这是一篇很不错的导言，感兴趣的同学可以看看

Chinese History in Economic Perspective

Edited by Thomas G. Rawski and Lillian M. Li,

University of California Press, November 1992

中国历史研究的经济之维

托马斯·G·罗斯基、李明珠  主编

加州大学出版社，1992年11月

Tr.   Chunfengqiushui

【译者按】Thomas G. Rawski（托马斯·G·罗斯基），匹兹堡大学经济系教授，长期致力于中国经济发展变化的研究，2001年因在美国的《中国经济评论》（China Economic Review，CER）发表《中国的GDP统计怎么了》（What's Happening to China's GDP Statistics）一文而声名大噪。

    Lillian M. Li（李明珠），斯沃斯莫尔学院历史系教授。1975年以题为《1842—1937年江南之丝绸出口贸易》（Kiangnan and the Silk Export Trade, 1842—1937）的论文获得哈佛大学博士学位。主要著作有《中国近代蚕丝业及外销(1842-1937)》（China's Silk Trade: Traditional Industry in the Modern World，1842-1937，1981）；《1690—1990年间华北的饥荒：国家、市场与环境的退化》(Fighting Famine in North China: State, Market, and Environmental Decline, 1690s-1990s，2007)；《北京：从六朝古都到奥运之城》(Beijing: From Imperial Capital to Olympic City，2007)。

INTRODUCTION: CHINESE HISTORY IN ECONOMIC PERSPECTIVE
Thomas G. Rawski and Lillian M. Li
绪论：中国历史研究的经济之维
托马斯·G·罗斯基、李明珠

Economics and economists tend to bring out strong emotions both in the general public and among (noneconomist) scholars. How often does one encounter the sentiment, "If economists are so smart, how come they couldn't predict such-and-such [the latest round of inflation, the October '87 stock market crash, etc.]?" Economics has always been a controversial field of study, and economists often exhibit a strong professional affinity for contentiousness among themselves. Yet, while society might conceivably get along without economists, it would be difficult to imagine a world in which economics did not play a role, even the mythical world of Robinson Crusoe. Nor can historians avoid the economic aspects of history even when they would like to do so. Embedded in all their common notions of how history has developed are views, conscious or unconscious, of economic forces: the prosperity of the Italian city-states prompted the cultural efflorescence of the Renaissance, the Chinese had a rural revolution because the peasants were so poor, Europeans conducted oceanic explorations because they needed spices, and so forth. But fundamentally, historians need to know about the material side of history because they are concerned with human welfare, social development, and national histories. The classic definition of economics, after all, is that it studies the allocation of scarce resources among alternative uses. Therefore, subjects such as agriculture, money, industry, and trade compel historians' interest for a variety of commendable reasons.
经济学和经济学家总能引起普通大众和其他（非经济领域）学者的强烈不满。下面这种情绪可谓屡见不鲜，“既然经济学家如此聪明，他们怎么没能预测到那个什么什么来着的（如最近一轮的通货膨胀，1987年10月的股市震荡等等）。”经济学一直是一个充满争议的领域，经济学家之间也总是莫衷一是。然而，如果没有经济学家，这个社会可能会发展得更好，不过很难想象一个没有经济学的世界，甚至包括虚构的鲁宾逊世界。历史学家在进行研究时也不可避免历史问题的经济方面。他们著作中所体现的历史发展图景，有意无意地受着经济力量的影响：意大利城邦的繁荣促使了文艺复兴的发生，中国发生农民革命是因为农民十分贫穷，欧洲人进行海外探险是因为他们需要香料，等等。但是从根本上说，历史学家需要知道历史的物质方面，因为他们考虑的问题关系着人类的福祉、社会的发展和国家的历史。毕竟，经济学的经典定义是，它研究人们如何有选择地配置稀缺资源。所以，诸如农业、货币、工业和贸易等课题使得历史学家的研究兴趣变得宽广。
It is our contention, however, that the study of such subjects in economic history has not always employed a true economic approach or perspective, at least among historians of China. This book is dedicated to the idea that the history of China's economy has been written many times in many ways but that the economic history of China has not yet been written. This, indeed, is not such a history either, but the essays in this volume are intended to illustrate how economic history is not the same as the history of an economy, and how an economic perspective involves more than an interest in some economic topic. Scholarship on China has excelled in studying the economy of China, but has barely begun to do so with a true economic perspective. The fundamental objective of this volume is to delineate and illustrate the potential contribution of systematically applying an economic approach to the study of China's economic history.
这是我们的论点，然而，在中国历史学家说来，这些经济史课题的研究一直没有成为真正的经济学方法或视野。该文集致力于书写已被中国经济的历史（the history of China's economy）所反复书写然而还没有被中国的经济史（the economic history of China）所涉及的观念。诚然，这不是一本历史学著作，但是这本论文集所收录的文章试图展示：经济史（economic history）与经济的历史（the history of an economy）不是一码事，而且在一些经济话题上，经济之维（economic perspective）涉及到更多的方面。中国的学者在中国经济研究上非常出色，但是他们很少用经济之维来进行研究。该文集的基本目标是描述、阐明系统运用经济学方法研究中国经济史的潜在作用。

State of the Field（研究现状）
  
Traditional Chinese scholarship did not neglect economic topics. Indeed, in the standard dynastic histories, sections on population, land taxes, and money, for example, assumed a prominent position. Local histories also treated these topics, as well as listing or describing local products, grain storage, and the like. A well-functioning economy was the hallmark of a successful dynastic regime, a visible sign of the harmony of heaven, earth, and man. Economics and morality were linked; a prosperous economy was a sign of the essential morality of the ruler. The model of the economy, like that of society, was based on the notions of harmony and stability, and not on the desirability of growth and change. The golden age of the past was one in which men plowed the fields and women wove cloth. Wars and famines signified the disruption of stability. The goal was to restore the status quo ante, the golden age, not to surpass it, because it could not be surpassed.
传统的中国学者没有忽略经济话题。在标准的各朝史书中，诸如人丁、赋税、钱粮等部分有着显著的位置。各地的地方志也涉及这些内容，同样也罗列记载着当地的物产、谷仓廪（grain storage）等等。一个成功的王朝有着有机的经济体，天、地、人之间的和谐相处有着显著的特征。经济学和伦理道德是相互联系的；经济的繁荣是统治阶级道德的本质特征。这种社会的经济模式是基于和谐、稳定的理念，而不是渴望经济增长、社会变化。过去的黄金时代是一个男耕女织（men plowed the fields and women wove cloth）的时代。战争和饥馑严重地破坏着社会的稳定。其目标是恢复以前的状态，即黄金时代，而不是超越它，因为它不可能被超越。
In recent decades, a different paradigm, that of Chinese Marxism, has dominated Chinese scholarship. The three broad areas that receive the most attention from historians in the People's Republic of China are land tenure, foreign imperialism, and the "sprouts of capitalism." In the post-Mao era, the "Asiatic mode of production" was added to this list. Studies of land tenure are closely linked to issues of servitude and subordination among China's peasantry in each period of history. Studies of foreign imperialism stress the plundering of China's economic resources by Western powers and Japan in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and the obstacles to the development of a modern economy posed by the unequal treaties. Studies of the "sprouts of capitalism" focus on the signs of development in China's late imperial, or early modern, economy (roughly since the mid-sixteenth century), such as the expansion of handicraft production and the freeing of labor in the countryside, but the line of interpretation has shifted from time to time—sometimes emphasizing the sprouts themselves and, at other times, the smothering of the sprouts. The revival of interest in Marx's idea of the Asiatic mode of production highlighted the dilemma of Chinese Marxist historians: how to fit Chinese history into the scheme of world history. Previously discredited by party historians because it tended to suggest that Chinese development did not fit into a unilinear world pattern, the Asiatic mode attracted renewed attention in the 1980s in part because it helped legitimize China's recent economic policies, which may seem to transgress the stages of history normally posited in the Marxist scheme of history.
（后文见附件）