第四章：勇敢者有新世界

原书及其作者：Jerry Brotton 的 “The Renaissance: A Very Short Introduction”，大主题，小开本。文艺复兴对于欧洲，是从不假思索的中世纪世界中出离的年代，它就和现代性本身一样复杂。

系列上一篇：Church and state｜宗教与政治

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Chapter 4 Brave new world

p79 In 1482 a printing press in the German town of Ulm published a new edition of Ptolemy’s Geography. Its world map captured what the world looked like to Europe’s 15th-century ruling elite. …… Medieval Christian geography had been limited to schematic maps, known as mappae mundi, which were religious symbols of the Christian understanding of creation. They placed Jerusalem at their centre, with little or no attempt to understand or represent the wider world.

Rounding the cape

• 支持葡萄牙王室发展大西洋航线的理由应该属于很基础的历史常识。为了绕开关税高昂的陆上商道和对寻找香料、黄金的渴望驱使着葡萄牙王室大力资助航海家们的探索，一路沿非洲大陆的西岸南下，一路驶向当时无人所知的海域——当时最先进的地图在此进入一片空白，它将其标为“Terra Incognita”。
• 随着航线，大宗原料商品贸易对于葡萄牙王室的重要性迅速超过了梦里的黄金和香料，探索航路从梦想启航变成了实打实的商业投资；航向未知海域的需求也促进了导航技术的需求也促进了导航技术的大规模应用 & 发展；对于非洲，几百年的殖民、奴隶贸易、原材料掠夺也即将开始。

p83-84 Having reached the limit of Mediterranean traditions of navigation and map-making, the Portuguese employed the services of Jewish scholars to develop solar tables, star charts, astrolabes, quadrants, and cross staffs to calculate latitude according to the position of the sun, moon, and stars. By the 1480s these scientific developments were so successful that the Portuguese had rounded Sierra Leone and established trading posts (or feitoria) along the Guinea coast. …… The news （越过好望角的消息传回葡萄牙本土） rendered printed maps still reproducing Ptolemy’s view of the world increasingly obsolete. From now on, European voyagers really were sailing into ‘terra incognita’, a whole New World where they could no longer rely on classical authority.

East is east

p84 It was Columbus’s observation of the practical achievements of the Portuguese navigators and his immersion in classical geography that led him to make a fateful decision. Columbus accepted Ptolemy and Marco Polo’s massive overestimation of the size of Asia. …… Columbus calculated that the westward distance between Japan and the Azores was 3,000 miles. It was in fact over 10,000 miles. Ptolemy’s calculations on both the size of Asia and the globe were wrong. If Columbus had known this, he might never have embarked on his voyage in 1492.

• 促使哥伦布开始他向西寻找印度的航海尝试的，是当时诸多航海家可望可及的成就。他采用了托勒密对亚洲大小和地球周长的估计，而很可惜这两个估算数据都有严重错误，他是用这一系列当时最先进的数字进行计算后认为西向航线确实更短。对于现代人来讲理所当然的地理知识在那时还是完全的未知。

The jewel in the crown

• 听闻西班牙王室资助的哥伦布向西发现了新的未知地域，备受刺激的葡萄牙王室马上启动新的探索，意求能将越过好望角的地理成就转化为利润。

p87 In 1513 the Ottoman naval commander known as Piri Reis issued a world map that its author claimed ‘is based mainly on twenty charts and mappa mundi, one of which is drawn in the time of Alexander the Great, and is known as dja’grafiye’. This was a reference to Ptolemy’s Geography. …… Only the western portion of Piri Reis’s map survives, but its detail suggests that the representation of the Indian Ocean would have been equally comprehensive in incorporating new Portuguese maps into the astronomical and navigational expertise of Islamic, Hindu, and Chinese pilots and scholars. Piri Reis’s comments emphasize the extensive level of cultural exchange and circulation of knowledge that underpinned the Age of Discovery. Muslims, Hindus, and Christians were all trading information and ideas in an attempt to capture the political and commercial initiative.

• 越过好望角，驶入印度洋，葡萄牙航海家达・伽马（da Gama）的探索又一次超出了已有导航技术的支持。当时他们的第一波探索是离开地中海，沿非洲西海岸一路南下，欧洲的传统导航技术失效，他们雇佣了犹太学者带着他们的天文技术来做向导；再往前，这下欧洲世界、穆斯林世界、印度、中国的航海家就彻底搭上线了。
• 随着船只的行迹不断远走，不同地区、信仰、国家的知识和技术大规模交融，史称地理大发现（the Age of Discovery）。一个族群能画多大范围、什么规制（eg. 是否知道标注经纬线）的地图，如何导航、能走多远，直接反映这个族群的科技发展水平。知识、技术、文化的交融带来了繁荣。

p89 Portugal’s entry into the trading emporium of the Indian Ocean was no more than a drop in the ocean. The region’s ritualized patterns of trade and exchange and the sheer magnitude and diversity of its commodities dwarfed the supply and demand of the early Portuguese fleets. The Portuguese responded with a pragmatic accommodation and acceptance of different methods of exchange, exploitation of political differences between Hindu and Muslim communities, and the use of gunpowder in establishing limited commercial footholds throughout the region. …… As so often in the Renaissance, when trade and wealth were at stake, religious and ideological oppositions melted away.

Global ventures

p90 By 1502, the first major phase of seaborne travel had reached its climax. Ptolemy’s world picture had been shattered and a recognizably modern image of the world had started to emerge. The Portuguese had rounded Africa, reached India, accidentally discovered Brazil en route to the east (1500), and were pushing on to Malacca (1511), Hormuz (1513), China (1514), and Japan (1543).

p90 With the revision of the European geographical imagination came a transformation in the texture of everyday life. The spices that flowed back into Europe affected what and how people ate, as did the influx of coconuts, oranges, yams, and bananas (from the east) and pineapples, groundnuts, papayas, and potatoes (from the Americas). The term ‘spices’ could also refer to a dizzying array of drugs (including opium, camphor, and cannabis), cosmetics, sugar, waxes, and cosmetics. Silk, cotton, and velvet changed what people wore, and musk and civet altered the way that they smelt. Dyes like indigo, vermilion, lac, saffron, and alum made Europe a brighter place, while porcelain, amber, ebony, sandalwood, ivory, bamboo, and lacquered wood all transformed the public and private domestic interiors of wealthy individuals. Tulips, parrots, rhinoceroses, chess sets, sexual appliances, and tobacco were just some of the more esoteric but prized goods that reached Europe from east and west. Lisbon itself was transformed into one of Europe’s wealthiest cities, where it was possible to buy virtually anything.

• 摸到印度西岸之后，葡萄牙的航线探索很快抵达一步之遥的印尼、中国、日本，建立了极其繁荣的海上贸易路线。大量的异域商品涌入欧洲，一切社会风貌都随之而变，葡萄牙的首都兼重要港口，里斯本（Lisbon），更是一跃成为当时最富庶的欧洲城市。
• 由于此前政治和外交上的角力结果使得葡萄牙王室通过1494年签订的《托尔德西里亚斯条约》（Treaty of Trodesillas）而垄断了向东发现的新地的开发权，只给西班牙王室留下向西的一片未知，发现更短、更有利可图的西向航线的希望驱使西班牙王室在1519年同意了麦哲伦（Ferdinand Magellan）向西的探索计划。他经过千辛万苦渡过南美洲大陆最南端的麦哲伦海峡（当时当然不这么叫，后来以他命名了），驶过大的远超预期的太平洋，半路在菲律宾东岸的一个小岛上身亡。剩余的船员因不堪回首来时的凶险航道，选择了继续向西通过已经被葡萄牙探索明白的海域驶回欧洲 —— 最终完成了首次环绕地球的壮举，出发时的240人仅18人生还。
• 毫无疑问，向西抵达远东和成功环绕地球的消息再次震动欧洲，也导致了又一轮的外交地震。主要的问题就是，既然已经证实了地球上向西向东都能走到同样的位置，那么原来《托尔德西里亚斯条约》划定的开发权界限到底在这个球体上的哪？这事关谁有权去贸易、掠夺、殖民盛产香料的印尼诸群岛。西班牙王室通过买通地图家按照有利于他们的方式测绘最新地图和地球仪，赢得了这场所有权争讼，但随后将印尼诸岛的经营权卖给了葡萄牙。因为他们自己实际上发现西向航道太长、太危险，以至于无利可图。

p92-93 As the two crowns sat down for their final attempt to resolve the dispute at Saragossa in 1529, Castile employed the Portuguese cartographer Diogo Ribeiro to make a series of maps and globes that placed the Moluccas within the Castilian half of the globe. This was the moment at which the Renaissance world went global in a recognizably modern sense. The consequences of Magellan’s voyage meant that terrestrial globes became far more convincing representations of the shape and scope of the world.

• 这里插一句，土地这东西既然只是自己存在于那里而已，什么叫“The Castilian half of the global”呢？对土地的所有权可能应是由人的活动所自然而然的带来（来自 John Locke 的自然法理论，比方说你耕种某一片土地，你灌注自己的劳动收获了农作物，那你就对地块和出产有了产权），但对产权的承认和保护只是人类相互之间的约定，而且正是从那个时代开始形成的新概念。
• 文艺复兴时期的欧洲人基于宗教理论而得出了著名的“发现即占有（Doctrine of Discovery）”原则，认为未开化的异教徒之地的开发经营权当属首先发现他的“文明国家”。所以（当时语境里的）东半球归你、西半球归我，这样的表述实际上类似于欧洲各国内部的分赃协定，按现代的认识来讲拥有那些土地的原住民并没有被视为对话对象。

New worlds, old stories

p95 Conservative estimates calculate that, of a world population of approximately 400 million in 1500, roughly 80 million inhabited the Americas. By 1550, the population of the Americas was just 10 million. At the start of the 16th century Mexico’s population has been estimated at 25 million. In 1600, it had been reduced to one million. European diseases such as smallpox and measles wiped out most of the indigenous population, but warfare, slaughter, and terrible treatment accounted for many fatalities. The romance of discovering piles of gold and silver had quickly turned into a dirty, murderous business of mining and enslavement.

• 随着葡萄牙许多航路的沿线口日趋成熟，西班牙也通过建立美洲殖民地开始获得源源不断的金矿银矿。西班牙的殖民者首先是奴役当时在北美和南美的原住民，殖民战争、传染病和屠杀造成了美洲人口在半个世纪内锐减，1500~1550年间估算美洲的人口约有8千万的减员，单论数字的话达到1959~1961年间三年大饥荒饿死3千万人口的两到三倍。至于引文中给出的墨西哥人口在16世纪内由2500万减至100万的比例，就更骇人了。美洲人口如此规模的死伤之后，西班牙殖民者就将目光转向非洲，在16世纪中叶往后，开启了跨大西洋的三角奴隶贸易。

p95-96 By the end of the 16th century over 270,000 kg of silver and approximately 2,000 kg of gold were reaching Europe every year, compounding the rise in inflation, and thereby contributing to what economic historians have called a ‘price revolution’, as wages and the cost of living soared, providing the framework for the long-term development of European capitalism.

• 殖民地大规模的采矿和冶炼对美洲的资源、人口、环境造成了极其恶劣的影响，输送回西班牙的金银财富也是惊人的。这造成了欧洲本土物价飞涨，新的产业和经济形态呼之欲出，市场商品交换和金融活动大为兴盛，直接为资本主义的出现和形成铺好了基础。

p96-97 Not all Spaniards endorsed the slaughter and oppression that took place in the Americas. …… In ‘On the Cannibals’, published in his Essays of 1580, the humanist Michel de Montaigne claimed to have spoken at length with several Brazilian Indians. He concluded ‘there is nothing savage or barbarous about those peoples, but that every man calls barbarous anything that he is not accustomed to’. Montaigne developed a highly sceptical and relativistic approach to perceptions of ‘civilization’ and ‘barbarism’, arguing that ‘we can indeed call those folk barbarians by the rules of reason but not in comparison with ourselves, who surpass them in every kind of barbarism’.

• 虽然在文艺复兴时期，欧洲人的文化优越感日炽，但是在同一时期也出现了早期的文化相对主义观点，即认为欧洲不是世界的中心、天然的优越者，他们把不同的文明称作野蛮主要只是处于无知和傲慢。
• 对此我有一些想法，我觉得文化系统是无高下的，但是文明进程应该有分别，主动为之的恶意或者恶劣行为也应该有别于作为一种状态描述的“蒙昧”。也就是比如说，不同的文化可能有不同的审美和艺术体系，我觉得这种东西就可以而且应该开放包容；但是又比方说有些发达或不发达的地方会存在一些陋习，比方说传统的缠足或者认为家暴不是犯罪。对于希望走向现代的社会来讲，总有些东西是不能完全的相对以待的，完全无可无不可的自由观点肯定无法延续其自身，它无底线的宽容迟早会宽容到足以毁灭自己的东西头上。
• 我的另一观点是恶意有别于蒙昧，科技文化发达的文明未必就更善，它用自己的发达所能为恶的潜力是更高的。但是同时，蒙昧也并不就意味着善，穷山恶水有可能保留一部分的民风淳朴也可能让人停留在一种愚昧的残忍中，或者更多的时候这两者往往可以混杂存在。

p97 The discovery of America revolutionized Renaissance Europe’s world picture. It had confounded deeply entrenched classical philosophical and religious beliefs that simply could not accommodate the existence of the culture, language, and belief systems of the indigenous inhabitants. It was partly responsible for defining Europe’s shift from a medieval world to a more recognizably modern world. However, the discovery of America brought together a volatile fear of the new and the unknown with a desire for unlimited wealth that ignored the incredible suffering and oppression inflicted upon indigenous people and slaves in the Americas. Its legacy can be seen in the poverty and political instability of much of South America today, and the inequalities of wealth and opportunity that characterize so much of the modern global economy.

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原书信息：Brotton, Jerry, The Renaissance: A Very Short Introduction, Very Short Introductions (Oxford, 2006; online edn, Oxford Academic, 24 Sept. 2013), https://doi.org/10.1093/actrade/9780192801630.001.0001