龙腾网对欧洲的贡献（如果没有殖民亚洲和非洲）

正文翻译

Could Europe have 'developed' without colonizing Asia and Africa?如果没有殖民亚洲和非洲，欧洲还会成为“发达地区”吗？

评论翻译Emmanuel-Francis Nwaolisa Ogomegbunam, I am the West African History GuySure.European economic hegemony rested on intrinsic factors and the colonisation of the New World. Everywhere else was surplus to requirements.Everyone knows this map by now, yes?Throw in the time-bound contributions of the Caribbean Isles, and you get a clear picture of the only territories the Europeans needed/need.Everywhere else is surplus to requirements., 喜欢西非历史当然可以。欧洲的经济霸权依赖于内在的因素和新世界（美洲）的殖民化。其他地方都是多余的。下面这张图大家应该都很熟悉吧？抛开加勒比群岛在某一段时间内有过一定的贡献，从这张图你就能清楚地看到欧洲人唯一需要的领土是哪里。其他地方都是多余的需求。Ygor CoelhoMost people seem to be unaWare that most of Europe didn't have colonies, including, most especially, the countries that are now the most developed of the entire continent (in fact, some of them were themselves conquered and ruled by foreigners, like Finland, Poland and Ireland), or had only minor colonies directly ruled for a pretty short time that didn't make much of a difference to them economically.Even more numerous are the European countries that really took off and became developed only in the post-colonial times, especially between the 1940s and 1990s, including old colonial powers such as Spain and, even more so, Portugal. They virtually stagnated after the mid 17th century, despite having many colonies.So, even analyzing Europe as it is and as it was, it's clear colonialism didn't do that much to make European societies rich and developed. In most cases, it seems that what happened was that colonialism was the consequence, not the cause, of the European “great divergence”: because some European countries had become more technologically advanced and wealthier than most other areas, they could even plan to invest on trying to reach and conquer lots of disparate lands and still be successful at that in a relatively short time.Italy and Flanders, for instance, were the wealthiest parts of Europe by 1400–1500 A.D., even if they weren't exactly big pioneers of the great navigations and far and wide colonial enterprises (that position was taken by Portugal and Spain and, only many decades later, the French, British and Dutch).What colonialism and overseas imperialism did a lot was to make some European individuals, a tiny elite class, very wealthy and, perhaps even more than that, very prideful in their social and political status. In some places, colonial endeavors were even detrimental to the large majority of the society, diverting precious taxes and human workforce (and lives, too) from the people of the metropolitan countries to their colonies, needed to make investments, sustain the entire bureaucracy there and to keep tight military control on them.大多数人似乎都不了解的一点是，欧洲大多数国家都没有殖民地，尤其包括现在整个欧洲大陆最发达的国家（事实上，其中一些欧洲国家本身就是被外国人征服和统治的，比如芬兰、波兰和爱尔兰），或者只在相当短的时间内拥有直接统治的小殖民地，在经济上对自身没有什么影响。更多的欧洲国家是在后殖民时代才真正起飞和发展起来的，特别是在1940年代和1990年代之间，包括老牌殖民国家，如西班牙，甚至是葡萄牙，后者在17世纪中期以后几乎停滞不前，尽管拥有许多殖民地。因此，对现在的欧洲和过去的欧洲进行分析，很明显，殖民主义并没有为欧洲社会的富裕和发展做多大贡献。在大多数情况下，似乎发生的情况是，殖民主义是欧洲"大分化"的结果，而不是原因：因为一些欧洲国家在技术上变得比其他大多数地区更先进，更富有，他们甚至可以计划投资于试图到达和征服许多遥远的土地，并在相对较短的时间内在这方面取得成功。之后，理所当然地，一个过程以辩证（和滚雪球）的方式相互加强和促进了另一个过程。例如，公元1400-1500年，意大利和佛兰德斯是欧洲最富有的地区，即使他们并不是伟大的航海和拥有遥远而广泛的殖民企业的先驱（这一地位被葡萄牙和西班牙以及几十年后的法国、英国和荷兰所取代）。殖民主义和海外帝国主义所做的很多事情是使一些欧洲人，一个极小的精英阶层，变得非常富有，而且，也许比这更多的是，使这些人对他们的社会和政治地位感到非常自豪。而在一些地方，殖民主义的行为其实对社会上的大多数人都是有害的，他们把宝贵的税收和人力（还有生命）从原生国家的人民那里转移到他们的殖民地，进行投资，维持那里的整个官僚机构，并对他们进行严格的军事控制。Emmanuel-Francis Nwaolisa OgomegbunamNot quite.The likes of Portugal and Spain took off relative to other European countries. They were much richer than the rest of the world. They were also more powerful in Europe when they could still live off rents from their New World colonies. Losing those and keeping the rest was a burden.The New World, SA and Australia are the only valuable pieces of real eState. Everywhere else shoulda been left alone.The colonisation of the New World was indispensable to European industrialisation because of how important it was to England's prosperity. Without England; no industrialisation.The 20th-century European industrialisers you mentioned were participants in the second and third industrialisation. A process that would have been impossible without the first. The first would not have happened without the colonisation of the New World.并非如此。相对于其他欧洲国家，葡萄牙和西班牙这样的国家依靠殖民地就起飞了。他们比世界其他国家要富裕得多。当他们还能依靠从新世界殖民地收来的“租金”过活时，他们在欧洲也强大得多。失去了这些而保留了其余部分才是一种负担。新世界（北美）、南美和澳大利亚是唯一有价值的地方。其他地方的殖民地都应该被抛弃。新世界的殖民化对欧洲的工业化是不可或缺的，因为它对英国的繁荣极其重要。没有英国，就没有工业化。你提到的20世纪的欧洲工业化国家是第二次和第三次工业化的参与者。如果没有第一次工业化，就没有第二次第三次。而如果没有新大陆的殖民化，第一次工业化就不会发生。Bill Matthews (ビル マシュス)Yes, it's a tricky one alright.Unfortunately, we have no shortage of English Quorans in particular who peddle the line the Britain didn't profit from the British Empire because of the prohibitive costs of running the empire. However, Britain and Europe ultimately became rich through trading lixs built on the back of the empire building.As you point out, even if a European region didn't have a colony, it traded with those who did.Sure, it was only an elite few who profited from this exploitation, but the systems (finance, trade, inventions, transport) to support it benefitted the development of Europe as a whole.The problem is Europeans look at the great buildings of old and think of it as a golden age and see it as proof of European exceptionalism rather proof of elitism.There is also no shortage of opulent old buildings in Latin America which display the former wealth of the elite in colonial times. Hell, you may see some opulent new buildings in Latin America belonging to a cartel or two or in the form of a presidential palace Is that proof of exceptionalism?是的，这是种狡诈的推脱。不幸的是，这个网站上并不缺乏那种兜售“因为经营帝国的成本太高，所以英国本身并没有从大英帝国获利”论调的英国人。然而不管他们怎么说，英国和欧洲最终确实通过建立在帝国这座大厦背后的贸易联系而变得富有。正如你所指出的，即使某个欧洲国家没有殖民地，它也与那些有殖民地的地区进行贸易。当然，只有少数精英从这种剥削中获利，但支持这种剥削的系统（金融、贸易、发明、运输）使整个欧洲的发展受益。问题是现在的欧洲人看着那些古老伟大的建筑，认为这是一个欧洲的黄金时代，并将其视为欧洲例外论的证明，而不是欧洲精英主义的证明。在拉丁美洲也不乏展示了殖民时代精英财富的富丽堂皇的古建筑。你甚至可能会在拉丁美洲看到一些属于一两个卡特尔（垄断企业）的富丽堂皇的新建筑，甚至以总统府的形式出现，但你会认为那是拉丁美洲例外主义而不是精英主义的证明吗？Niko NištaAs Ygor Coelho mentioned, it’s not quite as simple as that.Europe definitely benefited enormously from its blessed geography, which allowed it to prosper at the expense of the Americas and Africa, but Spain and Portugal were ruined by their colonial endeavors, largely because their rulers frittered the wealth of colonialism away on fighting foreign wars.Furthermore, Portugal and Spain got in on the colonialism game at the very beginning, when there were still plenty of kinks to work out, as controlling vast colonies overseas was extremely expensive and inefficient.The real reason Britain and to a lesser extent the rest of Europe prospered due to colonialism was because the Triangle Trade provided a massive impetus to the development of technologies such as shipbuilding and weapons manufacturing.War, government debt financing and the trade in drugs and slaves furnished the start-up capital to begin industrialization, as well as furnishing the modern financial instruments, advanced division-of-labor systems and legal institutions needed for the development of modern capitalism.I highly recommend the late David Graeber’s book Debt The First 5000 Years and its chapter on early modern history.Basically, it all started when states became better at squeezing taxes out of their populations, which they then used to invade and subjugate new populations to tax. Although government revenues skyrocketed, so did the costs of maintaining standing armies of professional soldiers that grew ever larger, causing governments to borrow money and create increasingly elaborate financial instruments to keep themselves solvent. This is the origin of modern banking systems and financial markets.All of this was supercharged by the fact that these states were cashing in on the ludicrously lucrative trade in slaves, weapons and drugs/alcohol/sugar/tobacco.All of these government expenditures and indebtedness of course, created massive war profiteering, and it was these war profits, the theft of common lands from the peasants by the gentry, the massive repressive/legal machinery of the modern Leviathan State that gave birth to modern capitalism.正如Ygor Coelho所提到的，事情并没有那么简单。欧洲无疑从其得天独厚的地理条件中受益匪浅，这使得它能够以牺牲美洲和非洲为代价实现繁荣，但西班牙和葡萄牙却被他们的殖民主义所毁，主要是因为他们的统治者将殖民攫取的财富浪费在了对外战争上。此外，葡萄牙和西班牙在一开始就参与了殖民主义这场游戏，而当时在这方面还有很多问题需要解决，因为控制庞大的海外殖民地是非常昂贵和低效的。英国以及小部分欧洲其他国家因殖民主义而繁荣的真正原因是，三角贸易为造船和武器制造等技术的发展提供了巨大推动力。战争、政府债务融资以及毒品和奴隶贸易为最初的工业化提供了启动资金，并为现代资本主义的发展提供了现代金融工具、先进的劳动分工体系和法律制度。我强烈推荐已故的大卫-格雷伯的《债务的最初五千年》一书及其中关于早期现代历史的章节。基本上，这一切都始于国家变得更善于从其人口中榨取税收，然后他们利用这些税收来入侵和征服新的人口来征税。虽然政府收入激增，但维持由职业军人组成的常备军的成本也越来越大，导致政府要借钱并创造越来越复杂的金融工具来保持自己的偿付能力。这就是现代银行系统和金融市场的起源。所有这一切都因为这些国家从利益巨大的奴隶、武器和毒品/酒精/糖/烟草贸易中套现而得到了加强。当然，所有这些政府开支和债务都创造了大规模的战争暴利，而正是这些战争利润、乡绅从农民手中窃取的公共土地、现代利维坦国家的大规模镇压/法律机制，催生了现代资本主义。