风起于青萍之末:大英帝国的黄昏(1888—1913)的新解释

Every Storm Begins as a Ruffle in the Gras:A New Interpretation of the Twilight of the British Empire(1888-1913)

帝国研究在21世纪重返理论界后再度成为核心议题,揭示西方帝国衰落的因果机制有助于拨开我国现代化进程中的迷雾。针对英国是否在维多利亚末期落入衰落轨道的经济史争论,本文从政治经济学的积累的社会结构理论视角出发,基于构建的英国1888—1913年政治、经济状况的数据集,对“维多利亚的黄昏”命题进行了实证检验。研究发现,英国在维多利亚末期的经济衰落并没有绝对地表现在盈利能力等直接的经济绩效指标上,而是体现在不利于资本积累的社会结构的制度因素上。英国企业沿袭的内部承包制发挥的工资侵蚀利润效应超过了效率工资的劳动榨取效应,这可能是导致英国经济衰落的制度根源。本文首次将积累的社会结构理论视角应用于帝国兴衰的经济史研究,丰富了量化帝国研究的政治经济学文献,拓展了量化历史唯物主义的研究范围。

Since the return of empire studies to theoretical circles in the 21st century,it has become a central issue to unravel the causal mechanisms behind the decline of Western empires,which could shed light on the Chinese modernization process.In response to the economic history debate on whether Britain fell into decline at the end of the Victorian period,this paper empirically tests the proposition of"Victorian twilight"from the perspective of the social structure of accumulation theory,based on a data set of the political and economic variables of Britain from 1888 to 1913.We find the economic decline of Britain at the end of the Victorian period was not directly reflected in economic performance indicators such as profitability,but in institutional factors of the social structure that hindered capital accumulation.The wage erosion effect exerted by the internal contracting system inherited by British enterprises outweighed the labor extraction effect,which might be the institutional reason of Britain's decline.This paper applies the social structure of accumulation theory to the field of the fall of empires in economic history for the first time,enriching the literature on the political economy of empires and expanding the scope of quantitative historical materialism research.