全知识专访

专家访谈、深度阅读、纵深历史

卜正民 / 2019

本期采访嘉宾：

卜正民，历任多伦多大学、斯坦福大学、英属哥伦亚大学历史系教授，兼圣约翰学院院长。1974年，他作为交换生来到中国。李约瑟则在1977年安排他参与《中国的科学与文明》第七分册的编写，这一册主要是对比中国发展与西方资本主义兴起，这对卜正民的学术道路或多或少有些影响，在《为权力而祈祷：佛教与晚明中国士绅社会的形成》（或译为“觊觎权力”，江苏人民，2005年11月）、与格力高利·布鲁编的《中国与历史资本主义：汉学知识的系谱学》（新星出版社，2005年5月）等都体现了这一点。2007年7月赴牛津大学历史系任教。著有《觊觎权力：佛教与晚期明士绅社会的形成》、《纵乐的困惑：明代的商业与文化》、《明清历史的地理资料》等书，编有《亚细亚生产方式在中国》、《中国公民社会》、《中国与历史资本主义》、《鸦片政权》、《民族行为：亚洲精英与民族身份认同》等著作。后现代史学认为历史只是后人构建的，历史的书写总会以特殊的意识形态和权力话语为导向的。因此后现代史学认为是历史学家发现并写作故事，个人价值、想像和感情无法避免，后现代史学写作也就和小说创作并无二致，《纵乐的困惑》也不例外，它的故事性极强，写得生动而有趣，这恰恰是后现代史学的中心特征之一。

2019年您出版了新书《大国》，接下来的几个问题是关于您的这本新书的。

从您的第一本书到最近的《大国》，您已经出版了很多书、研究了诸多课题。您希望每本书都独立存在，还是有计划地将每本书相互联系起来从而共同构建一个论述？

卜正民：这是一个很有趣的问题。我经常被问到我的书是如何相互联系的，因为我的作品涵盖了十分广泛的主题。实际上，我认为每一本书都应该独立存在。在每一本书中，我都试图处理一系列我想要去理解的问题。在我看来，我不断地在尝试新的话题，但我要说的是，我所有的工作都与这一点有关，即去了解人们所处的权力结构以及人们如何在这当中协商自己的地位。有些人有特权，有些人则很弱势。但无论你是特权阶层还是弱势阶层，你仍然生活在一个你无法掌控的体系中。有一个更大的政治体系支配着你的选择，我对人们如何应对他们所处的政治环境非常感兴趣。

I am often asked how my books are connected to each other, given that I cover such a wide variety of topics. As I see it, each book is meant to stand on its own. In each book, I try to deal with a set of problems that I want to understand better. For that reason, each book stands on its own. In term of my own practice, I'm constantly moving to new topics, yet I would say that all my work is connected by a concern to understand the structures of power within which people find themselves, and how people negotiate their positions in these structures. Some people are very privileged, others are very underprivileged, but regardless of whether you're privileged or underprivileged, you nonetheless exist in a system that you do not control. The larger political system dominates the choices you make. I'm interested in this question of how people manage the political environment in which they find themselves.

所以就像您刚刚说过的那样，您只是希望为读者提供可能性，让他们在当中发现自己的观点，或者让他们意识到，他们对这个世界的理解并不是唯一可能的方式。

卜正民：这是我写《大国》这本书时的理想。我希望亚洲外的读者能够尝试去理解，亚洲历史的发展轨迹与西方历史是不同的。当然，在某种程度上，这本《大国》也是为亚洲读者所写的，因为这本书挑战了人们对于中国历史的很多假设。但我的主要读者是西方人，我只是想让他们明白，中国是一个帝国，英国也是一个帝国，但这两者完全不同。你必须理解这些区别，而人们只能通过回顾历史来理解这些区别。这就是我想要做的。这本书也许是我所有的作品中对政治问题最感兴趣的。

My ambition with Great State was to inspire non-Asian readers to try and understand that Asian history has unfolded differently than Western history. But in some sense I've written Great State for Asian readers as well, because it challenges basic assumptions of Chinese history. But my main audience are Westerners. I just want them to understand that, just because China was an Empire and Britain had an Empire, they're not the same thing. You've got to understand the differences, and you can only understand this historically by going back into history. So that's what I was trying to do. The book is perhaps more interested in political questions than any of my books previous to this.

这让我想到您的另一本书《天命：成吉思汗以来的亚洲国际关系》（Sacred Mandates: Asian International Relations Since Chinggis Khan），但这本书您是编者之一。

卜正民：《天命》这本书为《大国》做了一些铺垫。正是由于《天命》这本书的启发，我写出了《大国》。写《大国》的时候，我其实选取了很多编写《天命》时的想法，并进行了进一步的扩充。在《天命》中，我试图提供一种新的理解国际关系的模式。这种模式是由我和其他编者共同构建的。其实我发现，在过去的十年里，我对国际关系的兴趣逐渐增加。但对我而言，这并不代表我进入了一个完全不同的领域。我所研究的范围越来越广，比如最近我在写关于中国流行病的内容，我所研究的领域一直在扩大。

Sacred Mandates was a step towards Great State. It was working on Sacred Mandates, in fact ,that led me to write Great State. I took some of the early ideas in Sacred Mandates and filed them out for a larger story. Sacred Mandates attempts to offer a new model of international relations, which was shaped by the colleagues I was working with. As a result, I find that at the last decade I've become much more interested in international relations. But to me, it's not that I've gone into a different field. It’s that the field I work in has gotten bigger, and with each topic I take on, my field gets bigger. As an example, I'm now writing about pandemics in China which is newe for me. So my field is always getting bigger.

《天命：成吉思汗以来的亚洲国际关系》

您最近是在写一本关于中国流行病的书吗？

卜正民：不是一本书。我并没有打算写一整本关于中国流行病的书。但两周前，我刚刚发表了一篇文章，在文章中我对比了17世纪的中国和英国的流行病。这主要是因为，我决定在《大国》这本书里提及鼠疫，而要写这样一个章节，需要我做大量的研究，但实际上我对于疾病史并没有太大的兴趣，所以我并不准备写一整本关于流行病的专著。

Not a book. I won't do a whole book about pandemics. I just published an essay a few weeks ago comparing epidemics in China and England in the 17th century. It came about because I decided I would write about the plague in Great State. To write that chapter required a lot of research, but I have no real interest into going into disease history.

除了刚刚提到的文章，您最近在研究哪些课题？能够和您的读者分享一下？未来您有哪些新作品的出版计划？

卜正民：我有一本书是关于中国历史上的世界地图，这本书叫《全图：中国与欧洲之间的地图学互动》（Completing the map of the world: Cartographic interaction between China and Europe），应该会在这个月在中国台湾出版。但我也在研究明朝的治国方略和《大学衍义补》，也就是弘治时代的政策文件集。我仍在研究约翰·塞尔登所收集的塞尔登地图。他所展现的17世纪的世界观非常有趣。我很喜欢做同时期的中国和欧洲历史的交叉研究。

I have a book on Chinese maps of the world which will come out from Taiwan this month. It is called Completing the Map of the World. But I am also working on Ming statecraft using Daxue yanyi bu, which is a Hongzhi-era collection of policy documents. I'm also still working on John Selden, who is the man who collected the Selden map, the subject of an earlier book. I'm interested in his view of the world in the 17th century. I like working both with China and Europe at the same time.

《大学衍义补》

让我们再回过头来聊聊您的新书。在《大国》这本书中，您提到自己“更喜欢短小精悍的作品而非鸿篇巨制”，但《大国》却涵盖了八个世纪的中国历史。是什么促使您写这本书的？在写作过程中，您所遇到的最大困难是什么？

卜正民：我研究了很多很细小的课题，并尝试把它们联系在一起，这样就构成一个宏大的叙事。有一章是关于通敌的，有一章是关于明末的，还有一章是关于蒙古人的。有一章，我尝试将我所研究的许多问题都放在一起，想看看最终会呈现出怎样的效果。我认为最大的挑战是找到不同问题间的连接点。所有的连接点都在我的脑海中，但对于读者来说，找到这些连接点是非常困难的。有一章是关于韩国人的，然后有一章是关于蒙古人的，还有一章是关于其他事情的。我把它们都放在一起，变成了一艘“巨轮”。在某种程度上，也许它太大了。我自己也有怀疑，也许我不应该尝试把所有这些结合起来，因为我真的喜欢写真实的人和他们的故事，而不是鸿篇巨著。我喜欢写具体的历史细节而不是宏大的历史叙事，所以最后，我不确定这本书是否成功。

Having worked on many smaller topics, I wanted to combine them all together and see what big picture emergtd. So there's a chapter on wartime collaboration, there is a chapter on the late-Ming disasters, there is a chapter on the Mongols. There's a chapter on many of the issues that I have worked on, and I wanted to put them together to see what the overall picture would be. The greatest challenge was finding the coherence. Coherence is something my mind imposes, though for a reader, I think it may be difficult to put all the parts together. There's a chapter about Koreans, a chapter about Mongols, another chapter about something else. I put them all together, and the effect was to produce something huge, like a cruise ship, maybe too big for the reader. Perhaps I shouldn't have tried to combine so much, because I really like writing stories about real people in immediate situations rather than offering big generalities. I like writing specific history rather than general history, and so in the end, I'm not sure if the book is successful or not.

作为一名读者，我认为看到各种不同的时期的人物是很有趣的，而您组织和叙述历史的方式也非常吸引人。就像您说的，如果想让读者有一个全面的理解，您必须提供不同的层次和角度。

卜正民：在《大国》这本书中我试图回答：中国是什么样的？以及它为什么成为这个样子？所以我用“大国”这个概念作为我全篇的主旨，去连接不同的章节。当然，“大国”这个概念也不是万能的。比如，关于瘟疫的那一章，“大国”这一概念就没有什么帮助。但对于大多数章节，它都是十分有效的连接点，比如有一章关于满族人的入侵，还有一章是关于18世纪的瑞士商人来到中国。实际上，中国和西方彼此之间存在着长期的误解。所以在我看来，如果我们有了“大国”这个概念，我的读者就可以用这个概念来理解中国与西方世界的不同。

The question this book is trying to answer is: what is China like and why is it like that? What I use to connect my stories is this concept of Da Guo, Great State, and to me that's enough of a connection that I can join everything. Perhaps not everything joins together completely under the concept of Great State. In the chapter on the plague, the concept of Great State doesn't really help to define the argument of that chapter. But it helps many other chapters: the Manchu invasion, the Swiss trader coming to China in the 18th century. There has been a long history of mutual misunderstanding between China and the West, which comes out in the latter chapter, which is why it seemed to me that this concept, great state, would give my readers something that they could use to make sense of the difference that has been China.

同时，读者也会对中国有更加复杂和立体的解读。

卜正民：是的，因为我不想说“中国是这样的，西方是这样的”，我不想重复这些刻板印象。我想从下到上研究真实的人在真实的情况下的故事，然后看看是否能从这些非常具体的故事中产生一些东西，形成一个更大的图景。

Yes, because I don't want to say that China's this way, and the West is that way. I didn't want to repeat the standard culture-conflict analysis. I wanted to work from the bottom up, to work with the stories of real people in real situations, and then see if something could rise up out of these very concrete stories to form a larger picture.

您最近的作品似乎转而聚焦在公共史学（public history）上。如果是这样，您可否分享一下是什么驱使您做出这样的改变？要针对不同的读者群体（大众和学术界）进行写作，这一点是如何影响您的写作过程的？

卜正民：是的，这是非常不同的过程，因为当你面向学术界写作时，你知道他们理解你的种种假设。所以你不需要解释太多。但当你为大众写作时，尤其是写关于中国的文章时，他们并不熟知学界的种种概念。所以你为公众写的任何东西，都必须找到他们所熟悉的方式，引导他们进入你的故事，因为西方人对中国一无所知。我喜欢这个挑战，这也是我为自己设定的一种考验。我做大量的学术研究，为我的同行们写作学术著作。但我喜欢挑战，把我学到的东西展示给更广泛的读者。我认为作为一个学者所做的各类研究很重要，但我希望能将我的学术成果分享给更多人，而并不仅仅是我学术界的同行。所以我既面向学术界写作，也尝试接触更广泛的读者群。但我不得不说，我刚刚发表的那篇文章不是为大众读者准备的。这篇文章发表在《全球史杂志》上。所以这篇论文更多的是面对历史学家的，但我会继续为大众读者写作，我觉得很有趣。

Yes, it is very different process because when you're writing for academics, you know that they share your assumptions. You don't have to explain your assumptions. When you write for the public, when you write about China for the public, there are no shared assumptions. Whatever you write for a public audience, you've got to find familiar ways for them to enter into the story. Westerners don't know anything about China. I like that challenge. It's a sort of a test that I set for myself. I do a lot of research; I write scholarly work for my colleagues; but I also like the challenge of taking what I have learned and making it available for a broader readership. If I think what I've done as a scholar is important, then I should be able to share that scholarship with a broader audience than just my fellow scholars. So I do both. This article I just published in the Journal of Global History is not for general readers; rather, it’s for professional historians. But I will continue to write for public audience. I find it interesting.

同时，拥有广泛的读者群体是一件很好的事。因为如果你只是写学术书籍，那么阅读你作品的人就非常有限。如果你的写作范围更广，你就拥有了更广泛的读者群，并能和他们建立了一种特殊的联系。这真的很有趣。但这并不意味着我的写作必须与众不同。如果我使用一个新奇的概念，我必须把它解释清楚，那我就不能花太多时间解释我想说的内容。我们在学术写作中这样做，但在通俗写作中，你不能这样做。所以在《大国》中，我虽然定义了“大国”这个概念，但我的解释很简单迅速，因为我相信我的读者不会希望我花10页的篇幅来定义一个概念。我要做的是向他们展示“大国”是如何运作的，而在学术文章中，你会解释这个概念而不是展示它是如何运作的。这是我喜欢的挑战。但是，我也将发表一些关于《大学衍义补》的研究成果。

It is great for an author to have a broad readership. If you just write scholarly books, you end up writing for a very narrow group of people who read your work. If you write more broadly, you have a broader readership and you enter into a different kind of a relationship with them. It doesn't mean that my writing has to be different. If I use a technical concept, I have to make it very clear what it is, and I can't spend too much time explaining my concepts. We do that in academic writing, but in popular writing, you can't do that. For instance, in Great State, I define the concept of “great state,” but I do it very quickly, very simply, because I know my reader doesn't want me to spend 10 pages defining a concept. Instead, what I have to do is show them how the concept of “great state” works, not tell them, whereas in an academic article, you would explain the concept rather than showing how it worked. And that is a challenge that I enjoy. However, I'm also going to continue publishing academic studies on Daxue Yanyi Bu.

这是为了学术界而写的作品吗？

卜正民：是的，这纯粹是为了学术。没人会觉得有趣，但我觉得有趣。

Yes, it is purely for academics. No general reader is going to find that interesting, but I do.

明白。最后一个问题比较轻松。您在过去的著作中研究了非常多的历史人物，想问下您如果可以回到过去，您最想体验哪个历史人物的人生？

卜正民：我想我会选择约翰·塞尔登。作为一个英裔加拿大人，随着年龄的增长，我逐渐走出英属加拿大，然后去发现世界。我去到中国，去了解世界。虽然塞尔登是英国人而不是加拿大人，但是我很想知道他是如何认识这个世界的。他比我早四个世纪出生。所以我很想知道他是如何看待这个世界的。因为17世纪的时候，世界对其已经越来越清晰可见。塞尔登使我感兴趣的是他了解这个世界，并且在不断地继续了解这个世界。他收集来自世界各地的书籍和地图。所以去和他谈谈会很有趣。我很喜欢这样的谈话。

Well, I think the person I will choose is John Selden. I will choose him because, as an Anglo-0Canadian, my life experience has been to go outside of English Canada as I get older and to discover the world, including China, to learn about the world. He was English, not Canadian, but I would be interested to listen to his experience of getting to know the world. He was born four centuries before I was, and I'd like to hear from him how he saw the world. The world in the 17th century was becoming visible to him in a way it has never before. What interests me about Selden is his interest in learning about the world. He collected books and maps from across the world to support that interest. So that is why I would like to talk to him. I would enjoy that conversation.

《塞尔登的中国地图》

这和您的研究很像。如果您能跟他交谈，那真的太棒了!

卜正民：我不一定非要成为他，但我很想和他交谈。但是过去有很多人，我都想和他们谈谈。然而这不会发生，所以我也就不怎么想了。

I don't have to be him but I would love to have a conversation with him. There many people in the past with whom I would like to have a conversation. But since that will not happen, I don't think about it much.

很感谢您接受我们此次的专访，也很期待看到您更多的作品！