0.0- Introduction
发布时间 2013-09-15 19:47:48 来源
Hello, and welcome to Revolutions. Episode 0, the introduction.
大家好，欢迎来到《Revolutions》。第0集，也就是介绍。
The word revolution is one of those words you think you know the definition of, until you actually start trying to define it. Then it turns out to be a very slippery fish.
“革命”这个词是那种你觉得自己理解了它的定义，直到你真的开始尝试去定义它，才会发现它其实是一条非常难捉摸的鱼。
Because first of all the word revolution, coined by Copernicus in 1543, is supposed to mean completing an orbit, coming full circle. But the kind of revolution we're talking about is the opposite of that. It's a sudden radical change, overthrowing the old regime and replacing it with a new one. It's not about coming full circle. It's about boldly setting out on a new path.
首先，1543年伽利略提出的“革命”一词原本是指完成一个轨道、来回循环。但我们所指的“革命”恰恰相反，是突然的彻底变革，推翻旧的体制并将其替换为新的。这与来回循环无关，而是勇敢地开辟一条新的道路。
So right away the word doesn't even mean what it's supposed to mean, and it only gets muddier from there.
所以，这个词从一开始就并不意味着它应该意味着的东西，而且它的意思从那时候开始就更加混乱了。
Because even overlooking the utter absurdity of using the word revolution to describe a fundamental change in political organization, we still have a hard time expressing precisely what we mean by revolution.
因为即使忽略使用“革命”一词来描述政治组织的根本变革的完全荒谬，我们仍然很难准确表达我们所指的“革命”是什么。
We know it involves overthrowing the existing regime, but we also know that it's more than a mere coup. We know it involves a conflict between two competing forces within a country, but we also know that it's more than a mere civil war. We know it involves mass mobilization, but we also know that it's more than some half-baked peasant revolt. It's more organized, more directed, more thoughtful. Isn't it?
我们知道它牵涉到推翻现有政权，但我们也知道这不仅仅是一次政变。我们知道其中涉及国内两个竞争势力之间的冲突，但我们也知道这不仅仅是一场内战。我们知道其中涉及大规模动员，但我们也知道这不仅仅是一次半吊子的农民起义。这是更为有组织、有方向、更加深思熟虑的。对吧？
Well, sometimes yes, and sometimes really no. As it turns out, distinguishing coups from civil wars, from revolts, from revolutions is a very sticky proposition.
嗯，有时是，有时确实不是。事实证明，区分政变、内战、起义和革命是非常棘手的事情。
Indeed, for each of the revolutions we are going to cover in this series, there is a contingent of revisionist historians ready to argue that no revolution in fact took place, that it was just a rebellion masquerading as a revolution.
实际上，在我们即将涵盖的每一场革命中，都有一部分修正主义历史学家 准备主张并辩称并没有真正发生任何革命，那只是伪装成革命的叛乱。
Because look, the revolutionary effects were neither as wide nor as deep as once supposed, or only a narrow band of socioeconomic elites actually participated, or no one at the time actually thought that they were engaged in a revolution.
因为你看，革命的影响既不像曾经认为的那样广泛深远，或者只有很狭窄的一部分社会经济精英真正参与了其中，或者当时没人认为他们正在进行革命。
But the problem is that when we add up all those particular reinterpretations, we're left with a very unsatisfying notion that in all of human history, no revolution has in fact ever taken place. And that just seems not right.
但问题在于，当我们把所有这些特别的重新诠释加起来时，我们得到的一个非常令人不满意的概念是，人类历史上实际上从未发生过任何革命。这似乎是不正常的。
With that in mind, this series is based on a broad definition of what counts as a revolution.
考虑到这一点，本系列基于广泛的定义，包括何为革命的不同形式。
The encyclopedia of political revolutions, dealing with the same problem, casts a wide net, by including events that share two characteristics. One, irregular procedures aimed at forcing political change within a society, and two, lasting effects on the political system of the society in which they occurred.
这本政治革命百科全书涵盖了相同问题，其中包括那些具有两个特点的事件。第一，采取非正常程序来强制社会内部的政治变革；第二，对发生事件的社会的政治制度产生持久的影响。
But I'd like to get a touch more specific than that.
但我想要更加具体一些。
Because it's not enough to just have a cabal of elites force their way into power, that's a coup, and it's not enough to have an amorphous blob of angry peasants marching around with clubs and axes. That's a revolt. Or maybe an insurrection.
因为仅仅让一小群精英阶层强行上台是不够的，那是政变，而且只有让一群愤怒的农民手持棍棒和斧头四处游行才不够。那是一次起义。也可以称之为暴动。
So sociologists Charles Tilly narrows the definition a little further, down to a forcible transfer of power over a state, in the course of which, at least two distinct blocks of contenders make incompatible claims to control the state, and some significant portion of the population's subject to the state's jurisdiction, acquiesces, and the claims of each block.
因此，社会学家查尔斯·蒂利进一步缩小了定义范围，将之限定为针对一个国家权力的强制性转移。在这个过程中，至少有两个不同的竞争者阵营提出了互不兼容的控制国家的主张，并且国家管辖范围内的一些重要人口屈服于这些阵营的主张。
Which is jumbled, because, well, he's a sociologist. But basically, we need some cross-class alliance of dissidents to overthrow an existing regime by extra-legal means, and then alter the political system in some fundamental way.
这句话有点紊乱，因为，呃，他是一个社会学家。但基本上，我们需要一些异质且异端的联盟，通过非法手段推翻现有政权，然后以某种基本的方式改变政治制度。
Or it starts to get messy, as when further wrinkles are added. Theta Scotchball, for example, creates a superclass called social revolutions that require changes to the political structure to be accompanied and reinforced by deep changes in the social structure.
否则的话，就会变得不清晰了，就像加入更多的皱纹一样。例如，Theta Scotchball创建了一个名为社会革命的超级类，需要政治结构的改变伴随着深层次的社会结构变革以加强和推动。
Now, this is perfectly reasonable, but it leaves us grappling with difficulty and ultimately subjective questions like how much change, and for how many people, and for how long, and how do we even measure it?
现在，这是完全合理的，但它让我们面对困难，最终是主观的问题，比如改变多少，为多少人，持续多久，我们如何度量？
These are the kinds of questions that academics will be arguing about forever as new evidences uncovered, and old evidences re-examined, and which I plan to neatly sidestep.
这些是学者们将会永远争论的问题，随着新的证据被揭示和旧证据被重新审查。而我计划巧妙地回避这些问题。
Don't get me wrong, we'll get into it, but I have no intention of adhering to some strict analytic criteria, and then casually tossing away events like the Mexican Revolution, because not enough hectares of land were ultimately redistributed to make it a really real revolution.
不要误会，我们会深入讨论，但我不打算坚持一些严格的分析标准，然后随意抛弃像墨西哥革命这样的事件，因为最终分配的土地不够多，无法使它成为真正的革命。
So, for me, if it walks like a duck, and it talks like a duck, it's probably a revolution.
对于我而言，如果它走起来像鸭子，说话也像鸭子，那很可能就是一场革命。
If there was ever a historical period that highlights this problem of what do we call it, it is the period we are going to begin the series with, Britain in the 1640s and 1650s.
如果说有一个历史时期突出了这个“叫什么名字”的问题，那么我们要开始介绍的系列就是这个时期——17世纪40年代和50年代的英国。
Something happened, everyone agrees on that. What was it a revolution? And if it was, was it a religiously driven Puritan revolution, or an economically driven bourgeois revolution? Or was it neither, and instead just a civil war that has been anachronistically labeled revolution?
有些事情发生了，大家都同意这一点。那是一场革命吗？如果是，那是由宗教驱动的清教徒革命，还是由经济的资产阶级革命？或者它既不是这两者，而只是一场被错误地标记为革命的内战吗？
The men and women who lived through the period often referred to it as simply the late troubles and left it at that.. So what was it? A revolution, a rebellion, a civil war? In truth, it was all of these things.
那些经历了那个时期的男女们经常把它简单地称为"晚年困境"，并把它当做结束。那么它到底是什么？革命、叛乱、内战？实际上，它是所有这些东西。
It started as a conflict over whether the political system should be reformed, descended into civil war, sparking a totally unexpected revolutionary period in the late 1640s and early 1650s that saw the king executed, monarchy abolished, and a written constitution introduced for the first time.
起初，这场冲突是关于政治体制是否需要改革的问题，后来演变成了内战，引发了一个完全意料之外的革命时期，发生在17世纪40年代末和50年代初，导致国王被处决，君主制被废除，第一次引入了一部书面宪法。
But then the storm passed, and by 1660 the monarchy was restored, and most of the recent innovations swept away. So what do we call it? Every possible label, the great rebellion, the English revolution, the English civil wars, the wars in the three kingdoms, fails to capture some essential element of the story.
然后风暴过去了，到了1660年，君主制恢复了，许多最近的革新也被抛弃了。那我们该如何称呼它呢？每一个可能的标签，如大起义、英国革命、英国内战、三国战争，都未能捕捉到故事的某些重要要素。
Since I am primarily interested in the revolutionary aspects of the period, I am going to use English revolution as shorthand. And I know that this is problematic, not the least of which, because Scotland and Ireland. So if you want to yell at me about calling it the English Revolution, please email me at revolutionspodcast at gmail.com. But just say, no, no, I am not a Marxist or some unreconstructed wig. I'm just a guy interested in the revolutionary aspects of the period, who is going to be talking a lot about the English revolutionary aspects of the period.
因为我主要关心这个时期的革命性质，所以我将使用“英国革命”作为简称。我知道这有问题，其中最大的问题是苏格兰和爱尔兰。如果你想因为我叫它“英国革命”而责备我的话，请给我发电子邮件到revolutionspodcast@gmail.com。但是只需说，不，不，我不是马克思主义者或某些没有重建的保守党派的人。我只是一个对这个时期的革命性质感兴趣的人，将会谈论很多关于英国革命方面的事情。
Finally, let's talk a little bit about interpretation. In broad terms, historians interested in explaining revolutions tend to break down into two loose camps. One camp argues that revolutions erupt when slowly building tensions in the socio-economic system finally break, while the other camp argues that it has far more to do with the calculations and miscalculations of individual historical actors.
最后，让我们稍微谈谈说明。一般来说，有兴趣解释革命的历史学家倾向于分成两个松散的派系。一个派系认为，当社会经济体系中逐渐累积的压力最终爆发时，革命就会爆发；而另一个派系认为，这与个体历史行动者的计算和误算有着更为密切的关系。
The former is criticized for building very nice looking theoretical models, and then highlighting anything that proves the model, and ignoring anything that doesn't. While the latter is criticized for essentially arguing that nothing was a miss, until the moment rebellion, civil war, and violent social upheaval spontaneously consumed the entire nation.
前者因建立非常漂亮的理论模型而受到批评，然后强调证明模型的任何事情，而忽略不符合模型的任何事。 后者因基本上认为一切都没有错，直到叛乱，内战和暴力社会动荡自发地吞噬了整个国家而受到批评。
Neither of these interpretations alone, at least to me, is satisfactory. Long-term social forces set the parameters for action, but they do not dictate the results. Individual choices dictate the results, but always within the bounds of those long-term social parameters. This is not a bold thesis, but I'm pretty sure it's how life goes.
在我看来，单独这两种解释都不令人满意。长期的社会力量为行动设定了参数，但它们并不决定结果。个人的选择决定结果，但始终在这些长期社会参数的界限内。这并不是一个大胆的论点，但我相信这就是生活的真相。
I'll close with a note on programming. With this show covering a series of distinct time periods that are thematically linked, but otherwise wildly disconnected, when I make the transition from one revolution to the next, I'm going to have to pause and recalibrate. Specifically, I'm going to have to pause and recalibrate for four weeks.
我最后想强调一下编程问题。由于这个节目涵盖了一系列在主题上有联系但在其他方面完全不同的时间段，当我从一个时期转换到下一个时，我需要停下来重新调整。具体而言，我需要停下来重新调整四周的时间。
I've thought a lot about this, and I just don't see any good way to get around it. So each revolution will run its allotted 12-15 episodes, and then I'm going to go dark for a month while I get ready for the next batch. So, 12 weeks on, four weeks off. Sound good? Good.
我认真考虑过这件事，但我真的看不出有好的方法可以避免这种情况。所以每个系列都会播放12至15集，然后我会在一个月的时间里为下一个系列做准备。也就是说，播放12周，暂停4周。听起来不错吧？那太好了。
So with all that out of the way, let's get into this thing. I apologize in advance if I butcher any pronunciation. It's bound to happen. Email me when it does. Please don't just leave me hanging. The show lives at revolutionspodcast.com.
那么既然这些事情都讲完了，我们现在就进入正题吧。如果我的发音出现了问题，我提前向大家道歉。这种情况肯定会发生的。如果有这种情况，请电邮告诉我，不要让我孤单难受。这个节目可以在revolutionspodcast.com收听。