中英双语话史记 第125期:第一次鸦片战争

Qing Dynasty

清朝

The First Opium War

第一次鸦片战争

Roughly between the Congress of Vienna and the Franco-Prussian War, Britain reaped the benefits of being the world’s sole modern, industrial nation.

大约在维也纳会议和普法战争之间，英国抓住机会成为了世界上唯一现代化和工业化的国家。

Following the defeat of Napoleon, Britain was the “workshop of the world”, meaning that its finished goods were no longer produced so efficiently and cheaply that they could often undersell comparable, locally manufactured goods in almost any other market.

打败拿破仑后，英国成为了“世界工厂”，这意味着它们生产的商品不再高效和低廉，也使它们的产品无法再像以前一样比其他地区本地生产的同样商品更具价格优势。

If political conditions in a particular overseas markets were stable enough, Britain could develop its economy through free trade alone without having to resort to formal rule or mercantilism.

如果海外市场的政治格局足够稳定，英国就可以不用采取形式规则或商业主义，而是仅仅通过与他国进行自由贸易来发展经济。

Britain was even supplying half the needs in manufactured goods of such nations as Germany, France, Belgium, and the United States.

英国甚至为德国、法国、比利时和美国提供了它们所需的一半以上的制造品。

As these other newly industrial powers, the United States, and Japan after the Meiji Restoration began industrializing at a rapid rate, however, Britain’s comparative advantage in trade of any finished good began diminishing.

自从新兴的工业国家，如美国以及明治维新后的日本开始高速工业化后，英国在成品贸易方面的优势开始减弱。

Sovereign areas already hospitable to informal empire largely avoided formal rule during the shift to New Imperialism.

大英帝国的主权领土大部分在转向新型工业化的过程中拒绝形式规则。

China, for instance, was not a backward country unable to secure the prerequisite stability and security for western-style commerce, but a highly advanced empire unwilling to admit western (often drug-pushing) commerce, which may explain the West’s contentment with informal “Spheres of Influences”.

比如，中国并不是一个无法维持稳定和西式贸易安全的落后国家而是一个不愿意承认西式贸易（通常是贩毒）的高度发达的国家，它将西方的满足感解读为“区域影响力”。

China, unlike tropical Africa, was a securable market without formal control.

与非洲不同，中国是一个还没有得到官方控制的触手可得的市场。

Following the First Opium War, British commerce, and later capital invested by other newly industrializing powers, was securable with a smaller degree of formal control than in Southeast Asia, West Africa, and the Pacific.

第一次鸦片战争过后，英国的贸易以及其他新兴工业国家对其投资的资本只能小幅度地通过官方控制东南亚、西非和太平洋地区获得。

But in many respects, China was a colony and a large-scale receptacle of Western capital investments.

但是从许多方面来说，中国是一个殖民地并能大幅度的接收西方的资本投资。

Western powers did intervene military there to quell domestic chaos, such as the horrific Taiping Rebellion and the anti-imperialist Boxer Rebellion.

西方列强对中国进行军事干预来镇压国内的动乱，如可怕的太平起义和反帝国主义义和团运动。

For example, General Gordon, later the imperialist “ martyr” in the Sudan， is often accredited as having saved the Manchu dynasty from the Taiping insurrection.

比如，戈登将军也就是之后苏丹的帝国主义“烈士”通常被认为将满洲国从太平起义的暴乱中拯救了出来。