帝國消亡 大不列顛最後的黃昏

LONDON — From Elizabeth I to Elizabeth II, England was an empire. No more.

倫敦——從伊麗莎白一世(Elizabeth I)到伊麗莎白二世(Elizabeth II)，英格蘭還是一個帝國。現在不是了。

Brexit has turned the twilight years of the reign of Elizabeth II into the final chapter in the history of Great Britain. What its partisans, celebrating with flag-waving in the street, tearfully called “Independence Day” will unravel the role that England has played since the 16th century as a great power, along with the City of London’s reign as a financial capital of the world.

英國脫歐已經把伊麗莎白二世末年變成了大不列顛的最後篇章。脫歐支持者在街頭揮舞着旗幟，熱淚盈眶地慶祝“獨立日”到來的那一天，讓英格蘭自16世紀以來一直扮演的大國角色，以及倫敦作爲世界金融之都的地位，都成爲明日黃花。

After Elizabeth I ascended to the throne in 1558, her merchant-venturers began an imperial quest. By Elizabeth II’s birth, Britain’s empire spanned nearly a quarter of the globe.

伊麗莎白一世於1558年登基後，她手下的商人-冒險家開始了帝國的創建。到伊麗莎白二世出生時，大英帝國已將近四分之一個地球納入了自己的版圖。

Brexit’s fantasy of revived greatness — “taking back control” — will achieve the opposite. England’s wish to withdraw from its union with Europe appears now to have made inevitable Scotland’s eventual withdrawal from its union with England. It has also placed in doubt the status of Northern Ireland, where a majority also voted against leaving the European Union.

英國脫歐承載着關於偉大復興的幻想——“收回控制權”——但現實將與這一幻想背道而馳。目前，英格蘭對脫離歐盟的渴求似乎已經導致蘇格蘭終將不可避免地脫離英國。它讓北愛爾蘭的身份也變得不確定起來，那裏的大多數人也都投票反對脫歐。

This misguided craving will turn Britain’s seat, created by Winston churchill, on the United Nations Security Council into a rotten borough (as parliamentary constituencies that persisted despite low populations were known Historically). The great powers will never allow this little England to exercise a veto right against their wishes.

這種被誤導的渴求，將溫斯頓·丘吉爾(Winston Churchill)在聯合國安理會爲英國爭取的一席之地變成了一個“腐敗選區”（即歷史上諸多人口稀少但依然得以存在的議會選區）。那些大國絕不會允許這個小小的英格蘭一票否決其意願。

Why did England choose this? The key is not sovereignty but a rejection of ethnic change.

英國爲何做出這種選擇？關鍵因素並不是主權問題，而是對民族變化的抗拒。

“It’s not England anymore,” people told me as I traveled around the country covering the referendum. In Tonbridge and Grantham, in Romford and Witney, this is what I heard, hundreds of times: “We don’t recognize our country anymore.”

“它已經不是英格蘭了，”我穿梭於全國各地報道公投期間，人們告訴我。在湯布里奇和格蘭瑟姆，在羅姆福特和威特尼，我成百上千次地聽人說起：“我們已經不認識我們的國家了”。

Middle England did not treat this as a referendum on European Union membership but as a plebiscite on one thing: “immigration.” For Middle Englanders, “immigrants” is also a synonym for nonwhite British. Identity, not austerity, motivated their vote to Leave.

在英格蘭中部地區，人們認爲這場公投所針對的議題並不是歐盟成員國資格，而是移民問題。他們還認爲，“移民”是非白種英國人的同義詞。促使他們投票贊同脫歐的是身份，而非緊縮政策。

At her coronation in 1953, Elizabeth II also became the reigning monarch of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Pakistan and Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). The nonwhite population of Britain then was probably less than 20,000. Over 70 percent of British workers were manual laborers.

在1953年加冕之際，伊麗莎白二世也成了加拿大、澳大利亞、新西蘭、南非、巴基斯坦和錫蘭（今斯里蘭卡）的君主。當時，英國的非白人人口數量可能還不到2萬。70%以上的英國勞工是手工勞動者。

London was far from the cosmopolitan capital it has become. In 1931, less than 3 percent of Londoners were foreign-born; that was the historical norm for the city. For all London’s trade and commerce, historians believe it was essentially mono-ethnic as late as the 17th century.

英國首都倫敦還遠遠沒有發展成現在這樣的大都會。在1993年，只有不足3%的倫敦人出生於國外；那是這座城市的歷史常態。歷史學家認爲，雖然有大量的商貿活動，倫敦一直到17世紀基本上還是一個單一民族城市。

Metropolitan elites often use the Irish and Jewish settlement in Britain from the mid-19th century to bolster a national story of Britain as an immigrant nation, but the history does not fit this narrative. We prefer to forget it, but Britain’s Irish communities suffered appalling levels of ethnic hate and communal segregation into the 1980s.

從19世紀中葉開始，都市精英們便常常以愛爾蘭人和猶太人在英國定居爲依據，宣揚不列顛是一個移民國家的國家敘事，但這種說法與歷史並不相符。我們選擇忘記的是，英國的愛爾蘭人羣體直到1980年代還在承受令人震驚的民族仇恨和社區隔離。

Jews were expelled from Britain in the 13th century and barred from settling here until the 17th century. The extreme hostility to Jewish immigrants saw Britain largely close its borders to them in 1905, and later refuse asylum to hundreds of thousands of European Jews fleeing Nazism. In Wales, there was even a pogrom against Jews in 1911.

猶太人在13世紀被趕出了英國，直到17世紀才被允許定居於此。由於極端敵視猶太移民，英國在1905年基本關閉了猶太人的入境通道，後來又拒絕庇護歐洲數十萬逃避納粹迫害的猶太人。

Before World War II, only three waves left a demographic trace on this “island nation”: Huguenots from France and the Netherlands in the 16th century, Irish immigration in the mid-19th century and Jewish immigration in the later decades. The numbers were always small. Huguenots numbered about 1 percent of London’s population; Irish immigration, even at its 19th-century peak, amounted to less than 3 percent of the population of England and Wales. Fewer than 250,000 Jews migrated to Britain between 1880 and 1914.

二戰爆發前，這個“島國”只經歷過三場給其人口結構帶來影響的移民潮：法國和荷蘭的胡格諾派(Huguenots)信徒在16世紀涌入，愛爾蘭移民在19世紀中葉涌入，猶太移民在隨後的幾十年裏涌入。移民人數一直都很少。胡格諾派信徒佔倫敦總人口的比重約爲1％。愛爾蘭移民的數量在19世紀達到了頂峯，但即便是那時，他們佔英格蘭和威爾士總人口的比重也少於3％。在1880至1914年間，只有不到25萬猶太人移居英國。

So the most striking historical trend of Elizabeth II’s reign has been a sudden ethnic transformation of Britain. In 1931, when the queen was a child of 5, only 1.75 percent of Britain’s population was foreign-born. Her rule saw the Empire come to Britain: For the first time, the island experienced large-scale nonwhite immigration from Asia, Africa and the Caribbean. By 2011, when she was 85, about 20 percent of the population of England and Wales were immigrants or the children of immigrants.

因此，伊麗莎白二世治下最令人震驚的歷史潮流，莫過於在英國突然出現了一場民族轉型。在1931年，也就是女王只有5歲的時候，英國人口中只有1.75%出生在國外。在她治下，帝國蛻變成了不列顛：這個島國首次經歷了來自亞洲、非洲和加勒比地區的非白人移民的大規模涌入。到2011年，也就是她85歲的時候，英格蘭和威爾士約20%的人口是移民或移民子女。

When the queen celebrated her 90th birthday this year, more than 12 percent of her subjects were nonwhite. This is the new England, but London is already another country. In 1971, 86 percent of Londoners were still white British. Forty years later, fewer than half were. Urban areas with a population less than 60 percent white British now include such major cities as Slough, Leicester, Luton and Birmingham. Ethnic change is gathering pace: By 2050, roughly 30 percent of Britons could be nonwhite.

到女王今年慶祝90歲生日的時候，她的臣民中12%以上爲非白人。這是一個新英格蘭，但倫敦已經是另一個國家。在1971年，倫敦人中仍有86%是白種英國人。40年後只剩下不到50%。現在，包括斯勞、萊斯特、盧頓和伯明翰等大城市在內，許多城市地區的人口中白種英國人的佔比都不到60%。民族變化正在加速：到2050年，大約30%的英國人可能會是非白人。

Remain campaigners argue that it was areas with low immigration that voted most heavily for Brexit. This misses the large flow of white British families from diverse cities to such areas and misunderstands them. People were voting against their town turning into London; they were voting against becoming an immigrant nation.

留歐派指出，移民涌入量不大的地區，投票支持脫歐的選民比例最大。這就忽略了從各個城市大量涌入這類地區的白種英國人家庭，並且誤解了他們。人們投票反對讓自己所在的城鎮變成倫敦，他們投票反對讓英國變成移民國家。

In Tonbridge, I heard “Enoch was right” — a reference to Enoch Powell, the politician who scandalized party colleagues in 1968 but won broad public support for a speech that predicted racial strife resulting from mass immigration. In Grantham, Margaret Thatcher’s hometown, I was told Britain would “collapse with these millions of Turks.” In Romford, a suburb east of London, I was warned that “there’ll be a civil war between the English and the immigrants.”

在湯布里奇，我聽見人們說“伊諾克是對的”。他們指的是政治人物伊諾克·鮑威爾(Enoch Powell)，他在1968年的一場演講中預言移民大量涌入會引發種族衝突，其言論讓黨內同仁感到震驚，卻贏得了大批民衆的支持。在瑪格麗特·撒切爾(Margaret Thatcher)的家鄉格蘭瑟姆，我被告知英國會“因數以百萬計的土耳其佬的涌入而崩潰”。在倫敦以東的郊區羅姆福特，有人警告我，“英國人和移民之間會有一場內戰。”

Since Brexit, a wave of attacks, arson and abuse has hit Britain. Historically, ethnic change is one of the most difficult things a society can go through. But why is this anger flaring with such intensity now?

自從投票決定脫歐以來，英國迎來了一波襲擊、縱火和凌辱的浪潮。從歷史角度看，民族變化是一個社會所能遭遇的最困難的事情之一。但憤怒的火焰爲何在今時今日變得如此熾烈？

Part of the reason is that the messaging of the Leave campaign suggested that Britain was under a camouflaged German diktat. A majority of those I met thought a tide of immigration from the European Union was imminent — thanks, they believed, to impending Turkish membership. This made the Brexit referendum eerily similar in emotional content to last year’s bailout referendum in Greece, which encompassed a similar psychodrama of World War II refought.

部分原因在於，脫歐運動傳達出這樣一種信息：英國其實是在聽德國發號施令。我遇到的大多數人都認爲，由於土耳其即將成爲歐盟成員國，源自歐盟的移民潮一觸即發。這讓脫歐公投所承載的情緒，與希臘去年針對救助方案的公投有着詭異的相似，後者同樣包含着一種二戰重新打響的心理暗示。

On my travels, I thought often of the writer J. G. Ballard. The English are a funny old lot, he said: They “talked as if they’d won the war but acted as if they’ve lost it.”

在旅途中，我時常想起作家J·G·巴拉德(J. G. Ballard)。他說，英格蘭人很可笑，“講起話來讓人覺得他們會打贏這場戰爭，但做起事來讓人覺得他們已經輸了。”

The suburbs dream of violence, he wrote. Beneath the surface, he saw an angry, lost society in which the centuries-old pillars of Britishness — empire, church, navy, class — were crumbling. This unraveling has continued inside Britain long after it ceased to exist in the world.

郊區在夢想着暴力，他寫道。但在這種表象之下，他看到了一個憤怒而迷失的社會，在這個社會中，讓英國在過去數百年間得以傲然挺立的支柱——帝國、教會、海軍、階級——正走向崩塌。英國不復存在許久之後，這種崩塌仍然在它內部繼續着。

And now the dreamers, unwitting, sickened with nostalgia, have torn down that last, threadbare vestige of Great Britain. This is the queen of England’s England no more.

如今，患有懷舊病的夢想家們在無意間拆毀了大不列顛最後一點破舊的遺蹟。它已經不再是英女王的英格蘭了。