冠状病毒会导致全球化的衰退吗？_风闻

作者丨艾艾森森

The period following the Black Death in Europe turned out to be the “waning of the Middle Ages", bringing to an end the universalist culture. 欧洲黑死病之后的时期被证明是“中世纪的衰落” ，终结了普世主义文化。

The COVID-19 epidemic could lead to similar far-reaching, historically significant global change, according to one historian. 据一位历史学家说，新型冠状病毒肺炎的流行可能会导致类似的影响深远的、具有历史意义的全球性变化。

The outbreak of the new coronavirus, COVID-19, that began in Wuhan, China, may well turn into a global pandemic. More than 50 countries have confirmed cases of the virus, with the precise nature of the transmission mechanism remaining unclear.

始于中国武汉的新型冠状病毒---- 新型冠状病毒肺炎病毒的爆发，很可能演变成一场全球性的流行病。已有50多个国家确诊病例，但传播机制的确切性质仍不清楚。 

Pandemics are not just passing tragedies of sickness and death. The omnipresence of such mass-scale threats, and the uncertainty and fear that accompany them, lead to new behaviors and beliefs. People become both more suspicious and more credulous. Above all, they become less willing to engage with anything that seems foreign or strange.

流行病不仅仅是疾病和死亡的悲剧。这种大规模威胁的无处不在，以及随之而来的不确定性和恐惧，导致了新的行为和信仰。人们变得越来越多疑，越来越轻信。最重要的是，他们变得不太愿意接触任何看起来陌生或奇怪的东西。

Nobody knows how long the COVID-19 epidemic will last. If it does not become less contagious with the arrival of spring weather in the northern hemisphere, nervous populations around the world may have to wait until a vaccine is developed and rolled out. Another major variable is the effectiveness of public-health authorities, which are significantly less competent in many countries than they are in China.

没有人知道新型冠状病毒肺炎的流行会持续多久。如果随着美国春季天气的到来，这种病毒的传染性仍然没有降低，那么世界各地神经紧张的人们可能要等到疫苗研制出来并推广接种之后。另一个主要变量是公共卫生当局的效力，许多国家的公共卫生当局的能力明显低于中国。

In any case, factory closures and production suspensions are already disrupting global supply chains. Producers are taking steps to reduce their exposure to long-distance vulnerabilities. So far, at least, financial commentators have focused on cost calculations for particular sectors: automakers worried about shortages of parts; textile makers deprived of fabric; luxury-goods retailers starved of customers; and the tourism sector, where cruise ships, in particular, have become hotbeds of contagion.

无论如何，工厂关闭和生产暂停已经扰乱了全球供应链。生产商正在采取措施，减少他们对远距离脆弱性的冲击。至少到目前为止，金融评论人士关注的是特定行业的成本计算: 汽车制造商担心零部件短缺; 纺织品制造商面料被剥夺; 奢侈品零售商缺乏顾客; 旅游业，特别是邮轮已经成为传染病的温床。

But there has been relatively little reflection on what the new climate of uncertainty means for the global economy more generally. In thinking through the long-term consequences of the COVID-19 crisis, individuals, companies, and perhaps even governments will try to shield themselves through complex contingent contracts. It is easy to imagine new financial products being structured to pay out to automobile producers in the event that the virus reaches a certain level of lethality. The demand for novel contracts may even fuel new bubbles, as the money-making possibilities multiply.

但对于新的不确定性环境对全球经济更广泛意味着什么，人们几乎没有进行反思。在考虑新型冠状病毒肺炎危机的长期后果时，个人、公司，甚至政府都会试图通过复杂风险合同来保护自己。人们很容易想象，一旦病毒达到一定程度的致命性，新的金融产品将被设计成支付给汽车生产商。随着赚钱的可能性成倍增加，对新合同的需求甚至可能助长新的泡沫。

History offers intriguing precedents for what might come next. Consider the famous financial crisis following the “tulip mania” in the Netherlands between 1635 and 1637. This episode is particularly well known because its lessons were popularized by the Scottish journalist Charles Mackay in his 1841 book, Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. To Mackay, the tulip crisis seemed to prefigure the speculative surges of capital into railroads and other industrial developments in North and South America during his own time. Throughout the book, he milks the episode for all its humor, recounting stories of ignorant sailors literally swallowing a fortune by mistaking tulip bulbs for onions.

历史为接下来可能发生的事情提供了有趣的先例。想想1635年至1637年间荷兰爆发的“郁金香热”之后的著名金融危机。这一段历史特别出名，是因为苏格兰记者查尔斯 · 麦凯在他1841年的书《大癫狂：群体性狂热与泡沫经济

》中普及了泡沫金融的教训。对麦凯来说，郁金香危机似乎预示着在他那个时代，投机资本涌入北美和南美的铁路和其他工业发展。在整本书中，他充分利用了这一段历史的幽默感，讲述了无知的水手误把郁金香球茎当作洋葱而吞下了一大笔财富的故事。

But as the cultural historian Anne Goldgar reminds us, Mackay neglected to mention that the mania coincided with the exceptionally high mortality of the plague, which was spread by the armies fighting the Thirty Years’ War. The plague hit the Netherlands in 1635, and reached its peak in the city of Haarlem between August and November 1636, which is precisely when the tulip mania took off.

但是正如文化历史学家安妮 · 戈德加（ Anne Goldgar ）提醒我们的那样，麦凯忽略了一点，那就是这种金融投机狂热，恰好与瘟疫的高死亡率同时发生，瘟疫是由三十年战争中的军队传播的。1635年，瘟疫席卷荷兰，1636年8月至11月，郁金香狂热在荷兰哈勒姆达到顶峰。

The rush of speculative capital into flower bulbs was fueled by a wave of cash windfalls accruing to the surprised heirs of plague victims. Tulips served as a kind of futures market, because the bulbs were traded during the winter when no one could examine the character of the flower. They also became the subject of complex contracts, such as one that stipulated a price to be paid if the owner’s children were still alive in the spring (otherwise, the bulbs would be transferred gratis).

作为瘟疫受害者，毫无心理准备的继承人得到了一大笔意外之财，这助长了投机资本涌入花球茎的热潮。郁金香作为一种期货市场，因为郁金香球茎是在冬天交易的，那时没有人能够研究这种花的特性。它们也成为复杂合同的主角，例如规定如果所有者的孩子在来春还活着，就要支付一定的价格(否则，花球将免费转让)。

The financial speculation in this wild, apocalyptic environment was born of uncertainty. But it has often been reinterpreted as evidence of craven materialism, with the bust representing an indictment of godless luxuries and foreign exotica. Tulips, after all, originally came from the alien culture of Ottoman Turkey.

在这种野蛮的、世界末日般的环境中，金融投机产生于不确定性。但是它经常被重新解释为懦弱的物质主义的证据，半身像代表着对不信神的奢侈品和异国风情的控诉。毕竟，郁金香最初来自奥斯曼土耳其帝国的异族文化。

Like today, early modern Europe’s plague epidemics spawned vast conspiracy theories. The less obvious the origin of the disease, the more likely it was to be attributed to some malign influence. Stories circulated about sinister hooded figures going door to door “anointing” surfaces with contagious substances. Outsiders – foreign merchants and soldiers – as well as the marginalized poor were fingered as the culprits.

就像今天一样，早期现代欧洲的瘟疫流行催生了大量的阴谋论。这种疾病的起源越不明显，就越有可能归因于某种恶性影响。关于戴着邪恶帽子的人挨家挨户地在表面涂抹具有传染性的物质的故事流传开来。外来者——外国商人和士兵——以及边缘化的穷人被指认为罪魁祸首。

Again, a nineteenth-century source offers powerful lessons for today. In Alessandro Manzoni’s 1827 novel, The Betrothed (I Promessi Sposi), the plot reaches its high point during the plague outbreak in Milan in the 1630s, which was considered a scourge introduced by foreigners, not least the foreign Spanish Habsburg monarchy that ruled Milan. The novel became a potent catalyst for Italian nationalism during the Risorgimento.

同样，19世纪的资料为今天提供了强有力的教训。在亚历山达罗·曼佐尼1827年的小说《约婚夫妇》中，故事情节在17世纪30年代米兰爆发的瘟疫中达到了高潮，这场瘟疫被认为是外国人带来的灾难，尤其是统治米兰的西班牙哈布斯堡君主国。这部小说成为复兴时期意大利民族主义的有力催化剂。

Not surprisingly, the COVID-19 epidemic is already playing into today’s nationalist narratives. To some Americans, the Chinese origins of the disease will simply reaffirm the belief that China poses a danger to the world and cannot be trusted to behave responsibly. At the same time, many Chinese will likely see some US measures to combat the virus as being racially motivated and intended to block China’s rise. Conspiracy theories about the US Central Intelligence Agency creating the virus are already circulating. In a world flooded with disinformation, COVID-19 promises to bring even more.

不足为奇的是，新型冠状病毒肺炎的流行已经影响到了今天的民族主义者的叙述。对一些美国人来说，这种疾病的中国根源只是重申了这样一种信念，即中国对世界构成了危险，不能相信中国会负责任地行事。与此同时，许多中国人可能会认为，美国的一些抗击艾滋病的措施是出于种族动机，旨在阻止中国的崛起。有关美国中央情报局(cia)制造这种病毒的阴谋论已在流传。在这个充斥着虚假信息的世界里，新型冠状病毒肺炎注定将引发更多的虚假信息。

As the Dutch historian Johan Huizinga showed, the period following the Black Death in Europe turned out to be the “waning of the Middle Ages.” For him, the real story was not just the economic aftereffects of a pandemic, but the mysticism, irrationalism, and xenophobia that eventually brought an end to a universalist culture. Likewise, it is entirely possible that COVID-19 will precipitate the “waning of globalization.”

正如荷兰历史学家约翰 · 胡伊津加(Johan Huizinga)所展示的，欧洲黑死病之后的这段时期结果是“中世纪的衰落” 对他来说，真正的故事不仅仅是瘟疫大流行的经济后遗症，还有神秘主义、非理性主义和仇外心理，这些最终导致了普遍主义文化的终结。同样，新型冠状病毒肺炎完全有可能加速“全球化的衰落”。

 作者: Harold James 哈罗德 · 詹姆斯，普林斯顿大学历史和国际事务教授

编译：艾森

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