liverpool, a French observer marvelled in 1907, “one feels one is in contact with America, Australia, west Africa, the Far East, at the same time as with Germany and France. There one is at the commercial centre of the world.”
1907年，一位法國觀察家在利物浦驚嘆道；“一個人感覺自己在與美國、澳大利亞、西非、遠東地區接觸，同時也與德國和法國有聯系。這個人所在之處就是世界商業中心?！?/p>
This remark neatly captures the subject of John Darwin’s new book. He tracks a century of what he calls “steam globalisation”, when steamships and railways drove a dramatic acceleration in the exchange of goods, people, ideas and money across the world. Faster and cheaper transport seemed to shrink the globe; the volume of world trade and foreign investment soared. Mr Darwin shows how major port cities were both products of these transformations and agents of change. In the great opening up of the world that is his subject, the port cities were the hinges.
這句話巧妙地抓住了約翰·達爾文新書的主題。他追蹤了長達一個世紀的所謂的“蒸汽全球化”，當時蒸汽船和鐵路加劇推動了世界范圍內貨物、人員、思想和金錢的快速流動。更快、更便宜的交通運輸似乎拉近了世界的距離；世界貿易和外國投資額猛增。達爾文先生展示了主要港口城市如何既是這些變革的產物，又是變革的推動者。在他所研究的世界大開放中，港口城市是樞紐。
The current era of globalisation, the author notes, is not unique but the latest in a series that have built on each other in a cumulative, though not neatly linear, fashion. In the mercantile system that sprang up in the wake of the voyages of Ibn Battuta, Christopher Columbus and Vasco da Gama, Asia was the world’s workshop and Europe relatively peripheral.
作者指出，當前的全球化時代并不是獨一無二的，而是一系列曾經的全球化變革在彼此的基礎上相互累加（盡管不是恰好的線性累加）而形成的最新時代。在伊本·巴圖塔、克里斯托弗·哥倫布和瓦斯科·達伽馬航海后興起的商業體系中，亞洲是世界工廠，而歐洲則相對處于外圍。
Then coal, readily available in Europe, fuelled what historians have called the “Great Divergence” of the 18th century, whereby Europe (and later North America) came to dominate. By describing the evolution and sometimes decline of a number of major port cities, most compellingly London, Bombay, Singapore and New York, Mr Darwin shows how this process worked.
當時，歐洲隨處可見的煤炭，助長了歷史學家所說的18世紀的“大分流”，歐洲（以及后來的北美）在這一時期占據了主導地位。通過描述一些主要港口城市的演變和有時的衰落，包括最具競爭力的是倫敦、孟買、新加坡和紐約，達爾文展示了這一過程是如何運作的。
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