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. 出於某種對於自身古怪的內向性，這種狹隘的觀點在英國軍事史中特別的明顯。歐陸強權 所參與的戰爭，至少自從法國大革命以後，多半是民族國家間的戰爭，人民不再只為了自 己的土地作戰，而是被民族國家給統一、武裝了起來。美國的獨立戰爭和南北戰爭亦是這 種形式。而在兩次世界大戰時，英國曾勉為其難地將其軍隊短暫的擴充成為此種全民皆兵 的形式，但卻在戰後又很快地改回其正統的職業軍人形式。這形成一種集合，一種具有私 人性質且與國內被分隔開來的集合。他們的歷史撰寫傳統便只是放大那些經過篩選過的軍 團史而已。而一個軍團史家，正如同我本人一直以來一樣，是為了要建構士氣而存在的， 我們被期待紀錄軍團的勝利，而不是不留情面的紀錄那些會降低士氣的軍事失敗。 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，從上述那種英國軍隊的歷史中，我們也無法得知軍隊在整個十九世紀前半葉的主要 功用就是弭平國內的社會衝突，而到了二十世紀則轉變成監控愛爾蘭的獨立運動。而在大 英帝國為數眾多的海外殖民或帝國衝突中，亦只有極少的人去處理一項最值得注意的成就 ：｢英國的武裝力量竟然能夠抵達並且駐紮在世界上任何一個需要他們作戰的地方。｣這 種驚人的後勤網絡主要是由英國皇家工程隊所締造的，他們同港口、鐵路與補給站等一同 撐起了大英帝國的骨架。他們在探索與製圖學上的功績讓許多印度、非洲與中東地區能逐 漸依照真實情況被記載在地圖上，而這些全都不在Fortescue（編按：應該是指英國軍事 史家John Fortescue，他在1928年寫了一本《帝國與它的軍隊The Empire and the Army 》）的記載中。 而就我所知，直到二十年前Daniel R. Headrick的《帝國的工具：十九世紀的科技與歐洲 帝國主義》之前都沒有相關的研究。如果我們現在要開始學習更多軍隊在國內的政治和社 會背景與他們對十九世紀武器革命的調適，這大部分得歸功於Hew Strachan（編按：蘇格 蘭軍事史家，其主要研究一次大戰與英國軍隊的行政管理）與他的跟隨者們，而他們這種 研究取向也被他們在美國的同事稱為＂新軍事史＂。 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. 在我們做進一步的討論之前，我必須要先談一下海軍史。這甚至是一個遠比軍事史還要專 門但卻更加孤立的研究領域。可是問題是海軍史根本不能從海洋史被分割出來研究，它們 應該被整體的來看，沒有人可以做海軍史卻不使用國家海洋史博物館的資料，但是研究海 洋史卻又會需要能掌握非常複雜的技術，而這往往不是一般軍事史學家所能夠單獨做到的 。海軍史受到狹隘主義與民族主義的扭曲也比軍事史來得還要嚴重，它的研究在十九末與 二十世紀初期達到的高峰甚至被視作是帝國主義者宣傳活動的一環。 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. 除了倫敦大學國王學院與艾希特大學在近年來開設海軍史講座以外，在這之前唯一與此較 為相關的就只有劍橋大學的帝國與海軍史研究，好在這個研究在過去半世紀以來一直是由 一些著名的經濟學史家所主持，不然本來有可能會更糟。就好像海洋史與海軍史的關係 一樣，海軍史一旦脫離其與經濟史背景的連結也會變得乏善可陳。傳統的海軍史家只強調 海軍在戰鬥上的歷史，因此會對像納爾遜提督與他輝煌的功績進行讚頌是可以理解的，但 就如同朱利安．科貝特（我們最優良的海軍史家，他既不是海軍水手也不是專業學術出身 ）所指出的一樣，除非我們給予那長達十年、單調乏味的海上封鎖與在他死後發生的較小 規模戰鬥給予同樣程度的關注，否則我們便不能體會納爾遜勝利的重要性。 （編按：Julian Corbett，英國在19-20世紀優秀的海軍史家與地緣戰略學家，他的著作 《Some Principles of Maritime Strategy》幫助型塑了當時英國皇家海軍的改革，他同 時也負責編篡官方的一戰海軍史。而他在戰略理論上則試圖將克勞賽維茨、約米尼等人的 陸戰思想放入海上作戰中。也由於他對海軍史研究的貢獻，英國倫敦大學每一年都會頒發 以他為名的獎項：Julian Corbett Prize來獎勵對海軍史有貢獻的學者。） 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. 事實上，我們對英國海軍在拿破崙時代的印象多是從派翠克．奧布蘭恩的優秀小說而來。 （編按：英國小說家，以描寫拿破崙時代的海戰－怒海爭鋒系列而聞名）它不斷提醒著英 國的歷史學家們，除了這本到目前為止最優秀且可能是唯一的＂研究＂以外，對於和拿破 崙時期英國海軍的經濟史研究成果竟多是由外國的歷史學家，如瑞典的Eli Hecksher與法 國的Francois Crouzet等人所進行的。一直要到保羅甘迺迪在1986年出版它的《英國海軍 霸權興衰史》以後，我們才能看到英國海軍的歷史被放到經濟史的脈絡底下，而這樣的創 舉卻迄今仍無人能夠接替。 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. 在那個稱為＂有限戰爭＂的時代，還有可能把軍事史與海軍史分開研究，雖然如此，其取 向與成果仍舊是相當的有限，我們應該要記得這些成果對整個世界史來說有是多麼的微不 足道。我記得一件頗令我驚訝的趣聞，那時我正在尋找可以加入戰爭研究的人才，而當我 天真的詢問我那些在國王學院上古史領域的同事誰才是研究這方面的權威時，我得到了＂ 任何研究上古史的歷史學家皆是＂的親切答案。（編按：我猜想這意味著根本就沒有人在 專門研究這個領域）這件事讓我避免了另一次可能的羞辱，我想我也會從那些研究中古史 的同事們口中得到同樣的答案。 　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　［待續］ --

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