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England's Revolutionary Century: Heady Times

英国的革命性世纪：激扬时代

The Blazing World. By Jonathan Healey.

《炽烈世界》。作者：乔纳森·希利。

Writing an accessible history of Britain in the turbulent 17th century, as Jonathan Healey sets out to do in “The Blazing World”, is a noble aim.

写一部深入浅出的关于动荡的17世纪的英国历史是一个崇高的目标，正如乔纳森·希利在《炽烈世界》中所力图做到的那样。

Starting with the seeds of one revolution and ending with a second, the period teems with ideas about what it means to be a citizen as opposed to a subject, and about how God should be worshipped.

17世纪以一场革命的种子开始，以第二场革命的种子结束，这一时期充斥着各种思考：作为公民而非臣民意味着什么？应该如何崇拜上帝？

By the end of it, a modern concept of the state was emerging.

到17世纪末，现代国家概念开始形成。

Yet even in Britain it is neglected.

然而，即使在英国，这一点也被忽视了。

At the turn of the century nine out of ten people lived in the countryside.

在16和17世纪之交，十分之九的人住在乡村。

A tiny minority were literate.

极少数人识字。

Famine and plague were regular scourges; a rising population and stagnant economy spelt misery.

饥荒和瘟疫是常见灾祸；人口增长和经济停滞意味着苦难。

Fear of witchcraft was common, as were executions for petty crimes.

对巫术的恐惧很常见，对轻微罪行的处决也很普遍。

Fornication could land you in court.

通奸会让你上法庭。

By 1700 trade had replaced farming as the mainstay of a burgeoning market economy.

到1700年，贸易已经取代农业，成为蓬勃发展的市场经济的支柱。

Relief from extreme poverty was mandated by Parliament.

摆脱极端贫困是由议会授权的。

Towns were hubs of commerce and culture; religious dissent was accepted by a relatively tolerant Anglican elite.

城镇是商业和文化中心；宗教异议被相对宽容的英国国教精英所接受。

Rich Protestant England was a force in Europe.

富有的新教英格兰成为欧洲的一股力量。

A continuous thread runs from the accession of England’s first Stuart king, James I, in 1603, to the dynasty’s fall in the so-called Glorious Revolution of 1688-89.

从1603年英国第一位斯图亚特国王詹姆斯一世登基，到1688年至1689年光荣革命中斯图亚特王朝垮台，一条连续的线索贯穿其中。

Yet historians often balk at telling the tumultuous, ideologically charged story in one go.

然而，历史学家往往不愿一口气叙述完这段混乱且充满意识形态色彩的历史。

Often it is divided into three chunks.

通常，它被分成三个部分。

First come increasing resistance to absolutism and religious intolerance, civil war, the parliamentary army’s victory, the execution of Charles I, and the establishment of the Protectorate under Oliver Cromwell.

首先是对专制制度和宗教不容忍的日益不满、内战、议会军队的胜利、查理一世被处决以及克伦威尔开启护国时期。

Next, the monarchy’s restoration under Charles II; finally, the disastrous reign of James II and invitation to William of Orange to take his place and establish a proto-constitutional monarchy.

接下来是查理二世复辟；最后是詹姆斯二世的灾难性统治，以及威廉三世接替王位，建立原始君主立宪制。

Mr Healey takes on the whole saga in under 500 pages.

希利用不到500页的篇幅囊括了全部历史。

It begins when the first James acceded to the throne and was struck by England’s apparent wealth compared with his native Scotland.

故事始于詹姆斯一世即位，他震惊于英格兰远超其祖国苏格兰的巨大财富。

But the monarchy itself was chronically broke, a condition made worse by the excesses of his court.

但君主制本身就在慢慢崩溃，在他统治下，宫廷的奢华无度使情况变得更糟。

Tension ensued between his need for cash (he even sold peerages) and Parliament’s traditional control over the royal purse strings.

詹姆斯一世对金钱的需求(他甚至出售贵族头衔)和议会一直以来对王室钱包的控制之间出现了紧张关系。

In an era in which absolutism had become the norm across Europe—but was a relatively newfangled notion in England—such restraints were seen first by James, then by his son Charles, as a direct challenge to the “divine right of kings”.

在那个专制制度已经成为整个欧洲的常态的时代——但在英格兰还是一个相对新奇的概念——这种限制接连被詹姆斯一世和其儿子查理一世视为对“神圣王权”的直接挑战。

All the dynasty’s calamities sprang from this clash.

王朝的所有灾难都源于这一冲突。

A far less canny operator than his father, the priggish Charles I was widely seen to be trampling over ancient English liberties.

严肃正经的查理一世远没有他的父亲那么精明，人们普遍认为查理一世践踏了古代英国的自由。

Initially, this was a bigger cause for rebellion than the novel idea of government by and for the people: that developed later, particularly in the ranks of the radicalised parliamentary army.

最初，这是比民治民享的政府观念更大的反叛原因：政府观念是后来发展起来的，特别是在激进的议会军队中。

When the civil war began in 1642, nobody thought it would lead to the decapitation of a king and advent of a republic (albeit a short-lived one).

1642年内战开始时，没有人想到这会导致国王被斩首以及共和国出现(尽管是短暂的)。

Wily and pragmatic as well as louche, Charles II may have been the only Stuart to see that public opinion, fed by the proliferating news-sheets and pamphlets, could confer or deny legitimacy.

狡猾、务实又奸邪的查理二世可能是唯一一个看清楚这个道理的斯图尔特：在大量涌现的单张报纸和宣传册子的推动下，公众舆论可以赋予也可以否认王权正统性。

The clumsy attempt by James II, a Catholic, to restore absolutist rule was always doomed to failure.

天主教徒詹姆斯二世试图恢复专制统治的拙劣尝试是注定要失败的。

The ferment of ideas about politics, society and religion led inexorably to his ousting in the Glorious Revolution—and Britain’s emergence as a stable modern state.

政治、社会和宗教思想的发酵，势不可挡地导致他在光荣革命中被赶下台——以及英国成为一个稳定的现代国家。

The tempo never slackens in this erudite book.

在这本精深广博的书中，节奏从未松懈。

But sometimes the reader feels bombarded by detail (all those parliaments, the Short, the Long, the Rump…).

但有时读者会感到被细节轰炸(比如各种议会：短期议会、长期议会、残缺议会……)。

Worse, there is too little attempt to flesh out the luminaries of the age, such as the outrageous editor and propagandist Marchamont Nedham,

更不妙的是，作者很少试图把那个时代的一些风云人物写得更为丰满一些，比如常作骇人之言的编辑和宣传家马卡蒙特·尼德海姆，

or John Lambert, the brilliant parliamentary general who drafted England’s first written constitution, and whom the author thinks would have made a more enlightened Lord Protector than Cromwell.

或者起草了英国第一部成文宪法的杰出议会军将领约翰·兰伯特，作者认为他会成为比克伦威尔更开明的护国公。

Mr Healey’s is avowedly a narrative history.

希利的这部著作无疑是一部叙述史。

A bit more attention to its characters would not have gone amiss.

但是多关注一下其中的人物是不会有问题的。

来源：经济学人