从民众态度看吴淞铁路的兴废

Public Attitude and the Rise and Fall of Wu Song Railway

吴淞铁路是中国近代第一条正式营运的铁路,它的兴废成为中外铁路史上著名的事件。长期以来学界笼统地认为民众因风水观念及民族意识而反对兴建铁路,实际上民众对待吴淞铁路的态度并非如此简单。本文将民众分为乡民和市民,分阶段细致考察他们在吴淞铁路兴建运营过程中表现出的态度,从而再现具有经济理性的上海民众对待吴淞铁路的复杂态度。吴淞铁路虽然被拆毁,但它对民众空间观念、时间意识及民族意识均产生较大影响,由此,在近代特殊的历史背景下,中国民众逐步形成融利益观、时空观及主权观于一体的铁路观。

Wu Song Railway is the first railroad ever built and run in modern China. Its rise and fall has become a famous event in the history of railroad in both China and the world. For a long time, scholars have tended to blame the public objection to the Railway on the popular feng shui view and narrow-minded nationalism. This paper tries to argue that the public mentality was far more complicated than this. By studying the different attitudes of rural and urban people towards the construction and operation of Wu Song Railway, this paper attempts to show that the whole event reflects the sophisticated conceptions of benefit, of space and time, and of sovereignty of a heterogeneous populace.