帝国消亡 大不列颠最后的黄昏

London — From Elizabeth I to Elizabeth II, England was an empire. No more.

伦敦——从伊丽莎白一世(Elizabeth I)到伊丽莎白二世(Elizabeth II)，英格兰还是一个帝国。现在不是了。

Brexit has turned the twilight years of the reign of Elizabeth II into the final chapter in the history of Great Britain. What its partisans, celebrating with flag-waving in the street, tearfully called “Independence Day” will unravel the role that England has played since the 16th century as a great power, along with the City of London’s reign as a financial capital of the world.

英国脱欧已经把伊丽莎白二世末年变成了大不列颠的最后篇章。脱欧支持者在街头挥舞着旗帜，热泪盈眶地庆祝“独立日”到来的那一天，让英格兰自16世纪以来一直扮演的大国角色，以及伦敦作为世界金融之都的地位，都成为明日黄花。

After Elizabeth I ascended to the throne in 1558, her merchant-venturers began an imperial quest. By Elizabeth II’s birth, Britain’s empire spanned nearly a quarter of the globe.

伊丽莎白一世于1558年登基后，她手下的商人-冒险家开始了帝国的创建。到伊丽莎白二世出生时，大英帝国已将近四分之一个地球纳入了自己的版图。

Brexit’s fantasy of revived greatness — “taking back control” — will achieve the opposite. England’s wish to withdraw from its union with Europe appears now to have made inevitable Scotland’s eventual withdrawal from its union with England. It has also placed in doubt the status of Northern Ireland, where a majority also voted against leaving the European Union.

英国脱欧承载着关于伟大复兴的幻想——“收回控制权”——但现实将与这一幻想背道而驰。目前，英格兰对脱离欧盟的渴求似乎已经导致苏格兰终将不可避免地脱离英国。它让北爱尔兰的身份也变得不确定起来，那里的大多数人也都投票反对脱欧。

This misguided craving will turn Britain’s seat, created by Winston Churchill, on the United Nations Security Council into a rotten borough (as parliamentary constituencies that persisted despite low populations were known historically). The great powers will never allow this little England to exercise a veto right against their wishes.

这种被误导的渴求，将温斯顿·丘吉尔(Winston Churchill)在联合国安理会为英国争取的一席之地变成了一个“腐败选区”（即历史上诸多人口稀少但依然得以存在的议会选区）。那些大国绝不会允许这个小小的英格兰一票否决其意愿。

Why did England choose this? The key is not sovereignty but a rejection of ethnic change.

英国为何做出这种选择？关键因素并不是主权问题，而是对民族变化的抗拒。

“It’s not England anymore,” people told me as I traveled around the country covering the referendum. In Tonbridge and Grantham, in Romford and Witney, this is what I heard, hundreds of times: “We don’t recognize our country anymore.”

“它已经不是英格兰了，”我穿梭于全国各地报道公投期间，人们告诉我。在汤布里奇和格兰瑟姆，在罗姆福特和威特尼，我成百上千次地听人说起：“我们已经不认识我们的国家了”。

Middle England did not treat this as a referendum on European Union membership but as a plebiscite on one thing: “immigration.” For Middle Englanders, “immigrants” is also a synonym for nonwhite British. Identity, not austerity, motivated their vote to Leave.

在英格兰中部地区，人们认为这场公投所针对的议题并不是欧盟成员国资格，而是移民问题。他们还认为，“移民”是非白种英国人的同义词。促使他们投票赞同脱欧的是身份，而非紧缩政策。

At her coronation in 1953, Elizabeth II also became the reigning monarch of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Pakistan and Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). The nonwhite population of Britain then was probably less than 20,000. Over 70 percent of British workers were manual laborers.

在1953年加冕之际，伊丽莎白二世也成了加拿大、澳大利亚、新西兰、南非、巴基斯坦和锡兰（今斯里兰卡）的君主。当时，英国的非白人人口数量可能还不到2万。70%以上的英国劳工是手工劳动者。

London was far from the cosmopolitan capital it has become. In 1931, less than 3 percent of Londoners were foreign-born; that was the historical norm for the city. For all London’s trade and commerce, historians believe it was essentially mono-ethnic as late as the 17th century.

英国首都伦敦还远远没有发展成现在这样的大都会。在1993年，只有不足3%的伦敦人出生于国外；那是这座城市的历史常态。历史学家认为，虽然有大量的商贸活动，伦敦一直到17世纪基本上还是一个单一民族城市。

Metropolitan elites often use the Irish and Jewish settlement in Britain from the mid-19th century to bolster a national story of Britain as an immigrant nation, but the history does not fit this narrative. We prefer to forget it, but Britain’s Irish communities suffered appalling levels of ethnic hate and communal segregation into the 1980s.

从19世纪中叶开始，都市精英们便常常以爱尔兰人和犹太人在英国定居为依据，宣扬不列颠是一个移民国家的国家叙事，但这种说法与历史并不相符。我们选择忘记的是，英国的爱尔兰人群体直到1980年代还在承受令人震惊的民族仇恨和社区隔离。

Jews were expelled from Britain in the 13th century and barred from settling here until the 17th century. The extreme hostility to Jewish immigrants saw Britain largely close its borders to them in 1905, and later refuse asylum to hundreds of thousands of European Jews fleeing Nazism. In Wales, there was even a pogrom against Jews in 1911.

犹太人在13世纪被赶出了英国，直到17世纪才被允许定居于此。由于极端敌视犹太移民，英国在1905年基本关闭了犹太人的入境通道，后来又拒绝庇护欧洲数十万逃避纳粹迫害的犹太人。

Before World War II, only three waves left a demographic trace on this “island nation”: Huguenots from France and the Netherlands in the 16th century, Irish immigration in the mid-19th century and Jewish immigration in the later decades. The numbers were always small. Huguenots numbered about 1 percent of London’s population; Irish immigration, even at its 19th-century peak, amounted to less than 3 percent of the population of England and Wales. Fewer than 250,000 Jews migrated to Britain between 1880 and 1914.

二战爆发前，这个“岛国”只经历过三场给其人口结构带来影响的移民潮：法国和荷兰的胡格诺派(Huguenots)信徒在16世纪涌入，爱尔兰移民在19世纪中叶涌入，犹太移民在随后的几十年里涌入。移民人数一直都很少。胡格诺派信徒占伦敦总人口的比重约为1％。爱尔兰移民的数量在19世纪达到了顶峰，但即便是那时，他们占英格兰和威尔士总人口的比重也少于3％。在1880至1914年间，只有不到25万犹太人移居英国。

So the most striking historical trend of Elizabeth II’s reign has been a sudden ethnic transformation of Britain. In 1931, when the queen was a child of 5, only 1.75 percent of Britain’s population was foreign-born. Her rule saw the Empire come to Britain: For the first time, the island experienced large-scale nonwhite immigration from Asia, Africa and the Caribbean. By 2011, when she was 85, about 20 percent of the population of England and Wales were immigrants or the children of immigrants.

因此，伊丽莎白二世治下最令人震惊的历史潮流，莫过于在英国突然出现了一场民族转型。在1931年，也就是女王只有5岁的时候，英国人口中只有1.75%出生在国外。在她治下，帝国蜕变成了不列颠：这个岛国首次经历了来自亚洲、非洲和加勒比地区的非白人移民的大规模涌入。到2011年，也就是她85岁的时候，英格兰和威尔士约20%的人口是移民或移民子女。

When the queen celebrated her 90th birthday this year, more than 12 percent of her subjects were nonwhite. This is the new England, but London is already another country. In 1971, 86 percent of Londoners were still white British. Forty years later, fewer than half were. Urban areas with a population less than 60 percent white British now include such major cities as Slough, Leicester, Luton and Birmingham. Ethnic change is gathering pace: By 2050, roughly 30 percent of Britons could be nonwhite.

到女王今年庆祝90岁生日的时候，她的臣民中12%以上为非白人。这是一个新英格兰，但伦敦已经是另一个国家。在1971年，伦敦人中仍有86%是白种英国人。40年后只剩下不到50%。现在，包括斯劳、莱斯特、卢顿和伯明翰等大城市在内，许多城市地区的人口中白种英国人的占比都不到60%。民族变化正在加速：到2050年，大约30%的英国人可能会是非白人。

Remain campaigners argue that it was areas with low immigration that voted most heavily for Brexit. This misses the large flow of white British families from diverse cities to such areas and misunderstands them. People were voting against their town turning into London; they were voting against becoming an immigrant nation.

留欧派指出，移民涌入量不大的地区，投票支持脱欧的选民比例最大。这就忽略了从各个城市大量涌入这类地区的白种英国人家庭，并且误解了他们。人们投票反对让自己所在的城镇变成伦敦，他们投票反对让英国变成移民国家。

In Tonbridge, I heard “Enoch was right” — a reference to Enoch Powell, the politician who scandalized party colleagues in 1968 but won broad public support for a speech that predicted racial strife resulting from mass immigration. In Grantham, Margaret Thatcher’s hometown, I was told Britain would “collapse with these millions of Turks.” In Romford, a suburb east of London, I was warned that “there’ll be a civil war between the English and the immigrants.”

在汤布里奇，我听见人们说“伊诺克是对的”。他们指的是政治人物伊诺克·鲍威尔(Enoch Powell)，他在1968年的一场演讲中预言移民大量涌入会引发种族冲突，其言论让党内同仁感到震惊，却赢得了大批民众的支持。在玛格丽特·撒切尔(Margaret Thatcher)的家乡格兰瑟姆，我被告知英国会“因数以百万计的土耳其佬的涌入而崩溃”。在伦敦以东的郊区罗姆福特，有人警告我，“英国人和移民之间会有一场内战。”

Since Brexit, a wave of attacks, arson and abuse has hit Britain. Historically, ethnic change is one of the most difficult things a society can go through. But why is this anger flaring with such intensity now?

自从投票决定脱欧以来，英国迎来了一波袭击、纵火和凌辱的浪潮。从历史角度看，民族变化是一个社会所能遭遇的最困难的事情之一。但愤怒的火焰为何在今时今日变得如此炽烈？

Part of the reason is that the messaging of the Leave campaign suggested that Britain was under a camouflaged German diktat. A majority of those I met thought a tide of immigration from the European Union was imminent — thanks, they believed, to impending Turkish membership. This made the Brexit referendum eerily similar in emotional content to last year’s bailout referendum in Greece, which encompassed a similar psychodrama of World War II refought.

部分原因在于，脱欧运动传达出这样一种信息：英国其实是在听德国发号施令。我遇到的大多数人都认为，由于土耳其即将成为欧盟成员国，源自欧盟的移民潮一触即发。这让脱欧公投所承载的情绪，与希腊去年针对救助方案的公投有着诡异的相似，后者同样包含着一种二战重新打响的心理暗示。

On my travels, I thought often of the writer J. G. Ballard. The English are a funny old lot, he said: They “talked as if they’d won the war but acted as if they’ve lost it.”

在旅途中，我时常想起作家J·G·巴拉德(J. G. Ballard)。他说，英格兰人很可笑，“讲起话来让人觉得他们会打赢这场战争，但做起事来让人觉得他们已经输了。”

The suburbs dream of violence, he wrote. Beneath the surface, he saw an angry, lost society in which the centuries-old pillars of Britishness — empire, church, navy, class — were crumbling. This unraveling has continued inside Britain long after it ceased to exist in the world.

郊区在梦想着暴力，他写道。但在这种表象之下，他看到了一个愤怒而迷失的社会，在这个社会中，让英国在过去数百年间得以傲然挺立的支柱——帝国、教会、海军、阶级——正走向崩塌。英国不复存在许久之后，这种崩塌仍然在它内部继续着。

And now the dreamers, unwitting, sickened with nostalgia, have torn down that last, threadbare vestige of Great Britain. This is the queen of England’s England no more.

如今，患有怀旧病的梦想家们在无意间拆毁了大不列颠最后一点破旧的遗迹。它已经不再是英女王的英格兰了。