不久前，經濟學人發表架空歷史系列的新一篇文章


內容是討論一戰中鄂圖曼選擇站好隊的結果


剛好我以前也滿喜歡這個國家的，也常常思考這個問題


所以就找了時間慢慢翻一下，不過英文程度差，有些地方進行了超譯ＸＤ



原文：

https://www.economist.com/news/world-if/21724913-imagine-mayhem-might-have-been-avoided-had-ottoman-empire-been-saved-rather


IF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE HAD NOT COLLAPSED

如果鄂圖曼帝國未曾崩解？

SULTANS OF SPRING


THE WORLD IF 2017

Jul 6th 2017, 12:07


Imagine the mayhem that might have been avoided had the Ottoman Empire been saved rather than sunk. Blame, among others, Winston Churchill

WHEN a Serb gunman shot an Austrian archduke in the summer of 1914, the nations of Europe tumbled into war with all the grace of bowling pins. Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, whose ally Russia declared war on Austria, whose ally Germany declared war on Russia, whose allies France and Britain declared war on Germany and Austria. By early August the continent was in flames.


時值一九一四年之夏，一名塞爾維亞槍手射殺了奧地利大公，歐洲諸國遂陷入了滾球般的混亂。奧匈帝國對塞爾維亞發下了戰檄，塞國盟友俄羅斯宣戰奧地利，奧地利盟友德國宣戰俄羅斯，俄國盟友英法宣戰德奧。八月之初，大陸烽火。


Much as it wobbled like the rest, however, one of those bowling pins could not make up its mind. Which way would Turkey fall? Should the fading Ottoman Empire join the Triple Entente (Britain, France and Russia) or go with the Central Powers (Germany and Austria-Hungary)?


諸國震盪，然而，尚有一國搖擺不覺，土耳其將投向何方。衰落的帝國該加入協約，或是同盟？


Turkey’s 500-year-old empire was shrinking. It had lost its territories in Africa, nearly all its Mediterranean islands and most of its Balkan lands as well as chunks of eastern Anatolia. It was debt-ridden, industrially backward and politically shaky.


土耳其五百年國祚的帝國正在動搖。失去了非洲領土、地中海幾乎所有島嶼、絕大多數的巴爾幹領土，以及東安納托利亞。負債累累，工業落後，政治動盪。


Still, the sultan’s lands straddled two continents, controlling access to the Black Sea. His Arabian territories stretched beyond the holy cities of Islam to the mountains of Yemen and the Persian Gulf, where there were rumoured to lie vast caverns of the sticky black liquid soon to replace coal as the world’s chief source of power.


蘇丹的土地仍橫跨兩洲，控制黑海入徑。他阿拉伯的領土超越了回教聖城，觸及了葉門群山與波斯灣……謠言漫談著這裡有巨穴黑油，此物後必大行於世。



Confident of Turkey’s weakness, Britain, France and Russia could have clobbered the Ottomans and divided the spoils. Thankfully, wiser heads prevailed. At a secret conclave aboard a British dreadnought off the coast of Norway in late July, a far-sighted politician by the name of Winston Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty, worked with French, Russian and Turkish diplomats to forge a treaty. The Turks drove a hard bargain for, as they coyly revealed, Germany too was proffering arms and gold in
exchange for an alliance.


理解土耳其的弱點，英法俄可能摧毀帝國，分其金甌。所幸，有人有更好的方法，七月下旬，挪威海濱旁的英國無畏號之上，一場秘密會議展開，一位時有名望的政治家溫斯頓·丘吉爾，是為第一海軍大臣，與法、俄、土三國周旋，密定條約。土耳其人狡猾透露，德國也欲以武器及金錢換取盟友，土耳其人因此得以強硬地討價還價


The deal that was reached proved immensely beneficial to all concerned. From France, Turkey received generous debt relief. Russia scrapped all claims to Ottoman territory, and made a limited goodwill withdrawal from parts of Anatolia. Churchill waived further payment on two warships that British shipyards were building for Turkey. And Turkey received assurances that its vulnerable extremities would not be attacked; for an empire that for a century had been preyed upon like a carcass this was a new lease
of life.


所成交易共利雙方。法國方面，土耳其被慷慨地免除債務。俄羅斯取消了對鄂圖曼領土的宣稱，並微小善意地撤出了安納托利亞。丘吉爾免除了英國造船廠為土耳其建造的兩艘軍艦之後續付款。土耳其獲知其脆弱的邊境不會受到攻擊，對於一個世紀來，像沙威瑪一樣被切片的帝國，這條約是給國家續命。


The rewards to the Triple Entente were equally big. Granted exclusive access to the Black Sea, Russia’s allies could resupply the tsar’s armies when they faltered at the start of the war. With no need to defend its Turkish frontier, Russia moved thousands of crack troops from the Caucasus to shore up its front lines. Turkey signed separate agreements recognising British control of the Suez Canal, Aden and the Trucial sheikhdoms of the Persian Gulf, securing the sea lanes for Britain’s massive
deployment of troops from the colonies to the Western Front. Turkey’s own army joined in a broad front against Austria-Hungary. Together, these Allied advantages are thought to have shortened the war by as much as a year; the Central Powers might not have sued for a truce as soon as America entered the war, but fought on instead.


協約同樣也有所報酬。由於獲得了黑海通行權，俄國得以在戰初獲得盟友的補給，也因無須在俄土邊境對峙，沙皇將高加索的上千突擊隊部署前線。土耳其簽署了單邊協議，承認英國對蘇伊士運河，亞丁和波斯灣特魯西爾酋長國的控制權，確保了英國得以自殖民地動員大規模部隊到西方戰線的海上通道。土耳其軍隊加入了對奧匈帝國的大陣線。盟軍得以縮短一年多的戰爭時間，一旦美國進入戰爭，同盟國可能不會被請求停戰，而是繼續戰鬥。


Reprieved from collapse, the Ottoman Empire’s government pursued radical reforms. Challenged by growing nationalist tendencies from Arab, Armenian, Greek and Kurdish subjects, Sultan Mehmed V issued a historic firman or proclamation that recognised these as individual nations united under the Ottoman sovereign.


奧斯曼帝國政府從崩潰中解脫出來，進行了激進的改革。受到來自阿拉伯，亞美尼亞，希臘和庫德人的民族主義傾向的挑戰，蘇丹·梅赫德五世發表了一個歷史性的公告，承認它們為個體國家，然在鄂圖曼主權之下統一。


The sultan got to keep the title of caliph, commander of the Sunni Muslim faithful, which his ancestors had acquired four centuries earlier. This proved useful when the empire had to put down a rebellion of religious fanatics in central Arabia, led by a man called Ibn Saud who gained followers by claiming he would restore Islam to a purer state. But mostly the empire was seen as a tolerant place. When Nazi persecutions drove Jews from Europe in the 1930s, many took refuge there (as they had done when
expelled from Spain in 1492), particularly in the province of Jerusalem.


蘇丹將維持在四個世紀前先皇所獲的遜尼派哈里發的頭銜。當帝國正在平定阿拉伯極端宗教主義者的叛亂時，這個頭銜便發揮了統領的用處。叛亂由一個名叫伊本·沙烏地的人領導，自稱將使伊斯蘭恢復為更純淨的國度。但大多數帝國被視為宗教寬容的地方。當納粹迫害在20世紀30年代從歐洲驅趕猶太人時，許多人在那裡躲避（就像猶太人在1492年被從西班牙驅逐時一樣），特別是在耶路撒冷省。


If only

Needless to say, none of the above happened. Quite the opposite. Turkey aligned with Germany in the first world war, and the allies did attempt to invade and divide its empire. Churchill, instead of handing over the warships that ordinary Turks had paid for by subscription, had them seized for the British navy. In 1915 he ordered a catastrophic attack on Turkey; the landing at Gallipoli cost the allies 300,000 casualties. British campaigns against Turkey in Iraq and the Levant cost another million lives.


假使

不用說，上述都沒有發生。恰恰相反。土耳其在第一次世界大戰中與德國同行，協約確實試圖入侵和分裂帝國。丘吉爾，並未奢免軍艦費用，反倒以軍艦對付土耳其人。 1915年，他下令對土耳其進行災難般的襲擊。加利波利登陸的代價是盟軍30萬人傷亡。英國在伊拉克和黎凡特的軍事行動消耗了一百萬的生命。


Turkey’s casualties mounted, by war’s end, to 3m-5m people, nearly a quarter of the Ottoman population. This included some 1.5m Armenians, slaughtered because Turkish officials believed they might become a fifth column for a hostile Russia. And when Britain and France grabbed the Ottomans’ Arab lands, their suppression of uprisings cost thousands more lives.


戰爭結束後，土耳其的傷亡人數已經達到了300萬至500萬人，是奧斯曼人口的近四分之一。 這包括約一百五十萬被屠殺的亞美尼亞人，因為土耳其官員認為他們可能成為敵對俄羅斯的資助者。 當英國和法國攫取了奧斯曼帝國的阿拉伯土地時，他們鎮壓反抗導致了數千人死亡。


How much of today’s mayhem in the Middle East, from civil wars to terror in the name of Islam (and of restoring the caliphate) to the emergence of sectarian dictators such as Bashar al-Assad, not to mention of such a grudge-bearing Ottoman revivalist as Recep Tayyip Erdogan, might have been avoided, if only Churchill had embraced Johnny Turk instead of sinking him?


多少今日在中東的混亂可被避免？以伊斯蘭教的名義（並恢復哈里發）施行的內戰、恐怖主義，或像巴沙爾·阿薩德這樣的教派獨裁者的出現，更不用說渴望復興鄂圖曼榮光的怨恨者，如雷伯普·塔伊普·埃爾多安。僅僅假使邱吉爾擁抱土雞，而非吃了它？





大概就是個英國會拍一部《鄂圖曼的勞倫斯》電影的世界


雖然我認為作者似乎有點樂觀


鄂圖曼之所以會選擇德意志，自然是因為英、俄不是吃素的


一旦協約滅亡，英俄可不會好心地讓這塊好吃的火雞放在餐盤上未動


我的想法倒是在戰爭中保持中立，等待帝國主義者自己互相殘殺


使得戰勝後的英俄也無力分食帝國


並主動引導美國勢力進入，好比二十世紀版的門戶開放政策


以此確保美國對自己主權的支持


兩次大戰後，殖民地獨立風潮大起，不列顛自然不成威脅


然而北方染紅，蘇聯的勢力成為更大的威脅


不過這反倒是更好的契機，加入北約，成為共產反堵圈的一員


以此國內發展也可受到美國的扶持。


不過鄂圖曼最可觀的潛力，莫過於地底的黑金了


今日阿拉伯諸國據此一地便能成富，鄂圖曼則是控制了整塊領土


擁有當時世界上近九成的可開採能源，怎麼不可怕


當然，不要像穆罕默德·摩薩台那樣想把石油國有化，這怎麼看都是匹夫懷玉


給予西方石油公司一定的股權，換取政治上的支持。


而這帝國最大的問題，莫過於其國家的本質，一個單一民族統治的多民族國家


南斯拉夫分了，蘇聯崩了，馬來西亞尚處爭端


不過好處在於，它的主體仍是伊斯蘭宗教


鄂圖曼帝國曾經推行過「鄂圖曼民族」這個概念


即是同於中華民族的一種多民族共同體，雖然歷史說明它失敗了


但如果它擁有一個更穩定的政治環境，它是否會成功呢？


以宗教統合多民族的國家，在今日國際上，卻實是穩定許多


比如印度的最大民族人數甚至不過半，印尼的爪哇族也僅佔四成


兩者都算是穩定的政治體。


雖然如以伊斯蘭為號召，那麼鄂圖曼可能不會如土耳其那樣西化


但也不至於成為何梅尼的伊朗或今日達許那樣激進

http://i.imgur.com/U1UZfCu.jpg

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