第一章：革命源起

原书及其作者：这是一本介绍美国独立史的VSI读本，不得不说语言方面真是比上一本的英国史好读太多了，但是其中涉及到很多美洲的地名和原住民的部落名的时候还是挺难读懂的。这一本读起来非常顺，除了有时候涉及一些空间关系和战略路线的时候我需要费点脑子，以至于我不太知道该怎么特别介绍。这本书的覆盖面一如VSI系列的一贯品质，非常全面，历史、全球背景、政治经济和社会文化等等方面都涵盖其中。

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Chp 1 The Revolutions’s origins

• 紧接着上一本 “Stuart Britain: A very Short Introduction” 的内容，英国在17世纪完成了从绝对君主制向现代的法治与共和（王权受到地方分权和法治规范的限制，议会代表民意参与政治制衡，“君权神授” 的神圣光环一去不复返）转轨的过程，15-17世纪的地理大发现（Age of Discovery）成为接下来殖民与全球争霸时代的序幕，走出绝对君主制的英国马上投入到必须增强国力以参与全球殖民竞赛的历程中。到18世纪中叶时，英国已是殖民地遍布世界的列强之一，在北美逐步建立了共13个殖民地，具已有着成型的社会结构和生产方式。
• 这些殖民地之间并不是共进同退的整体，他们各有各的人口组成和历史背景，经济结构、政治和宗教认同、与原住民社会的交互模式等等。相互之间交通困难，也缺乏沟通渠道。他们的行为动机主要出于自己的经济利益或政治理念，和原住民抢夺资源就不必说了，还和其他的殖民地之间相互冲突，和英国的统治与税收不断冲突。

p4 Thirteen colonies, with very different populations, economic systems, and social structures. The colonies had been swept by a religious revival—a “Great Awakening”—in the 1730s and 1740s, with evangelists such as George Whitefield preaching throughout the colonies; this was one of the first movements to bring together these colonies, but the evangelists also challenged the established religious orders. There still was no formal communication system joining the colonies politically except through London. Post roads linked Boston with Philadelphia, but most transit was by water. Few Americans visited the other colonies.

p5 Though their survival depended on cooperation, no colony would overlook its immediate self-interest. …… Franklin and Massachusetts political leader Thomas Hutchinson drew up a plan of union, under which each colony would chose delegates to a forty-eight-member grand council, to meet every year in a different colonial capital; this council would raise troops and taxes from the colonies for common defense, though each colony would continue to govern itself. The king would appoint a president-general, to ensure that the council did not conflict with British policy. Though the Albany conference approved the plan, the colonial assemblies did not. None would cede any of its powers or prerogatives to the other colonies.

• 当时，英法在北美都有殖民地，并且都希望能最大化自己在这篇大陆上的控制范围。面对法属殖民地和一些原住民势力的不断骚扰，英属殖民地需要团结起来才能供养更强大的武装力量，而英国本身则希望殖民地可以避免矛盾升级和稳定的产出税收金流。
• 英国的克制倾向并没能阻止英法殖民地之间的冲突升级；而与此同时，在全球争霸战中花费巨大的英国十分需要将殖民地的价值变现，出台了一系列强行征税的措施，自然激起了英属殖民地内部的商业精英们的抗议。

p6-7 Reaction against the proclamation (Proclamation of 1763), though, was mild compared to the reaction against Parliament’s attempts to regulate colonial trade and to pay for the defense of the colonial frontiers. Parliament began its fiscal campaign with the Sugar Act in April 1764. This cut the tax on imported molasses in half, to three pence per gallon, but, unlike the previous tax, this one contained provisions to ensure collection. …… Along with the Sugar Act, Parliament prohibited colonies from coining or printing their own money. The object was to standardize currency and prevent wildly fluctuating notes and coins. But the real effect was to take money out of circulation and stifle colonial trade.

p7 Merchants protested, predictably. Less predictable was their rationale for protesting: they contended that they could not be taxed without their own consent; they had not elected Parliament, and so it could not tax them. And the merchants had support in this from some influential clergy. Boston minister Jonathan Mayhew warned that “People are not usually deprived of their liberties all at once, but gradually.”

• 1764年，启蒙运动的许多理论都已展开完毕，英国的议会政治也已经实际运行了相当一段时间。虽然后世民主政体中的一些关键拼图还没出现，比如联邦制原则、普选权等等，但是现代化的政治正义观和基本实践已经成型，只等在某种压力的催化下被更广泛的推开。而英法对殖民地控制权的争夺、殖民地和原住民群体的合作或冲突、殖民地的自身利益和大英帝国全球利益的冲突、殖民地内部的协调沟通和责任分配，带来了全方位足量足质的试炼。
• 值得注意的是，那时的北美对于欧洲人所拥有的技术而言是一片有着极大开发潜力（压榨空间）的土地，越动员（掠夺）越产出；此外，从本国漂洋过海来此 “开发新世界” 的殖民者们大多有着鲜明的人口特质，比如不为英国国教会所容的激进新教徒；但同时，“新世界” 因为其 “（在欧洲人眼里看起来的未开化之）新”，这些殖民者相当于是一朝脱离了所有既定的社会结构而来此，这片土地对它们而言是不存在历史包袱或着原生建制派的。

Americans protested, not just against a new series of taxes, but against the principle that Parliament could tax them. (p.p. 8)

p9 American opponents of the Stamp Act, which Parliament passed on March 22, 1765, began calling themselves Sons of Liberty. They built on other institutions, particularly the colonial press …… whose real strength came from each community’s working people. For example, Ebenezer MacIntosh, a Boston shoemaker, longtime leader of Boston’s South End Mob, became “captain general of the Sons of Liberty,” and the large elm from which his mob hung effigies of unpopular officials became the “Liberty Tree.”

p9 Patrick Henry in the Virginia assembly (the House of Burgesses) in May 1765 argued that the people of Virginia had not given up “the distinguishing characteristick of British freedom,” the right to be taxed only by one’s own consent. Though the assembly rejected Henry’s resolutions, they were published in newspapers throughout the colonies, becoming the basis for each colony’s opposition. …… As the petition made its way to London, the Stamp Act went into effect on November 1. Ebenezer MacIntosh organized protest parades in Boston and that night walked through the streets arm in arm with merchant William Brattle, a member of the Governor’s Council, showing unity between Boston’s commercial leaders and emerging political leaders like MacIntosh, whose power came from an ability to mobilize dockworkers, longshoremen, and rope makers to attack the Oliver warehouse or hang effigies from the Liberty Tree. Resistance now could afford to be more civil. Americans showed a near-unanimous determination to boycott the stamps.

• 继糖税之后，正如当时的美国人所宣传的，议会不经同意就可以随意征殖民地的税的绝对权力很快带来了更多的税收。后续影响较大的主要是印花税（the Stamp Act）和对包括茶叶在内的许多关键货物征收进口税的汤森税法（the Townshend Acts）。
• 对这一系列税法的抗议活动拥有：分散式涌现的各地领袖，广泛的社会响应（或者说，关心政治、有行动力、有决定性经济影响力、易于组织动员的大量劳工阶层），恰如其分的理论宣讲，能集中和英政府进行沟通的关键人物（Benjamin Franklin）。虽然偶尔间杂针对大英帝国的在地代理人的零星暴力，但是占绝对主导地位的手段是：坚定统一的抵制购买。

“No power, how great soever, can force men to change their opinions.” (p.p. 12)

p14 Two British regiments arrived in October 1768. …… On March 5, 1770, rioters attacked the main British barracks, and in the ensuing street fight soldiers fired on a crowd of civilians. Five civilians were killed in what town leaders quickly called the “Horrid Massacre.” Paul Revere made an engraving of the scene, showing an orderly line of troops shooting at innocent and unarmed civilians, with the state house and the First Church looming over the tragedy; in this depiction the arbitrary power of the soldiers has usurped Boston’s legitimate civil and spiritual authority.

p14-15 In the wake of the violence, Boston’s town government demanded removal of the troops …… Lieutenant Governor Thomas Hutchinson (acting as governor after Bernard’s return to England) complied, having the soldiers involved in the shooting arrested and the others sent to New Jersey. …… Two leading patriots, as the opponents of the tax laws called themselves, stepped forward to defend the accused soldiers. Josiah Quincy and John Adams wanted the troops out of town, but they also wanted to prove that Boston was not the ungovernable and riotous place Bernard had described. By giving British soldiers who shot unarmed civilians in the streets of Boston a fair trial, Quincy and Adams could prove that the people of Boston were law abiding. Two soldiers were found guilty of manslaughter, still a capital offense. Adams had their sentence reduced to branding on the thumbs, and the rest were acquitted. With the troops gone, Boston calmed down.

• 为了维持社会稳定和自己的统治利益，英国向殖民地派驻了士兵——士兵带来了矛盾和擦枪走火。
• 军队在惹出事端之后被撤下了，主要涉事士兵也被逮捕。在两位当地精英（Josiah Quincy and John Adams）（亚当斯家族闪亮登场！）的出头介入之下，士兵得到了公正的审判，并从轻发落。波士顿恢复了平静，英政府也做出了一定的让步——但是仍然为自己的绝对权力保留了象征性的茶税。

Soldiers would “find nobody in arms” there. “They will not find a rebellion; they may indeed make one.” (p.p. 12)

• 此时的13个殖民地仍然很难算的上一个整体（但事情发展很快），它们相互之间的冲突频繁，除了都认为英国国会无权向它们征税以外几乎不存在任何共识。英国对这一片充满未知的土地的管理，充满了各种模糊的偏差，而不断扩张的殖民者们则每一个都如痴如狂的想要更多土地——这不仅在他们之间制造大量的边境争端，也不断向西压迫原住民的土地——英国目前的治理原则已经问题不断，英国试图进行管控的行为不仅徒劳而且加剧了殖民地的反感情绪。
• 在殖民地内部搅风搅雨的，除了当地民众的自发群体行动，主要带头的精英也大多是从本地家庭里冒出来的——当时的殖民地尚且还是一个未成熟、固化的社会，政治新人有机会轻松露头。共同且迫切的危机则让所有人心中都想着同样的事，领头人物只要冒出来了就很容易一呼百应。来自遥远的英政府的命令，除非伴随着军事力量和强制执行，基本就只是空话；而军事力量又不断增加英国治理和在地社会之间的矛盾。

p17-18 Samuel Adams was not idle. Following the model of the Sons of Liberty, who had established a communication network among like-minded people in the different colonies, Adams in November 1772 created the Boston Committee of Correspondence, a twenty-one-member group to keep in contact with like-minded people in other towns. “We are brewing something here which will make some people’s heads reel …,” Dr. Thomas Young wrote. As Massachusetts towns formed Committees of Correspondence, Adams, clerk of the Massachusetts Assembly, had that body form a Committee of Correspondence to communicate with other assemblies. By 1774, every colonial assembly had a committee to correspond with the other assemblies; this ensured that Boston would not be isolated during the crisis that quickly ensued.

p19 The British government had not regarded these thirteen colonies, with their different social structures and political systems, as essential parts of the empire as a whole. When the French threatened, the colonists had not united in the interest of the British Empire. But now, as the British government tried to make them cohesive parts of the imperial fabric, the colonists began to unite against the empire that sought to govern them.

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原书信息：Allison, R. J. (2015). The American Revolution: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-022506-3

附注：13州的中英文名对照，从北向南排序，以及大致创立时间——

• 马萨诸塞 Massachusetts 1630,
• 新罕布什尔 New Hampshire 1622,
• 纽约 New York 1626,
• 罗得岛 Rhode Island 1636,
• 康涅狄格 Connecticut 1636,
• 宾夕法尼亚 Pennsylvania 1681,
• 新泽西 New Jersey 1664,
• 特拉华 Delaware 1664,
• 马里兰 Maryland 1632,
• 弗吉尼亚 Virginia 1607,
• 北卡罗来纳 North Carolina 1663,
• 南卡罗来纳 South Carolina 1663,
• 佐治亚 Georgia 1732。