Trade
贸易
The greatest journey
最伟大的征途
Jul 17th 2008
From The Economist print edition
Largely for better, sometimes for worse, our world has been defined by trade
今日世界,贸易主导:总体良好,偶尔堪忧
WORLD trade gets a bad press: to many people globalisation seems more of a menace than an opportunity. Whether it is the threat to the environment posed by the phenomenal growth of Chinese manufacturing exports, the outsourcing of jobs by footloose corporations or the re-emergence of inflation as oil heads for $150 a barrel and food prices soar, trade is cast as the villain. As this year’s American presidential election campaign heads for the final straight, the candidates, especially Barack Obama, will face ever more strident demands to protect workers from “unfair” foreign competition.
世界贸易如今名声狼藉：对于许多人来说，全球化似乎更多的是威胁，而非机遇。不论是因中国制造业惊人的出口增幅所引发的环境威胁，还是因为企业的自由经营导致就业机会的外流，乃至随着油价冲击每桶150美元的新高以及食物价格的飞涨而卷土重来的通胀。贸易正在扮演着恶棍的角色。随着美国大选临近终点，两大候选人，尤其是巴拉克奥巴马将面临更多的呼声–要求他保护工人免受外来的”不公正”的竞争。
By contrast, too little is heard about the positive effects of world exports that reached $14 trillion in 2006. The boost to Western living standards from all those cheap Chinese goods is taken for granted, while the astonishing increase in the sum of human happiness that has been wrought by lifting hundreds of millions of Asians from the misery of subsistence farming into comfortable prosperity is conveniently forgotten.
相反，2006年，世界出口额达14万亿，带来诸多积极效应，但是对此鲜有耳闻。 中国的廉价商品对西方人民改善其生活水平所起的推动作用被认为是理所当然，同时在帮助了数百万亚洲人摆脱了为求生而耕作的疾苦，并实现小康后，人类的幸福感骤增；但是，这一切都被轻易地忽略了。
William Bernstein’s “A Splendid Exchange” is a timely and readable reminder that the desire to trade is not only one of the oldest human instincts but also the cause of many of the most important developments in our shared history. As Adam Smith observed: “The propensity to truck, barter and exchange one thing for another is common to all men, and to be found in no other race of animals.”
威廉彭斯特恩的新作”伟大的革命”，创作及时，可读性强，提醒我们对贸易的渴望是人类最为远古的本能，同时在人类共有历史的进程中促成了许多对人类最为重要的进步。正如亚当斯密指出的：以物易物，物物交换是人类共同的习性。这种习性，未曾在其他动物身上有所发现。
Mr Bernstein’s purpose is to show how that trait evolved and shaped the world. His story begins with Sumerian farmers who realised, some time in the third millennium BC, that the surpluses of grain generated within Mesopotamia’s fertile crescent could be used as barter for things they did not have. Among these was copper, obtained from Sinai several hundred miles to the west, that could be used to make weapons to repel the nomadic raiders who were otherwise helping themselves to the fruits of Sumerian labour.
威廉彭斯特恩的目的在于展示人类渴望贸易的习性是如何演变，并塑造了整个世界。他的故事开篇描述的是大约在公元前3000年间，苏美农民意识到在美索不达米亚平原新月沃地上产出粮食的剩余部分可以用来进行物物交换，以获得自己没有的东西。这其中就有铜–来自西部百里之遥的辛那。它可以制成各种武器来击退游牧掠夺者–这群通过不正当手段来使自己坐享苏美人辛劳果实的人。
Mr Bernstein eschews a rigidly chronological narrative in favour of a more thematic approach. His discussion of the disastrous Peloponnesian war between Athens and Sparta serves to make a wider point about the importance (and vulnerability) of sea-lanes. The Athenians were driven by the dictates of trade to create first a powerful navy and then an empire.
威廉彭斯特恩不落窠臼，避免了呆板地按时间顺序一一赘述，而是采用了一种主题更加鲜明的方式。他在书中讨论了雅典人和斯巴达人之间的伯罗奔尼撒战争所引发的灾难，以此从一个更为广泛的角度来说明海上航线的重要（以及脆弱），以及雅典人又是如何在贸易的驱使下打造了世界上首支强大的舰队并随后缔造了一个王朝。
Though Greek agriculture was rich in highly exportable wine and olive oil, thin soil, low rainfall and a mountainous topography made it impossible for farmers to produce enough grain for a growing and increasingly city-based population. The Spartans and their allies looked west to Sicily but the Athenians increasingly relied on access to the breadbasket of Pontus (modern Ukraine). This, in turn, meant keeping open those narrowest of choke points: the Dardanelles (to the Greeks, the Hellespont) and the Bosporus.
尽管希腊农业盛产可供出口的酒和橄榄油，但由于土壤贫瘠，雨量稀少，地形以多山为主，当地的农民无法种出足够的粮食来供给那些日益增长并日趋聚居于城镇的人群。斯巴达人及其盟友将目光投向西部的西西里岛，而雅典人越来越依赖于蓬塔斯（如今的乌克兰）的食物供应，反过来，这种依赖意味着开放那些扼要之地的最狭隘之处：达达尼尔海峡 (向希腊人，海斯波特人) 和博斯普鲁斯海峡.
Other states in the region were just as dependent on the trade with Pontus and were therefore prepared to contribute to the costs of Athenian naval operations. Before long, this “coalition of the willing” evolved into the Athenian empire. However, with two rival power blocks competing for resources within a relatively confined space, conflict was inevitable and when it came, it was Athens, always more exposed than Sparta, that was eventually starved to defeat. Today, it is the Straits of Hormuz, through which much of the world’s oil is carried, that has acquired the same strategic importance as the Hellespont had for the Athenians.
该地区的其他王国和雅典人一样依赖于同蓬塔斯的贸易。因此也准备承担雅典海军活动的开销。不久，这个”意愿的联盟”演变为雅典大帝国。然而在相对闭塞的有限空间里，两大敌对势力对雅典进行封锁，并与其争夺资源。矛盾不可避免。然而，当矛盾最终爆发时，比斯巴达人更易受到冲突影响的雅典人最终受困，忍饥挨饿，乃至落败。今天，就像海勒斯波特海峡之于雅典人，作为世界多数石油运输的必经之地–霍尔木兹海峡海峡拥有同等战略地位。
With an ability to switch gracefully from the macro to the micro, Mr Bernstein whisks his reader on a tumultuous journey. Along the way, it takes in the Pax Islamica established in the Mediterranean by the heirs of the Prophet Muhammad (a trader by profession himself); the rise and decline of Venice and Genoa; the devastation caused by the Black Death; the Portuguese-led age of discovery; the establishment of the great Dutch and British East India trading companies; the horrors of the transatlantic slave trade; the campaign (that led, among other things, to the founding of this newspaper) to abolish the Corn Laws; the golden period of the late 19th century in which trade flourished under the benign wing of the British empire; and the 20th century’s descent into beggar-my-neighbour protectionism.
威廉彭斯特恩时而着眼于宏观，时而关注细节，切换得体，不露痕迹。在充满喧嚣的旅途里，他快速地向读者展示一幅幅画面。一路上可以领略到由先知穆罕默德（自己也是一个商人）的后人在地中海区域建立的帕克斯伊斯兰马卡王朝；了解威尼斯和热那亚的兴衰；黑死病引发的浩劫；葡萄牙人引领的探索和发现的时代；大英荷东印度公司的诞生；跨越大西洋的奴隶贸易的可怖；为废除玉米法案的抗争（该运动和其他一些事件导致了本报纸的诞生）。19世纪晚期的黄金时代：此时，在大英帝国有利庇护下，贸易繁荣起来；以及20世纪贸易如何向零和博弈的贸易保护主义沦落。
The strength of Mr Bernstein’s book is the analytical rigour that overlays the rollicking history and the way in which he seamlessly weaves in the theoretical with the practical. For anyone wanting a painless primer in the ideas of Adam Smith, David Ricardo or more recent economists, such as Paul Samuelson, this is the place to find it. At the same time, Mr Bernstein never neglects the vital role of technology as a driver of trade, above all perhaps the coming of steam and reliable refrigeration.
威廉彭斯特恩的书优点在于其分析中迸发出来的活力。这种活力遍布于他对喧闹历史的描述，也体现在他天衣无缝地将实践编缀于理论之中。对于所有希望不费周折便能对亚当史密斯，大卫里卡多，以及时代稍近的经济学家诸如保尔萨姆尔森的理念有所了解的话，此书乃是理想之选。同时，作者没有忽视技术作为贸易的原动力所扮演的重要角色，而其中最重要的莫过于蒸汽原理的发现和可靠冷藏技术的问世。
The author also deserves credit for his willingness to take seriously the plight of the victims of trade, the workers and farmers displaced by the iron rule of comparative advantage. He argues, persuasively, that it is far better to help workers affected by disruptive change than it is to shield industries with efficiency-destroying tariffs.
作者试图认真思考贸易受害者–因无法适应比较优势这一残酷定律而被取代的工人，农民的疾苦，这点值得赞赏。他颇具说服力的指出，通过设立摧残效率的关税壁垒来保护本国产业远逊于直接帮助那些为混乱的变革所困扰的工人。
If Mr Bernstein has one overriding message it is that trade “has yielded not only a bounty of material good, but also of intellectual and cultural capital, an understanding of our neighbours, and a desire to sell things to others rather than to annihilate them.” It is a truth that a President Obama would do well to remember.
如果威廉彭斯特恩传达了某种中心主旨，那便是他认为贸易不仅孕育了大批的物质商品，而且积累了一批知识和文化的资本，增长了对我们近邻的理解，以及衍生出销售物品于他人而不是将其毁灭的欲望–这是奥巴马总统需铭刻于心的真理。
译者：vincent1986 http://www.ecocn.org/forum/viewthread.php?tid=12762&extra=page%3D1