[Book] [2011.01.04]The king's shilling国王的先令

showcraft

http://www.ecocn.org/thread-44716-1-1.html
The king's shilling国王的先令

A revolution that was also a civil war
也是内战的革命

America's revolution美国革命

Jan 6th 2011 | from PRINT EDITION

Tories: Fighting for the King in America’s First Civil War. By Thomas Allen. Harper; 468 pages; $26.99. Buy from Amazon.com

《保王党：在美国第一次内战中为国王而战》 托马斯•艾伦著 哈珀出版社；468页；26.99美元；Amazon.com有售

AMERICANS remember their revolution as an event both epochal and clean. Richard Nixon famously argued that it was not a revolution at all. Some historians, such as Charles and Mary Beard and Howard Zinn, stress its conservative character; others, like Gordon Wood, have insisted on its radicalism. The revolution Thomas Allen presents, in an original and copiously sourced history of the war’s losers, the Loyalists, called Tories by their victorious opponents, is very different.

美国人记忆中的革命既有划时代的意义又是一场正当事件。理查德•尼克松有句名言：这根本不是一场革命。一些历史学家，如查尔斯、玛丽•比尔德和霍华德•津恩，强调它的保守特色；而另一些历史学家，如戈登•伍德，则坚持其激进主义。这场革命的失败者是被其胜利的对手称为保王党的反对独立者，托马斯•艾伦从失败者的角度以新颖而丰富的史实所呈现给读者的是一场迥然不同的革命。

Mr Allen sees it as “a revolution that was also a civil war”. Men fought to the death, he says, “American against American, kin against kin”. At the decisive fight at King’s Mountain, there was only one British subject. “Everyone else was an American, and those who chose to fight for King George III had chosen the wrong side.”

艾伦认为它“也是一场内战的革命”。男人奋战到死，他说，“美国人对美国人，同室操戈”。在国王山（译者注：今加拿大蒙特利尔）的决定性战役中，只有唯一的一个英国臣民。 “其他人都是美国人，而且那些选择为国王乔治三世而战的人选择了错误的一边。”

History is written by the victors. Mr Allen points out that although Loyalists were a minority—in the end perhaps no more than one-fifth of the colonists—in many places they were a very substantial proportion of the population of the colonies. In the end, some 80,000 quit the new republic for Britain, the British colonies in the Caribbean and especially for Canada, where their influence has been lasting. One tragic group were the black freedmen, in danger of being re-enslaved on the orders of George Washington. (At least one of them had belonged to Thomas Jefferson.) They were eventually allowed to emigrate to Nova Scotia, but were so badly treated there that they moved on to West Africa, where they became Sierra Leone’s elite, founding the capital, Freetown.

历史是由胜利者书写的。艾伦指出，虽然在许多地方反对独立者只是少数（最后可能不超过殖民地居民的五分之一），但是他们占据殖民地的人口比例非常可观。最后，约有8万人退出新共和国而到了英国、位于加勒比海的英国殖民地、尤其是到了加拿大，他们在加拿大的影响持续至今。悲剧的一群是黑人自由民，有着被乔治•华盛顿下令重新变成黑奴的危险。（其中至少有一人属于托马斯•杰斐逊。）他们最终被允许移民到新斯科舍省，但受到了严重虐待，所以他们迁徙到西非，在那成了塞拉利昂的中坚分子，建立了首都弗里敦。

The Loyalists were of many kinds and conditions. There was a religious dimension. Presbyterians were apt to be Patriots, Anglicans often Tories. Many slaves, tempted by freedom, joined Loyalist units, such as Lord Dunmore’s Ethiopian Regiment; so did many, though not all, of the Native American tribes on the frontier. Quakers and Catholics sided with the king, and so did many settlers of German and Dutch origin, as well as most Scots Highlanders, who had sworn an oath of loyalty to the Hanoverian crown in defeat and were not about to go back on it. Some tenant farmers fought alongside their Tory landlords, while others were Loyalists out of hostility to Patriot landlords. Some were tempted by promises of land, others by the fact that the king’s armies paid in a gold-backed currency, not paper dollars.

保王党里各色人等，背景不一。宗教就是其中的一个划分界限。长老会有爱国倾向，圣公会则是保王党。许多奴隶受自由所诱惑，加入了反对独立者的部队，比如邓莫尔勋爵的埃塞俄比亚团；虽然不是全部，但还是有许多边境上美洲土著部落的人也加入了反对独立者的部队。贵格会教徒和天主教徒站在英国国王一边，这么做的还有许多德裔和荷兰裔的移民以及大多数苏格兰高地人的移民，苏格兰高地人曾因战败而誓死效忠汉诺威王朝，并且从没打算放弃誓言。有些佃农与他们的保王党地主并肩作战，而另一些佃农则出自对爱国者地主的敌视成了反对独立者。有些受了保证土地承诺的诱惑，另一些则受到了英国国王的军队支付黄金货币为薪饷，而不是美元纸币这一事实的诱惑。

Like other civil wars, the American revolution was marked by brutality on a sickening scale. Both sides shot and hanged prisoners without mercy, and on at least two occasions Patriots enforced the gruesome punishment of hanging, drawing and quartering. While the Native American braves recruited to fight for the crown by the Johnson and Butler chieftains of the Mohawk valley scalped, tortured and sometimes burned their prisoners alive, the Patriots tarred and feathered Loyalists, or forced them to ride on a sharpened rail, and many Loyalist houses were looted and burned. Patriotic legend remembers the violence of British officers, but rebel officers, including General Washington himself, could be ruthless when policy recommended it. The future father of his country once proposed shooting a few Tories to “strike terror into the others”. In real life, civil wars are not Tea Parties.

象其它内战一样，美国革命也是以令人作呕的残暴行为为标志的。双方都毫不怜悯地枪杀和绞死战俘，至少在两个场合爱国者执行了绞死、四肢裂解的可怕惩罚。约翰逊所招募的为英国王朝而战的美洲土著勇士们和魔霍克河谷的仆役长酋长们剥下战俘的头皮、拷打他们，有时活活烧死他们，而同时爱国者也往反对独立者身上浇桐油、沾羽毛，或者强迫他们骑在削尖的栏杆上，许多反对独立者的房屋被洗劫和烧毁。爱国的传说传诵的都是英国军官的暴行，但是反抗武装的军官，包括华盛顿将军本人，政策允许时也是毫不手软的。这位未来的国父曾提议枪毙一些保王党人以“威吓其他人”。在现实生活中，内战不是茶党运动。

from PRINT EDITION | Books and Arts