被遗忘的美国历史.

2017-08-14 作者： 566阅读

　　下面小编为大家搜集了一篇关于被遗忘的美国历史的英语文章，是中英双语阅读的好材料，大家可以边读边学英语，对其中的英语翻译进行认真研究与学习。

　　America&aposs Lost Revolutionary

　　A few years ago David Ler, a high school and college history teacher in Brooklyn, was asked by a student for a good book on John Dickinson, an 18th-century American Revolutionary political figure who hailed from Philadelphia.

　　Ler duly scoured the libraries and discovered a striking fact: although America&aposs academic world is brimming with accounts of the Founding Fathers, there was almost nothing at all written on Dickinson. That struck Ler as odd. Dickinson was important in that 18th-century independence movement, since he (in)famously penned the tracts known as Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania, which eloquently dended the idea of liberty and freedom.

　　Indeed, that writing was so influential that during Dickinson&aposs own lifetime he was considered “the most trusted man in America and second most famous American in the world, after Benjamin Franklin” and credited with “single-handedly rallying the colonies in the fight against British oppression”, as Ler notes. And yet, by the 21st century, Dickinson&aposs name had slipped out of view.

　　So Ler started digging into this curious silence, and earlier this month he published the fruits of this research in a book entitled The Founding Conservatives: How a group of Unsung Heroes Saved the American Revolution.

　　This makes fascinating reading, and not just for history buffs or die-hard American patriots. For Ler argues that the lack of books about Dickinson is not just an oversight, but rlects a wider distortion in how modern Americans perceive their revolution. More specifically, in recent decades, schools have tended to teach that the revolt against the British was organised by a fairly united band of noble freedom fighters with shared, egalitarian views.

　　However, Ler argues, this is wrong. In reality, the revolutionaries were racked by bitter infighting between a group that might be dubbed “liberals” (in that they held quite ltwing ideas and were low-born) and “conservatives” (who were of the elite and determined to protect their privileges against others).

　　Dickinson, who was a wealthy Maryland-born lawyer, fell into this latter camp. “These [elitists] were not loyalists [to the crown]... they were committed Patriots who nonetheless wanted to preserve as much of the old social order as possible,” Ler writes, pointing out that the elite also had “faith in history and experience... support for venerable social institutions... reverence for the military... insistence on protecting property over equality... beli in yoking the interests of the rich and powerful to the government... and devotion to free-market capitalism”. In short, they were “revolutionary conservatives” whose ideas are echoed in the Republican party today.

　　Yet in the period after the second world war - when many modern history books were written - historians did not want to focus on this split or those elites. “With the United States facing an existential and ideological threat from Soviet Communism, the &aposconsensus&apos school... deliberately emphasized Americans&apos underlying unity during the revolution... and believed that American history was fundamentally liberal.”

　　So those Founding Fathers were presented as a happily unified group and Dickinson slipped from view.

　　Does this matter today? Ler thinks it does. For one thing, Dickinson&aposs tale shows that the roots of modern conservatism run deeper in America than is commonly believed. However, it also shows that 18th-century conservatives were a pragmatic bunch, who could accept bipartisan compromise and adapt to changing social mores to win popular support. This is a trait that the modern Republican party badly needs to relearn, observes Ler (who says that he is a Democrat, but gained a new respect for conservatism by studying Dickinson).

　　But, in my view, there is another lesson to draw as well: the slippery nature of historical “truth”. As I have noted in a recent column, history occupies a strikingly large place in school curriculums in America, compared with a country such as the UK. It is also prominent in the publishing world: books about the Founding Fathers and other American leaders dominate book stores to a degree unknown in Britain. The reason for this is not hard to spot: as anthropologists often point out, most societies have a “creation myth” that acts as social glue. And America has a particularly strong need for a common narrative - a founding mythology - since it has fused a nation from diverse immigrants in a short space of time.

　　But, as anthropologists also like to point out, creation myths are never entirely factual; in any society - be that the UK, US or anywhere else - history is usually presented to suit some wider, albeit half-stated, ideological goal.

　　In the postwar years, this goal was anti-Soviet “consensus”, Ler argues; in future decades it may be something else. Either way, the next time you hear an American politician cite “history”, or those Founding Fathers, just remember Dickinson. The question of what - or who - is lt out of historical accounts is often as interesting as what is included. Especially when those omissions are barely noticed at all.

　　几年前，布鲁克林的一位中学兼大学历史教师戴维?莱福尔(David Ler)应一名学生的请求，推荐一本有关约翰?迪金森(John Dickinson)的好书。迪金森是18世纪美国革命时期一位来自费城的政治人物。

　　莱福尔仔细查询了多家图书馆之后，发现了一个令人震惊的事实：尽管美国学术界写出了大量有关美国开国元勋的著作，但对迪金森几乎没有着墨。这让莱福尔感到奇怪。迪金森是18世纪美国独立运动中的重要人物，因为他撰写了题为《宾夕法尼亚农人来信》(Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania)的著名系列文章，雄辩地捍卫了解放与自由的思想。

　　事实上，正如莱福尔指出的，这些文章在迪金森生活的时代具有巨大的影响力，他也因此被认为是“美国最受信任的人、继本杰明?富兰克林(Benjamin Franklin)之后全世界最有名的美国人”，并被誉为“在反对英国压迫的斗争中以一人之力使各个殖民地团结在一起”。然而，到了21世纪，迪金森的名字从人们的视野中消失了。

　　所以，莱福尔开始研究这一奇怪的“沉默”，近期他出版了《开国元勋中的保守主义者：一群无名英雄是如何拯救美国革命的》(Founding Conservatives: How a group of Unsung Heroes Saved the American Revolution)一书，该书呈现了他的研究成果。

　　这本书非常引人入胜，对历史爱好者或美国铁杆爱国者之外的读者来说也是如此。因为莱福尔指出，写迪金森的书奇少并不只是他本人被忽视了，而是反映出现代美国人看待那场革命时普遍存在的一种扭曲视角。更具体讲，最近几十年来，学校在讲解那段反叛英国统治的历史时，倾向于把革命的组织者说成是一群共同持有平等主义观点的高贵、团结的自由斗士。

　　然而，莱福尔提出，这并非事实。实际上，革命者们内部争斗十分严重，他们分为两个阵营：一个是“自由派”，出身卑微，持有左翼观点;一个是“保守派”，源自精英群体，志在捍卫自己相对于他人的特权。

　　迪金森生于马里兰州，是一位富裕的律师，属于后一个阵营。莱福尔写道：“这些(精英人士)并不效忠于(王权)……他们是忠诚的爱国者，但希望尽可能保留旧有社会秩序。”他指出，精英们也“信仰历史和经验……支持森严的社会制度……敬畏军队……坚持认为产权重于平等……相信应把权贵阶层与政府的利益捆绑到一起……笃信自由市场资本主义”。简言之，他们是“保守的革命者”，其观念与今天的共和党相仿。

　　但在二战之后的时期，也就是许多当代历史书成书之时，历史学家不想着重描写这种分歧或精英阶层。“由于美国面对着来自苏联共产主义的生死存亡与意识形态威胁，‘达成共识的’学校……刻意强调了革命期间美国人之间的团结一致……并且相信美国历史从根本上是以自由主义为特点的。”

　　所以，那群开国元勋就被刻画为一个和谐团结的群体，迪金森则由此淡出了人们的视野。

　　此事在当今重要吗?莱福尔认为很重要。首先，迪金森的故事说明，当代保守主义在美国萌芽的时间比人们通常认为的要早。然而，它也说明，18世纪的保守主义者是一个务实的群体，他们可以接受两党妥协，并适应社会习俗的不断变化，以赢得公众支持。莱福尔认为，如今的美国共和党迫切需要重新学习这一品性(莱福尔表示，自己是一名民主党人，但由于对迪金森的研究而对保守主义产生了新的尊敬)。

　　但在我看来，还要吸取另一条教训：历史“真相”是难以把握的。正如我在近期发表的一篇专栏文章中所述，同英国等国家相比，美国学校历史课程占有的地位超出寻常。出版界也是如此：书店里有关美国开国元勋和其他领袖的书非常盛行，其程度远非英国可比。原因不难找出：如人类学家经常提到的，大多数社会都把“建国神话”当作一种社会粘合剂。美国尤其强烈需要有一种共同的历史描述——建国神话，因为它在非常短的时间里便把背景不同的移民凝聚在一起，创立了一个新的国家。

　　但是，人类学家也乐于指出，建国神话从来都不完全属实;在任何社会，不管是英国、美国还是其他哪个国家，历史的呈现通常都会契合某种更广泛(尽管犹抱琵琶半遮面)的意识形态目标。

　　莱福尔指出，在战后时代，这个目标变成了反苏联“共识”;在未来几十年，目标可能又变成了别的什么。不管目标变成什么，下次你听到某个美国政客谈到“历史”或那些开国元勋时，一定要想一想迪金森。被历史叙述遗忘的事件或人物，经常与史上有记载的事件和人物一样有趣，尤其是在几乎谁也没察觉到这些人和事被忽略的时候。

　　译者/邢嵬

　　希望这篇被遗忘的美国历史的中英双语阅读文章能够帮助大家更好地学英语，如果其中有不明白的地方可以对照英语翻译进行阅读。