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（作者沃尔特·谢德尔为斯坦福大学教授，相关著作：Escape from Rome: The Failure of Empire and the Road to Prosperity (2019)（《逃离罗马：帝国的失败与繁荣之路》）

For an empire that collapsed more than 1,500 years ago, ancient Rome maintains a powerful presence. About 1 billion people speak languages derived from Latin; Roman law shapes modern norms; and Roman architecture has been widely imitated. Christianity, which the empire embraced in its sunset years, remains the world’s largest religion. Yet all these enduring influences pale against Rome’s most important legacy: its fall. Had its empire not unravelled, or had it been replaced by a similarly overpowering successor, the world wouldn’t have become modern.

对于一个在一千五百多年前就崩溃了的帝国来说，古罗马仍保持着强大的存在感。约有十亿人说的是源自拉丁语的语言；罗马法塑造了现代规范；罗马风格的建筑被广泛模仿。帝国在其暮年信奉的基督教，仍是全世界最大的宗教。然而，所有这些持久性的影响，在罗马最重要的遗产面前就显得苍白无力了：罗马的陨灭。如果帝国没有解体，或是被一个同样强悍的继任者取代，那这个世界就不会走向现代了。

Roman power had fostered immense inequality: its collapse brought down the plutocratic ruling class, releasing the labouring masses from oppressive exploitation. The new Germanic rulers operated with lower overheads and proved less adept at collecting rents and taxes. Forensic archaeology reveals that people grew to be taller, likely thanks to reduced inequality, a better diet and lower disease loads. Yet these changes didn’t last.

罗马的强权助长了极为严重的不平等：其崩溃使得财阀统治阶级垮台，把劳动大众从压迫性的剥削中解放了出来。新的日耳曼统治者以较低的管理成本管理，并被证明不那么擅长收租和税收。法医考古学发现，人们比过去长得更高了，这可能是由于不平等现象的减少，更好的饮食和更低的患病率。然而，这些变化并没有延续下去。

The real payoff of Rome’s demise took much longer to emerge. When Goths, Vandals, Franks, Lombards and Anglo-Saxons carved up the empire, they broke the imperial order so thoroughly that it never returned. Their 5th-century takeover was only the beginning: in a very real sense, Rome’s decline continued well after its fall.When, in the year 800, the Frankish king Charlemagne decided that he was a new Roman emperor, it was already too late. In the following centuries, royal power declined as aristocrats asserted ever greater autonomy and knights set up their own castles.

罗马败亡带来的真正回报，需要更长的时间才能显现。当哥特人、汪达尔人、法兰克人、伦巴第人和盎格鲁-撒克逊人瓜分帝国时，他们如此彻底地破坏了帝国的秩序，以至于这种秩序再也没能恢复。他们在五世纪的接管只是开始而已：罗马的衰落在其崩溃之后很久仍在继续，这一点可以说很确凿了。公元800年，当法兰克国王查理曼决定成为新的罗马皇帝时，为时已晚。在接下来的几个世纪里，随着贵族们坚决要求越来越大的自主权以及骑士们建立了属于自己的城堡，皇权也在式微中。
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So many different power structures intersected and overlapped, and fragmentation was so pervasive that no one side could ever claim the upper hand; locked into unceasing competition, all these groups had to bargain and compromise to get anything done. Power became constitutionalised, openly negotiable and formally partible; bargaining took place out in the open and followed established rules.

如此多套各自不同的权力结构互相交叉、重叠，而且碎片化的情况如此普遍，以至于没有任何一方能自称占了上风；所有集团被框限在了不间断的竞争中，它们想要达成任何一件事，都不得不讨价还价乃至妥协。权力逐渐能公开谈判了，还能正式分割；讨价还价在明处进行，并遵循既定规则。

his deeply entrenched pluralism turned out to be crucial once states became more centralised, which happened when population growth and economic growth triggered wars that strengthened kings. Yet different countries followed different trajectories. Some rulers managed to tighten the reins, leading toward the absolutism of the French Sun King Louis XIV; in other cases, the nobility called the shots. Sometimes parliaments held their own against ambitious sovereigns, and sometimes there were no kings at all and republics prevailed. The details hardly matter: what does is that all of this unfolded side by side. The educated knew that there was no single immutable order, and they were able to weigh the upsides and drawbacks of different ways of organising society.

一旦国家变得更加集中化，这种根深蒂固的多元主义就变得至关重要了，因为人口增长和经济增长触发的战争强化了王权。然而，不同的国家走上了不同的轨迹。一部分统治者成功收紧了控制，导致了法国太阳王路易十四的绝对主义；在其他一些案例中，则由贵族发号施令。有时候，议会在野心勃勃的君主面前坚持了自己的立场，有时候则根本不存在国王，共和国占了上风。细节并不重要，重要的是：所有这些都是一并展开的。受过教育的人会明白，不存在什么不可改变的唯一秩序，他们也能够权衡不同社会组织方式的利弊。

Whenever dynasties failed and the state splintered, new dynasties emerged and rebuilt the empire

【每当王朝败亡、国家分裂时，新王朝就会出现并重建帝国】

Across the continent, stronger states meant fiercer competition among them. Ever costlier warfare became a defining feature of early modern Europe. Religious strife, driven by the Reformation, which broke the papal monopoly, poured fuel on the flames. Conflict also spurred expansion overseas.

纵观整个大陆，列国更强大，就意味着它们之间的竞争也更加残酷。越来越耗钱的战争成为了早期现代欧洲的一个决定性特征。在打破了教皇垄断的宗教改革的推动下，宗教冲突更是火上浇油。冲突也刺激了海外扩张。

Hardened by conflict, the European states became more integrated, slowly morphing into the nation-states of the modern era. Universal empire on a Roman scale was no longer an option. Like the Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland, these rival states had to keep running just to stay in place – and speed up if they wanted to get ahead. Those that did – the Dutch, the British – became pioneers of a global capitalist order, while others laboured to catch up.

在冲突的磨砺下，欧洲国家变得更加一体化了，慢慢嬗变为现代民族国家。罗马规模的世界性帝国不再是一种选项。就像《爱丽丝梦游仙境》中的红皇后一样，这些敌对的国家单是为了保住原有地位，就不得不持续奔跑，而如果他们想出人头地，就必须加快步伐了。那些成功了的国家（荷兰、英国），成为了全球资本主义秩序的先驱，而其他国家则努力追赶。

Nothing like this happened anywhere else in the world. The resilience of empire as a form of political organisation made sure of that. Wherever geography and ecology allowed large imperial structures to take root, they tended to persist: as empires fell, others took their place. China is the most prominent example. Ever since the first emperor of Qin (he of terracotta-army fame) united the warring states in the late 3rd century BCE, monopoly power became the norm. Whenever dynasties failed and the state splintered, new dynasties emerged and rebuilt the empire. Over time, as such interludes grew shorter, imperial unity came to be seen as ineluctable, as the natural order of things, celebrated by elites and sustained by the ethnic and cultural homogenisation imposed on the populace.

在全世界其他任何地方都没有发生过这种事。帝国这种政治组织形式的复原能力确保了这一点。只要是地理和生态环境允许大型帝国结构扎根的地方，它们往往就会持续存在：随着帝国的陨落，会有其他帝国取代其位置。中国是最明显的例子。自从秦始皇（因兵马俑闻名于世）在公元前3世纪末统一战国以来，垄断权力成为了常态。每当王朝败亡、国家分裂时，新的王朝就会出现并重建帝国。随着时间推移，随着这种间歇期的缩短，人们逐渐把帝国的统一视为不可避免之事，系万物的自然秩序，为精英们所称颂，并依靠强加给民众的民族同质化和文化同质化来维持。

China experienced an unusual degree of imperial continuity. Yet similar patterns of waxing and waning can be observed around the world: in the Middle East, in South and Southeast Asia, in Mexico, Peru and West Africa. After the fall of Rome, Europe west of Russia was the only exception, and remained a unique outlier for more than 1,500 years.

中国经历的帝国连续性，达到了非同寻常的程度。然而，在世界各地都可以看到类似的兴衰模式：在中东、南亚和东南亚，在墨西哥、秘鲁和西非。在罗马灭亡后，俄罗斯以西的欧洲是唯一的例外，而且在1500多年里一直是一个独一无二的异类。

Was that a coincidence? Historians, economists and political scientists have long argued about the causes of these transformative developments. Even as some theories have fallen by the wayside, from God’s will to white supremacy, there’s no shortage of competing explanations. The debate has turned into a minefield, as scholars who seek to understand why this particular bundle of changes appeared only in one part of the world wrestle with a heavy baggage of stereotypes and prejudices that threaten to cloud our judgment. But, as it turns out, there’s a shortcut. Almost without fail, all these different arguments have one thing in common. They’re deeply rooted in the fact that, after Rome fell, Europe was intensely fragmented, both between and within different countries. Pluralism is the common denominator.

这是巧合吗？长久以来，历史学家、经济学家和政治学家一直在争论这些变革性发展的起因。就算有一些理论在半途被淘汰，从上帝的意志到白人至上主义，其中不乏相互矛盾的解释。这场辩论已经变成了雷区，因为那些企图理解“为什么这一系列特殊的变化只出现在了世界的一个地方”的学者们，要竭尽全力地去克服那些威胁到我们判断力的大量成见和偏见。但事实证明存在一条捷径。几乎无一例外，所有这些不同的论点都有一个共同点。它们深植于这样一个事实：在罗马灭亡后，欧洲陷入了严重的碎片化状态，在不同国家之间如此，在国家内部也是如此。多元化即其共同点。
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But what if Europeans owed their later preeminence to the ruthless oppression and exploitation of colonial territories and plantation slavery? Those terrors too grew out of fragmentation: competition drove colonisation while commercial capital greased the wheels. Geography as such played second fiddle. It has been said that the Europeans rather than the Chinese reached the Americas first simply because the Pacific is much wider than the Atlantic. Yet successive Chinese empires failed to seize even nearby Taiwan until the Ming finally intervened in the late 17th century, and never showed much of an interest in the Philippines, let alone more distant Pacific islands. That made perfect sense: for an imperial court in charge of countless millions of people, such destinations held little appeal. (The Ming ‘treasure fleets’ that were dispatched into the Indian Ocean didn’t make any sense at all and were soon shut down.)

但如果欧洲人把他们后来的优势地位归功于殖民地和种植园奴隶制中的无情压迫和剥削呢？这些可怕的现象也是从碎片化中产生的：竞争推动了殖民化，而商业资本则为此进程加油。地理因素在其中扮演了次要角色。有人说过，是欧洲人而不是中国人首先到达美洲，完全是因为太平洋比大西洋宽得多。然而，一直到十七世纪末明朝最终介入，历代中华帝国连附近的台湾（地区）都没能夺取，也从未对菲律宾表现出过什么兴趣，更遥远的太平洋岛屿就更不用说了。这也很合理：对于一个掌管着无数人的朝廷来说，这些目的地没有什么吸引力。(明朝派往印度洋的“宝船队”没有任何意义，而且很快就被叫停了）。

Large empires were generally indifferent to overseas exploration, and for the same reason. It was small, geographically peripheral cultures – from the ancient Phoenicians and Greeks to the Norse, Polynesians and Portuguese – that had the most to gain from striking out. And so they did. Had Europeans not sailed forth with reckless abandon, there would have been no colonies, no Bolivian silver, no slave trade, no plantations, no abundant cotton for the Lancashire mills. Capitalising on military skills honed by endless war, European powers escaped the perpetual stalemate on their own continent by exporting violence and conquest across the globe. Separated by entire oceans from the imperial heartlands, colonised populations could be squeezed much harder than would have been feasible back in Europe. Over time, much of the world turned into a subordinate periphery that fuelled European capitalism.

一般来说，大帝国对于海外探索都比较冷淡，也是出于同样的原因。从古代的腓尼基人、希腊人，到北欧人、波利尼西亚人和葡萄牙人，小规模且在地理上处于边缘的文化才最有可能从开辟新路中获益。他们也是这么做的。要是欧洲人没有抛下一切出海，就不会有殖民地，不会有玻利维亚的银器，不会有奴隶贸易，不会有种植园，不会有兰开夏郡工厂出产的大量棉花。欧洲列强利用其在无休止的战争中磨练出来的军事技能，通过向全球输出暴力和征服，摆脱了长期存在于自己大陆上的僵局。由于和帝国中心地带隔着一整个大洋，被殖民的人口受到的压榨，可能要比在欧洲时严重得多。随着时间推移，全世界大部分地区变成了一个从属性质的边缘地区，并为欧洲资本主义提供了动力。

Intense competition among rulers, merchants and colonisers fed an insatiable appetite for new techniques

【统治者、商人和殖民者之间的激烈竞争助长了对新技术永不满足的胃口】
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Europe’s pluralism provided much-needed space for disruptive innovation. As the powerful jostled for position, they favoured those whom others persecuted. The princes of Saxony shielded the heretic Martin Luther from their own emperor. John Calvin found refuge in Switzerland. Galileo and his ally Tommaso Campanella managed to play off different parties against each other. Paracelsus, Comenius, René Descartes, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke and Voltaire headline a veritable who’s who of refugee scholars and thinkers.

欧洲的多元化为颠覆性创新提供了亟需的空间。在强者争夺地位时，他们偏爱那些被其他人迫害的人。萨克森的王子们为异教徒马丁路德提供庇护，使其免受来自自己皇帝的迫害。约翰·加尔文在瑞士找到了庇护所。伽利略和他的盟友托马索·坎帕内拉成功地把不同党派玩弄于鼓掌，使其互相争斗。帕拉塞尔苏斯、夸美纽斯、勒内·笛卡尔、托马斯·霍布斯、约翰·洛克和伏尔泰，这些人都是名副其实的难民学者和思想家中的焦点人物。

Over time, the creation of safe spaces for critical enquiry and experimentation allowed scientists to establish strict standards that cut through the usual thicket of political influence, theological vision and aesthetic preference: the principle that only empirical evidence counts. In addition, intense competition among rulers, merchants and colonisers fed an insatiable appetite for new techniques and gadgets. Thus, while gunpowder, the floating compass and printing were all invented in distant China, they were eagerly embraced and applied by Europeans vying for control over territory, trade and minds.

随着时间推移，打造出了批判性探索和实验的安全空间，科学家们籍此便能建立严格的标准，而这样的标准穿透了惯常存在的政治影响、神学观点和审美偏好的错综密林，也即只有经验证据才算数的原则。此外，统治者、商人和殖民者之间的激烈竞争助长了对新技术永不满足的胃口。因此，虽然火药、浮动罗盘和印刷术都是在遥远的中国发明的，但争夺领土、贸易和思想控制权的欧洲人却迫不及待地接受了它们并加以应用。

In the end, once the Italian Renaissance had run its course, it was precisely those parts of western Europe where the legacies of Roman rule had faded most thoroughly, or where Rome had never held sway at all, that spearheaded political, economic and scientific progress: Britain, the Low Countries, northern France and northern Germany. It was there that Germanic traditions of communal decision-making survived the longest and that the Reformation precipitated yet another break from Rome. It was there that social values changed most profoundly, modern commercial capitalism took root, and science and industrial technology flourished. But that was also where the fiercest wars of the era were being hatched and fought.

最后，意大利文艺复兴一经发端，在西欧范围内，恰恰是罗马统治带来的遗产消失最彻底的地区或罗马从未统治过的地区率先取得了政治、经济和科学的进步。英国、低地国家（荷比卢）、法国北部和德国北部。日耳曼人集体决策传统存续时间最长的就是在这些地方，而宗教改革则促成了与罗马的又一次决裂。正是在那里，社会价值观发生了最深刻的变化，现代商业资本主义生了根，科学和工业技术蓬勃发展。但也是在那里，酝酿和开打了那个时代最激烈的战争。

We might well be forgiven for finding this combination of fracture, violence and growth baffling or even implausible. Wasn’t it preferable to lead peaceful lives in a large and stable empire than on a continent where people were constantly at each other’s throats? Only if we think in the short term. Large-scale empire was indeed an extremely effective way of organising agrarian societies: by providing limited governance, it ensured a degree of peace and order while largely staying out of most people’s lives. Even taxes were generally quite modest. Designed to cater to the needs of a small ruling class and drawing heavily on the services of local elites, empires were relatively easy to build and cheap to maintain. But they came with built-in limitations: on liberties, on innovation, on sustainable growth.

如果认为这种分裂、暴力和增长的组合令人费解甚至难以置信，或许也是可以谅解的。在一个庞大而稳定的帝国中过上和平的生活，难道不比在一个人们无休止互相残杀的大陆上生活更可取吗？但只有当我们从短期角度考虑时才是这样。幅员辽阔的帝国的确是组织农业社会的一种极为有效的方式：通过提供有限的治理，确保了一定程度的和平和秩序，同时在很大程度上不涉入大部分人的生活。即使是税收，一般来说也是相当适度的。帝国这种设计，是为了迎合占少数的统治阶级的需要，并在很大程度上依赖本地精英的服务，因此，打造帝国是相对容易的，维护起来也相对便宜。但它们也内含各种局限：自由方面、创新方面、可持续增长方面。

The benefits of modernity were disseminated around the world, painfully unevenly yet inexorably

【现代性的利好被传播到了世界各地，过程痛苦，分布不均，却不可阻挡】

This story embraces a grimly Darwinian perspective of progress – that disunx, competition and conflict were the principal sextion pressures that shaped the evolution of states, societies and frxs of mind; that it was endless war, racist colonialism, crony capitalism and raw intellectual ambition that fostered modern development, rather than peace and harmony. Yet that’s precisely what the historical record shows. Progress was born in the crucible of competitive fragmentation. The price was high. Bled dry by war and ripped off by protectionist policies, it took a long time even for Europeans to reap tangible benefits.

这个故事内含一种冷酷的达尔文式的进步观，即分裂、竞争和冲突是左右国家、社会和思维框架演进的首要选择压力；促进了现代发展的，是无休止的战争、种族主义的殖民主义、裙带资本主义和原始的智识野心，而不是和平与和谐。然而，历史记录显示的恰恰是这一点。进步，是在竞争性碎片化状态的坩埚中诞生的。代价非常高。由于在战争和保护主义政策的剥削中失血过多血，连欧洲人都耗费了很长时间才收获了切切实实的利益。
（译注：选择压力即进化压力，指外界施与一个生物进化过程的压力，从而改变该过程的前进方向）

When they finally did, unprecedented inequalities of power, wealth and wellbeing began to divide the world. Racism made Western preeminence seem natural, with toxic consequences to the present day. Fossil fuel industries polluted earth and sky, and industrialised warfare wrecked and killed on a previously unimaginable scale.

当他们最终做到这一点时，权力、财富和福利方面前所未有的不平等便开始分裂世界了。种族主义让西方的优势地位显得理所当然，其有害之后果一直持续到今天。化石燃料工业污染了地球和天空，工业化战争以从前无法想象的规模进行了破坏和杀戮。

At the same time, the benefits of modernity were disseminated around the world, painfully unevenly yet inexorably. Since the late 18th century, global life expectancy at birth has more than doubled, and average per-capita output has risen 15-fold. Poverty and illiteracy are in retreat. Political rights have spread, and our knowledge of nature has grown almost beyond measure. Slowly but surely, the whole world changed.

同时，现代性的利好被传播到了世界各地，过程痛苦，分布不均，却不可阻挡。自十八世纪末以来，全球居民出生时的预期寿命翻了一倍多，人均产出增加了十五倍。贫困和文盲正在减少。政治权利扩大，我们对自然界认知的增长也几乎无法估量。虽然缓慢，但确凿无疑，整个世界已经改变了。

None of this was bound to happen. Even Europe’s rich diversity need not have produced the winning ticket. By the same token, transformative breakthroughs were even less likely to occur elsewhere. There’s no real sign that analogous developments had begun in other parts of the world before European colonialism disrupted local trends. This raises a dramatic counterfactual. Had the Roman Empire persisted, or had it been succeeded by a similarly overbearing power, we would in all likelihood still be ploughing our fields, mostly living in poverty and often dying young. Our world would be more predictable, more static. We would be spared some of the travails that beset us, from systemic racism and anthropogenic climate change to the threat of thermonuclear war. Then again, we would be stuck with ancient scourges – ignorance, sickness and want, divine kings and chattel slavery. Instead of COVID-19, we would be battling smallpox and plague without modern medicine.

这一切中的任何一个部分都不是注定会发生的。即使以欧洲那般丰富的多样性，也未必会中彩。出于同样的原因，其他地方就更不可能发生变革性的突破了。没有真正意义上的迹象能表明，在欧洲殖民主义打断当地趋向之前，类似的发展在世界其他地方开始过。这便引出了一个同现存事实悖反的戏剧性情况。如果罗马帝国继续存在下去，或是被一个类似的压倒性力量接替，我们十有八九还在耕田，大部分人生活在贫困中，而且经常出现早逝的情况。我们的世界将会更容易预测，更静态。我们将免于遭受一些困扰我们的阵痛，从系统性的种族主义、人为的气候变化，到热核战争的威胁。而我们会又一次陷入古代的种种灾祸：愚昧、疾病和贫困、神圣的国王和奴隶制。不会有新冠病毒了，但我们将会在没有现代医学的情况下，同天花和瘟疫展开斗争。

Long before our species existed, we caught a lucky break. If an asteroid hadn’t knocked out the dinosaurs 66 million years ago, our tiny rodent-like ancestors would have had a hard time evolving into Homo sapiens. But even once we had gotten that far, our big brains weren’t quite enough to break out of our ancestral way of life: growing, herding and hunting food amid endemic poverty, illiteracy, incurable disease and premature death. It took a second lucky break to escape from all that, a booster shot that arrived a little more than 1,500 years ago: the fall of ancient Rome. Just as the world’s erstwhile apex predators had to bow out to clear the way for us, so the mightiest empire Europe had ever seen had to crash to open up a path to prosperity.

早在我们这个物种存在之前，我们就抓住了一个命运的转机。要不是一颗小行星在6600万年前淘汰了恐龙，我们那些体型微小的啮齿类祖先将很难进化成智人。但即使我们已经走到了这一步，我们硕大的大脑也不足以突破我们祖先的生活方式：在极为普遍的贫困、文盲、不治之症和早夭中种植、放牧和猎食。我们需要第二次命运的转机来摆脱这一切，而1500多年前的这剂加强针就是：古罗马的覆灭。就像世界上曾经的顶级掠食者不得不退场，而为我们开辟出道路一样，欧洲有史以来最强大的帝国也不得不崩溃，以开辟出一条通往繁荣的道路。