大西洋两岸的历史故事 | 经济学人文化

Culture | Transatlantic histories

文化 | 大西洋两岸的历史故事

Culture | Transatlantic histories

文化 | 大西洋两岸的历史故事

As Europeans went west, indigenous people travelled the other way

西进的欧洲人，东进的土著人

Caroline Dodds Pennock remembers their stories and impact in “On Savage Shores”

卡罗琳·多兹·彭诺克在《野蛮海岸》中记述了土著人的迁徙之旅及其影响

In recent decades indigenous people around the world have fought to rebuild cultures wrecked by colonialism, invoking a common phrase: “We are still here.” From protests against oil pipelines to bids to reclaim land, and from the revival of native cuisines to indigenous stories on screen, a renaissance is refuting the tired view that these cultures are vanishing.

近几十年来，全球的土著人都在努力重建被殖民主义蹂躏的本地文化，由此催生出一句流行语：我们仍然在这儿。土著人除了联合抗议铺设输油管道外，还积极争取收复自己的土地、再现当地传统烹饪、将传统故事搬上大荧幕，一场本地文化复兴的风潮正不断批驳着那些认为土著文化正在消失的陈言旧论。

According to Caroline Dodds Pennock’s absorbing account of indigenous peoples in 16th-century Europe, their roles in earlier history have been simplified or erased, too. “On Savage Shores” shatters the Eurocentric assumption that, half a millennium ago, people and ideas flowed in only one direction, from the old world to the “new”. Her study painstakingly reconstructs the first century of contact between colonial powers and the peoples of the Americas, documenting thousands of natives who travelled east, often involuntarily, to a continent they considered no less “savage” than the conquistadors had found their own.

卡罗琳·多兹·彭诺克在书中对16世纪欧洲土著人的生活作了一番引人入胜的描述，从中可知他们在早期历史中的作用也被淡化或是完全抹除了。《野蛮海岸》粉碎了欧洲中心主义，即500年前，人口和思想只从旧世界流向所谓的“新世界”。彭诺克在书中费尽心力地重构了殖民大国和美洲土著人相遇的第一个百年，记录了成千上万迫于无奈向东迁徙的土著人，他们认为，他们去往的欧洲大陆与西班牙征服者眼中的美洲大陆一样“野蛮”。

Long before Buffalo Bill’s Wild West shows began touring Europe in the late 19th century—and even before the first permanent English settlement in North America, at Jamestown in 1607—indigenous people lived in European courts and cities. Ms Dodds Pennock, a scholar of Mesoamerica, mainly focuses on the peoples of Central and South America, which were invaded and exploited by conquistadors from Spain and Portugal. But readers meet scores of individuals ferried across the Atlantic, from Nunatsiavut, Roanoke and Brazil to London, Seville and Rouen.

早在19世纪末水牛比尔（Buffalo Bill）的蛮荒西部表演开始在欧洲巡演之前，甚至早在1607年英国人在北美建立第一个永久殖民地詹姆斯敦之前，土著人就已经生活在欧洲的宫廷和城市里。多兹·彭诺克是研究中美洲的学者，主要关注居住在中、南美洲的人民，这两片土地都曾遭受西班牙和葡萄牙征服者的侵略与开发。不过在书中也能读到从努纳武特、罗阿诺克、巴西等地被送上船，横跨大西洋，来到伦敦、塞维利亚和卢昂的大量人物。

注释：

Wild West shows were traveling vaudeville performances in the United States and Europe that existed around 1870–1920. The shows began as theatrical stage productions and evolved into open-air shows that depicted romanticized stereotypes of cowboys, Plains Indians, army scouts, outlaws, and wild animals that existed in the American West. While some of the storylines and characters were based on historical events, others were fictional or sensationalized. American Indians in particular were portrayed in a sensationalistic and exploitative manner. The shows introduced many western performers and personalities, and romanticized the American frontier, to a wide audience.

水牛比尔最为人所知的身份可能是蛮荒西部（Wild West）的代表人物，他制作了一整部名为《水牛比尔的荒蛮西部及世界驯马师大会》（Buffalo Bill's Wild West and Congress of Rough Riders of the World）的系列表演，他的演出团里所有的演员都是来自美国西部，有很多都是大名鼎鼎的历史人物，比如印地安酋长“坐牛”（在英国演出时受到维多利亚女王的亲切接见），还有当时的一些传奇枪手、印第安部落的武士等等，这场表演享誉全球，并为美国西部创造了一个永恒不变的形象。水牛比尔的主要贡献在于创造了美国西部神话，一如好莱坞电影及电视影集所呈现出的蛮荒景象。

After trumpeting his “discovery” of America in 1492, on his next trip Christopher Columbus focused on kidnapping Taíno people from the Caribbean to sell as slaves at home. One Taíno boy he “adopted” as his own was the first of many émigrés forcibly Christianised to justify the Spaniards’ “civilising mission”. For his part, after laying waste to the Aztec capital in 1519, Hernando Cortés sent the gifts offered by its ruler, Moctezuma, back to the Spanish king. These included a hoard of exquisite gold and silver treasures—and at least five emissaries from the Totonac people of Mexico, who barely rated a mention in one observer’s breathless report.

1492年，克里斯托弗·哥伦布（Christopher Columbus）大肆宣扬自己“发现”了美洲大陆，在之后一次的航行中，他主要目标是绑架加勒比海地区的泰诺人（Taíno），带回本国卖作奴隶。他“收养”的一名泰诺族男孩就是第一批被强制皈依基督教的众多移民之一，以此证明，西班牙人的“使命”是为美洲大陆带来“开化”。1519年，埃尔南多·科尔特斯（Hernando Cortés）在阿兹特克首都大开杀戒之后，将其统治者莫特祖马（Moctezuma）赠送的礼物交予西班牙国王，其中包括一批精美的金银财宝，以及至少5名墨西哥托托纳克人（Totonac）的使者，然而他们在某位观察员令人窒息的报道中几乎未被提及半句。

Only through oral histories and forensic reading of archival documents can the voices of such travellers be heard, the author writes. By 1600 as many as 2m people from the Americas were enslaved, she recounts, many of them transported to Europe. Some high-ranking travellers came as diplomats trying to broker better conditions for their people; others were forced into service as interpreters. Two such intermediaries arrived in London in 1584 with Sir Walter Ralegh and were instrumental in developing an Algonquian written alphabet (credited solely to Ralegh’s navigator, Thomas Hariot).

彭诺克写道，这些土著旅行者的所思所想仅能在口述历史和文献档案的蛛丝马迹中得以窥见。她补充道，到了1600年，多达两百万美洲土著沦为奴隶，很多人被运往欧洲。其中地位较高的土著就担任起了外交官，为自己的族人争取更好的生存条件；另有一些人不得不担当起翻译的角色。1584年，两名土著和当时英国著名的冒险家沃尔特·雷利爵士（Sir Walter Ralegh）一起抵达伦敦，创造了阿尔衮琴语字母表（美洲原住民语言的一支）。但后人却将这项成果仅归功于雷利的航海员托马斯·哈里奥特（Thomas Hariot）。

Meanwhile, for all the splashy biographies of indigenous American crops like coffee and tobacco, says Ms Dodds Pennock, those who grew and sold such goods were overlooked for centuries and are still neglected. Perhaps unconsciously, Europeans emulated indigenous peoples’ rituals for smoking and coffee-drinking; but, the author argues, they failed to adopt their system of “reciprocity between the land and its inhabitants”. She cautions against romanticising indigenous beliefs, yet notes that “European value-systems tended to extraction and profit, rather than sustainability and the sharing of resources.”

彭诺克还提到，几个世纪以来在所有关于美洲作物的传记之中，对咖啡和烟草的记载洋洋洒洒，却鲜有提及种植和售卖这些作物的人，而现在情况依旧如此。或许欧洲人自己都没意识到，他们学着美洲土著抽烟、喝咖啡，却没能领悟其“人与自然和谐共生”的生存智慧。她提醒人们切莫过分渲染土著居民的信仰，但也指出“欧洲的价值体系以压榨和利益为导向，并非永续发展和资源共享。”

The impact on European culture of these travellers is hard to measure. It is clear in language: Quechua provided jerky and quinoa; the Aztec-Mexica tongue supplied avocado and chocolate. The book’s wider claim—that the indigenous presence shaped European society—is less convincing. Still, the views of native peoples on their colonisers continue to resonate. Michel de Montaigne, a French essayist, inquiring of three Tupinambá from present-day Brazil, reported their wonder at how “among us some men were overstuffed with all sorts of rich commodities while their [compatriots] were begging at their doors, emaciated from hunger.”

这些土著旅行者对欧洲文化的影响难以估量。从语言上就显而易见：jerky（熏肉干）和quinoa（藜麦）源自盖丘亚语；avocado（牛油果）和chocolate（巧克力）源自阿兹特克-莫西加语。作者进一步认为美洲土著塑造了欧洲社会，这个说法显然不能服人。但是，美洲土著对殖民者的看法不断引发共鸣。法国散文家米歇尔·德·蒙田（Michel de Montaigne）探问了三位来自今天巴西的图皮南巴人（一个美洲印第安族），他们无法理解为什么“有人腰缠万贯、百货加身，有的同胞却因挨饿而面黄肌瘦、在富人家门前行乞”。

注释：

盖丘亚语：Quechua，南美洲原住民的语言，也称印加语；纳瓦特尔语：Nahuatl，阿兹特克人的语言；

jerky（熏肉干）词源盖丘亚语中的ch’arki；

quinoa（藜麦）词源盖丘亚语中的kinua；

avocado（牛油果）来自西班牙语aguacate，词源纳瓦特尔语中的āhuacatl；

chocolate（巧克力）由西班牙语chocolate传入英语，词源纳瓦特尔语中的chocolātl。

翻译组：   

zy，没啥新鲜的，想做一个好译员

Colin，男，崇拜科比的一枚小翻译

Trista，女，虽然我是无业游民，但是我并没有骄傲

校核组：

Dossver，男，是错永不对真永是真

Kin，译术学徒一枚，积微言细，自就鸿文

Harold，工作打牌读书足球不可兼得，我偏全要

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