迈向“大分流”:中欧贸易网络和全球消费者在澳门和马赛(18～19世纪)

Toward a“Greater Divergence”?:Sino-European Trade Networks and“Global Consumers”in Macao and Marseille(18th-19th Centuries)

引言:为什么选择澳门和马赛?近几十年来,全球史已经能与“旧史学”——专注于零散的、地方性的、民族国家内部的历史观相提并论了。“旧史学”过多地使用微历史视角叙述,却没有强调通常定义下地区间的社会经济和文化交流过程。然而,随着冷战的结束、柏林墙的倒塌,全球史在学术研究上更受关注。通常人们会认为全球史是关于以发达国家现代经济发展为标志的全球化的历史,但事实上全球史是分析人、社会、经济和文化以及全球不同地区的差异的一种研究方法。因此,全球史是一门通过寻找大型问题的答案以帮助人们认知此种全球性进程的交叉科学。彭慕兰(Kenneth Pomeranz)2000年出版的《大分流》是全球(经济)史研究的一个里程碑,它的主要目标是对在工业革命初期发达国家和发展中国家之间的巨大经济差异以及在中国经济发展水平等同甚至超过欧洲的前提下,为什么西欧国家诸如英国和荷兰先一步进行了工业革命,促使它们经济腾飞并领先于中国等问题做出进一步的解释。以加州学派学者为代表的学者们把理论重点放在中国东部地区的经济发展上,诸如彭慕兰、王国斌、杰克·戈德斯通(Jack Goldstone)、李中清、丹尼斯·弗林(Dennis Flynn)、阿图罗·吉拉尔德兹(Arturo Giraldez)、马立博(Robert B.Marks)、万志英(Richard Von Glann)、约翰·霍布森(John Hobson)、杰克·古迪(Jack Goody)、吉姆·布劳特(Jim Blaut)和贡德·弗兰克等知名历史学家。他们通过对“欧洲中心论”这一曾盛行于世界历史的视角发起挑战,分析了西方与东方特别是欧洲和中国之间的巨大经济差异。

In last decade the approaches and limits of the global history have been emphasized in order to visualize the progress and also the form and method that the historian has undertaken when carrying out ambitious research projects to analyse and compare diverse geographical and cultural areas of Asia and Europe.Surely,at the time of making and writing this kind of narrative,researchers on global history have renewed specific thematic areas especially those related to the analysis of material culture and patterns of consumption.But when dealing with comparisons and cross-cultural studies on Europe and Asia,scholarly works have exceeded of ambiguities and vagueness when defining geographical units as well as chronology.What I advocate is for comparing specific geographical units in concrete demarcated periods,such as city ports during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,defined as strategic geo-political sites to develop commerce,international relations and socio-economic networks between China and Europe which can narrow better the gap that the California School have taken when widely analysing differences between Asia and Europe without a specific geographical and chronological delineation.Macao,in south China,and Marseille in south Europe are the areas chosen in our study.