叙述世界:英国早期帝国史脉络中的世界秩序观

Narrating the World:The World Order in the Historiography of Early British Imperial History

本文透过赫尔曼·梅里维尔、约翰·希里、休·爱德华·伊格尔顿和雷金纳德·库普兰的帝国史书写,着重讨论从19世纪中期到20世纪上半叶英国帝国史研究的形成与发展,并试图从帝国史发展的学术脉络中透视这一“帝国世界观”的构成问题。本文希望将帝国史脉络中展现的那种对于帝国秩序普遍性的信心重新历史化,并将帝国史作为一种从帝国扩张历史中发展起来的认识论来理解。本文希望表明,帝国的世界论述及其普遍性不仅仅体现在它对同时代世界秩序及其原理的宏大解释欲望上,更体现在它整理、裁剪、编织乃至神化过往时间的历史主义冲动之中,以及基于这种历史主义而倒推出的“帝国理性”及其对预测人类社会整体未来发展能力的非凡信心之中,而这种秩序观的核心是种族中心主义的。

This paper elaborates on the origin and development of the British imperial historiography in the late 19th and early 20th century through the writings of Herman Merivale,John Robert Seeley.Hugh Edward Egerton.and Reginald Coupland,in order to track down the evolution of the imperial historical narratives which canonise the universality of the imperial world order.The author argues that the confidence in the universality of imperial world order was cultivated in the process of imperial global expansion.Such a world order is also ethnocentric.These imperial historical narratives reorganise,tailor,weave and even mystify pass events in the ethos of historicism to construct a universal history of mankind.They also claim,with exceptional self-assurance,to hold the prophecy for the future of mankind.