21世纪初西方鸦片战争研究反映的重大问题——从近年所见的三部鸦片战争史研究著作说起

Contemporary Relevance of Recent Western Scholarship on the Opium Wars

纵观大英帝国史的发展,大致是三部曲。中国的百年屈辱,正是大英帝国鼎盛之时,若要求当时的帝国史家说半句两次鸦片战争之不是,无异与虎谋皮。帝国垮台,英人反思,鼓起勇气面对历史,对祖先之贩毒,内疚莫名。在此思潮下,黄宇和的《鸩梦:第二次鸦片战争探索》虽然全程批判帝国主义,但1998年出版后好评如潮。然而,英国资深史家哈利.盖尔伯及年轻学者朱莉娅.骆菲尔,分别在2004年及2011年出版有关鸦片战争的专著,竟然若隐若晦地高呼中国该打。另一位不具名的学者,拟出版第二次鸦片战争史,更是明目张胆地大喊中国该打。风云突变,时势逆转。逆转的原因在哪?作者认为帝国主义与封建主义从未寝熄,只是中国人升平日久而似乎有点麻痹大意。先贤反帝反封建以救亡,一针见血。反封建之最终目标是中国现代化。当今的中国距离现代化还甚远。若不加倍努力,则当帝国主义卷土重来之时,恐怕会悲剧重演。

Charting the development of British Imperial History scholarship,it is perhaps too much to expect imperial historians not to be defensive in the nineteenth and a good part of the twentieth centuries.A subtle and gradual change happened after the Second World War,when Britons bravely faced up to their imperial past.Thus John Y.Wong's Deadly Dreams: Opium,Imperialism and the Arrow War(1856-1860) in China(Cambridge University Press,1998) received worldwide acclaim.The BBC TV interviewed him and used his Deadly Dreams as the main theme of its Scotland's Empire: The Far East in 2004.An abrupt change happened in the same year,however,when Harry Gelber published his Opium,Soldiers and Evangelicals: England's 1840-1842 War with China and its Aftermath(London: Palgrave Macmillan,2004).This was followed by Julia Lovell’s The Opium War: Drugs,Dreams and the Making of China(London: Picador,2011),and a book-manuscript on the Arrow War.All three put the blame squarely on Chinese shoulders.The present author suggests that Chinese do some soul-searching,just as Britons have done.