This parochialism is particularly marked in the case of British military history because of the peculiar introversion of the British Army itself. The wars fought by the great continental powers, at least since the French Revolution, have been genuine “wars of nations” fought by peoples in arms, as often as not on their own soil. So were the great formative conflicts of the United States – the War of American Independence and the Civil War. In the two World Wars, the British Army did expand briefly to become “a people in arms,” but it did so reluctantly and inexpertly and went back afterward to “proper soldiering” as soon as it decently could. It was a club, or rather a congeries of clubs, whose activities were a private matter and took place a long way from home. Its historiographical tradition is that of regimental history writ large, a rather selective regimental history at that. The regimental historian – and I have been one myself, so I should know – is expected to chronicle triumphs, not disasters. His purpose is morale building, not dispassionate analysis, which rather limits its didactic value. 出於某种对於自身古怪的内向性，这种狭隘的观点在英国军事史中特别的明显。欧陆强权 所参与的战争，至少自从法国大革命以後，多半是民族国家间的战争，人民不再只为了自 己的土地作战，而是被民族国家给统一、武装了起来。美国的独立战争和南北战争亦是这 种形式。而在两次世界大战时，英国曾勉为其难地将其军队短暂的扩充成为此种全民皆兵 的形式，但却在战後又很快地改回其正统的职业军人形式。这形成一种集合，一种具有私 人性质且与国内被分隔开来的集合。他们的历史撰写传统便只是放大那些经过筛选过的军 团史而已。而一个军团史家，正如同我本人一直以来一样，是为了要建构士气而存在的， 我们被期待纪录军团的胜利，而不是不留情面的纪录那些会降低士气的军事失败。 Furthermore, one would not learn from most histories of the British Army that, throughout the first half of the nineteenth century, one of its major functions was repressing social conflict within the United Kingdom or, in the twentieth, policing Ireland. Accounts abound of colonial or imperial conflicts overseas, but few deal with the most remarkable achievement of the British Armed Forces: getting to where they had to fight, wherever it might be in the world, and remaining there. The amazing logistic network created primarily by the Royal Engineers, the ports, railroads, and depots that provided the skeleton of the British Empire, the feats of exploration and cartography that put so much of India, Africa, and the Middle East quite literally on the map – none of this was chronicled by Fortescue of indeed, as far as I know, by anyone else until Daniel Headrick drew attention to it in his Tools of Empire written twenty years ago. If we are now beginning to learn more about the political and social context of the Army at home and its adjustment to the weapons revolution of the nineteenth century, much of this is due to the work of Hew Strachan and his fellow practitioners of what our American colleagues call the “New Military History.” 此外，从上述那种英国军队的历史中，我们也无法得知军队在整个十九世纪前半叶的主要 功用就是弭平国内的社会冲突，而到了二十世纪则转变成监控爱尔兰的独立运动。而在大 英帝国为数众多的海外殖民或帝国冲突中，亦只有极少的人去处理一项最值得注意的成就 ：｢英国的武装力量竟然能够抵达并且驻紮在世界上任何一个需要他们作战的地方。｣这 种惊人的後勤网络主要是由英国皇家工程队所缔造的，他们同港口、铁路与补给站等一同 撑起了大英帝国的骨架。他们在探索与制图学上的功绩让许多印度、非洲与中东地区能逐 渐依照真实情况被记载在地图上，而这些全都不在Fortescue（编按：应该是指英国军事 史家John Fortescue，他在1928年写了一本《帝国与它的军队The Empire and the Army 》）的记载中。 而就我所知，直到二十年前Daniel R. Headrick的《帝国的工具：十九世纪的科技与欧洲 帝国主义》之前都没有相关的研究。如果我们现在要开始学习更多军队在国内的政治和社 会背景与他们对十九世纪武器革命的调适，这大部分得归功於Hew Strachan（编按：苏格 兰军事史家，其主要研究一次大战与英国军队的行政管理）与他的跟随者们，而他们这种 研究取向也被他们在美国的同事称为＂新军事史＂。 Before going any further, I must say a word about naval history. This is even more of a specialization than military history and remains shamefully isolated even from that. But naval history cannot be studies in isolation from maritime history as a whole – no naval historian can get very far without using the resources of the National Maritime Museum – and maritime history demands a grasp of very complex technologies that lies as far beyond the range of average military historian as they do of his political and social colleagues. But naval history has been distorted even more than has military history by parochialism and nationalism. Its study peaked at the turn of the ninetieth and twentieth centuries as part of general campaign of imperialist propaganda. 在我们做进一步的讨论之前，我必须要先谈一下海军史。这甚至是一个远比军事史还要专 门但却更加孤立的研究领域。可是问题是海军史根本不能从海洋史被分割出来研究，它们 应该被整体的来看，没有人可以做海军史却不使用国家海洋史博物馆的资料，但是研究海 洋史却又会需要能掌握非常复杂的技术，而这往往不是一般军事史学家所能够单独做到的 。海军史受到狭隘主义与民族主义的扭曲也比军事史来得还要严重，它的研究在十九末与 二十世纪初期达到的高峰甚至被视作是帝国主义者宣传活动的一环。 Indeed, until chairs of naval history were recently established at King’s College London and Exeter University, the only relevant post in any British university was that of, significantly, “Imperial and Naval History” at Cambridge, and that has been sanitized for the last half-century by being held by a succession of highly respectable economic historians. But they could have done worse. Like maritime history as a whole, naval history is sterile unless studied in association with economic history. The emphasis laid on operational naval history by traditional British naval historians, the glorification of Nelson and his triumphant battles, is understandable; but as Julian Corbett (our fines naval historian, one who was neither a sailor nor a professional academic) point out, we cannot appreciate the importance of Nelson’s victories unless we devote equal attention to the ten years of humdrum blockade and minor actions that followed his death. 除了伦敦大学国王学院与艾希特大学在近年来开设海军史讲座以外，在这之前唯一与此较 为相关的就只有剑桥大学的帝国与海军史研究，好在这个研究在过去半世纪以来一直是由 一些着名的经济学史家所主持，不然本来有可能会更糟。就好像海洋史与海军史的关系 一样，海军史一旦脱离其与经济史背景的连结也会变得乏善可陈。传统的海军史家只强调 海军在战斗上的历史，因此会对像纳尔逊提督与他辉煌的功绩进行赞颂是可以理解的，但 就如同朱利安．科贝特（我们最优良的海军史家，他既不是海军水手也不是专业学术出身 ）所指出的一样，除非我们给予那长达十年、单调乏味的海上封锁与在他死後发生的较小 规模战斗给予同样程度的关注，否则我们便不能体会纳尔逊胜利的重要性。 （编按：Julian Corbett，英国在19-20世纪优秀的海军史家与地缘战略学家，他的着作 《Some Principles of Maritime Strategy》帮助型塑了当时英国皇家海军的改革，他同 时也负责编篡官方的一战海军史。而他在战略理论上则试图将克劳赛维茨、约米尼等人的 陆战思想放入海上作战中。也由於他对海军史研究的贡献，英国伦敦大学每一年都会颁发 以他为名的奖项：Julian Corbett Prize来奖励对海军史有贡献的学者。） In fact, the fines picture of British naval activities during the Napoleonic Wars that we have to date is that given in the superb novels of Patrick O’ Brian. It remains a standing reproach to British historians that until very recently the best, if not the only studies of the economic dimension of the Napoleonic Wars, have been by foreign historians, Eli Hecksher the Swede and Francois Crouzet the Frenchman. We had to wait for Paul Kennedy’s Rise and Fall of British Naval Mastery to see the sweep of British naval history set in its appropriate economic context, and this pioneer work still awaits a successor. 事实上，我们对英国海军在拿破仑时代的印象多是从派翠克．奥布兰恩的优秀小说而来。 （编按：英国小说家，以描写拿破仑时代的海战－怒海争锋系列而闻名）它不断提醒着英 国的历史学家们，除了这本到目前为止最优秀且可能是唯一的＂研究＂以外，对於和拿破 仑时期英国海军的经济史研究成果竟多是由外国的历史学家，如瑞典的Eli Hecksher与法 国的Francois Crouzet等人所进行的。一直要到保罗甘乃迪在1986年出版它的《英国海军 霸权兴衰史》以後，我们才能看到英国海军的历史被放到经济史的脉络底下，而这样的创 举却迄今仍无人能够接替。 In the era of so-called ”limited wars,“ it was possible to study military history and naval operations in isolation, although even for that era it remained a pretty sterile and impoverished approach. But we should recall how comparatively brief, in the sweep of world history, that era was. I remember the amazement and amusement with which my colleagues in the Department of Classics at King’s regarded me, when I rather naively asked them to tell me who were the major current authorities on warfare in classical antiquity whose help I should try to enlist. Any historian of the classical era, they explained kindly, had to be an authority on warfare: war was what the classical era was all about. I knew enough to avoid a similar humiliation at the hands of my medievalist colleagues, who would have told me the same about European history between the fifth and the fifteenth centuries. 在那个称为＂有限战争＂的时代，还有可能把军事史与海军史分开研究，虽然如此，其取 向与成果仍旧是相当的有限，我们应该要记得这些成果对整个世界史来说有是多麽的微不 足道。我记得一件颇令我惊讶的趣闻，那时我正在寻找可以加入战争研究的人才，而当我 天真的询问我那些在国王学院上古史领域的同事谁才是研究这方面的权威时，我得到了＂ 任何研究上古史的历史学家皆是＂的亲切答案。（编按：我猜想这意味着根本就没有人在 专门研究这个领域）这件事让我避免了另一次可能的羞辱，我想我也会从那些研究中古史 的同事们口中得到同样的答案。 　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　［待续］ --

※ 发信站: 批踢踢实业坊(ptt.cc) ◆ From: 118.166.0.214 ※ 编辑: jonathan836 来自: 118.166.0.214 (03/10 21:40)