导读：在过去的几个世纪中，西方国家在国家兴盛方面大显身手。历史学家尼尔·费格森问道：为何西方如此成功，而不是其它地区呢?他提出西方文化中的一系列重要思想，称之为促进财富、稳定、创新的“六大致命应用程序”。他说，在新世纪里，这些应用程序将得到共享。
演讲文本(中英文)：
Let's talk about billions.
我们来说说数以亿计。
Let's talk about past and future billions.
我们来说说过去和将来的数以亿计。
We know that about 106 billion people have ever lived.
众所周知在地球上生活过的人有1060亿。
And we know that most of them are dead.
当然大多数人已经不在人世了。
And we also know that most of them live or lived in Asia.
我们还知道他们大多数人生活在或曾经生活在亚洲。
And we also know that most of them were or are very poor did not live for very long.
我们还知道他们大多数人非常贫穷寿命不长。
Let's talk about billions.
我们来说说数以亿计。
Let's talk about the 195,000 billion dollars of wealth in the world today.
我们来说说现今世界高达195万亿美元的财富。
We know that most of that wealth was made after the year 1800.
这些财富的大部分是从1800年开始被创造的。
And we know that most of it is currently owned by people we might call Westerners:
而现在 这些财富的主要拥有者是西方人:
Europeans, North Americans, Australasians.
欧洲人 北美人和澳洲人。
19 percent of the world's population today,
仅占世界人口19%的西方人，
Westerners own two-thirds of its wealth.
拥有了全球三分之二的财富。
Economic historians call this "The Great Divergence."
经济历史学家称之为大分流。
And this slide here is the best simplification of the Great Divergence story I can offer you.
这个幻灯片能够最好地展示简化版的大分流故事。
It's basically two ratios of per capita GDP,per capita gross domestic product,so average income.
上面是两个人均GDP比率，也就是人均国内生产总值，平均收入。
One, the red line,is the ratio of British to Indian per capita income.
红色的那条线，代表英国和印度的人均收入之比。
And the blue line is the ratio of American to Chinese.
而蓝色那条则是美国与中国的人均收入之比。
And this chart goes back to 1500.
这幅图追溯到1500年。
And you can see here that there's an exponential Great Divergence.
大家可以看到大分流的走势。
They start off pretty close together.
这两条曲线一开始非常接近。
In fact, in 1500,the average Chinese was richer than the average North American.
事实上在1500年，中国人普遍比美国人富有。
When you get to the 1970s,which is where this chart ends,the average Briton is more than 10 times richer than the average Indian.
而到了二十世纪70年代，也就是这幅图时间的结点，英国人平均比印度人富十倍。
And that's allowing for differences in the cost of living.
这就产生了生活消费的差异。
It's based on purchasing power parity.
这是建立在购买力对等基础上的。
The average American is nearly 20 times richer than the average Chinese by the 1970s.
到了二十世纪70年代美国人平均比中国人富二十倍。
So why?
这是为什么?
This wasn't just an economic story.
这并不仅仅只是一个经济问题。
If you take the 10 countries that went on to become the Western empires,in 1500 they were really quite tiny five percent of the world's land surface,16 percent of its population,maybe 20 percent of its income.
看看这十个后来成为帝国的西方国家，在1500年时 这些国家都很小仅占全球土地面积的5%，人口仅占世界人口的16%，而收入在全球仅占20%。
By 1913,these 10 countries, plus the United States,controlled vast global empires 58 percent of the world's territory,about the same percentage of its population,and a really huge, nearly three-quarters share of global economic output.
到了1913年,包括美国在内的这十个国家，控制了全球大片土地占据了全球58%的势力范围，而人口也占到了世界人口的58%左右，创造了全球近四分之三的财富。
And notice, most of that went to the motherland,to the imperial metropoles,not to their colonial possessions.
请注意大部分财富都流入了这些国家，流入了帝国的大都市里，而不是殖民地。
Now you can't just blame this on imperialism,though many people have tried to do so,for two reasons.
你不能仅仅责怪帝国主义,尽管很多人这么做,原因有二。
One, empire was the least original thing that the West did after 1500.
第一 1500年以后帝国到处都是。
Everybody did empire.
大家都建立帝国。
They beat preexisting Oriental empires like the Mughals and the Ottomans.
之前建立的东方帝国被打败了,例如莫卧儿帝国和奥斯曼帝国。
So it really doesn't look like empire is a great explanation for the Great Divergence.
所以大分流并不见得是帝国造成的。
In any case, as you may remember,the Great Divergence reaches its zenith in the 1970s,some considerable time after decolonization.
This is not a new question.
这不是一个新问题了。
Samuel Johnson,the great lexicographer,it throughhis character Rasselas in his novel Rasselas, Prince ofAbissinia,published in 1759.
著名词典编纂家，塞缪尔·约翰，通过他1759年所著小说《幸福谷-拉塞拉斯王子的故事》中的人物拉塞拉斯，提出了这个问题。
By what means are the Europeans thus powerful;or why, since they can so easily visit Asia andAfrica for trade or conquest,cannot the Asiaticks and Africans invade their coasts,plant coloniesin their ports,and give laws to their natural princes?
欧洲人何以如此强大?他们为何能够轻而易举地来到亚洲和非洲进行贸易或征服，而亚洲人和非洲人为何无力入侵他们的海岸线，化其通商口岸为殖民地，并控制他们的王子呢?
The same wind that carries them back would bring us thither?
既然是同一股风 为何它只将他们送回家却将我们送去他们那里?
That's a great question.
这个问题问得很好。
And you know what,it was also being asked at roughly the same time by the Resterners-by thepeople in the rest of the world like Ibrahim Muteferrika,an Ottoman official,the man whointroduced printing, very belatedly,to the Ottoman Empire who said in a book published in1731,Why do Christian nations which were so weak in the past,compared with Muslim nationsbegin to dominate so many lands in modern times and even defeat the once victoriousOttoman armies?
无独有偶，几乎在同一时期西方国家之外的人,其中有伊布拉希姆·穆特费黎加，一位奥斯曼帝国的大官，也是后来将印刷术，引入奥斯曼帝国的人，在他1731年出版的一本书里，他说： 与穆斯林国家相比，基督教国家原先显得弱不经风，但他们何以在现代统治了大片土地，甚至战胜了曾经盛极一时的奥斯曼帝国?
Unlike Rasselas,Muteferrika had an answer to that question,which was correct.
和拉塞拉斯不同，穆特费黎加对问题做了回答，答案还是正确的。
He said it was because they have laws and rules invented by reason.
他说：因为他们制定了合理的法律法规。
It's not geography.
这跟地理无关。
You may think we can explain the Great Divergence in terms of geography.
你们可能认为我们能从地理的角度解释大分流。
We know that's wrong,because we conducted two great natural experiments in the 20thcentury to see if geography mattered more than institutions.
这个思路是错误的，我们在20世纪进行了两次自然试验来证明地理和制度究竟哪个作用更大。
We took all the Germans,we divided them roughly in two,and we gave the ones in the Eastcommunism,and you see the result.
我们把德国，分成了两部分，在东德推行共产主义，结果大家都看到了。
Within an incredibly short period of time,people living in the German Democratic Republicproduced Trabants, the Trabbi,one of the world's worst ever cars,while people in the Westproduced the Mercedes Benz.
在极短的一段时间里，东德人生产了卫星牌汽车，世界上性能最差的车型之一，而西德人却生产出了梅赛德斯奔驰。
If you still don't believe me,we conducted the experiment also in the Korean Peninsula.
这如果还不足以说明问题，我们又在朝鲜半岛进行了试验。
And we decided we'd take Koreans in roughly the same geographical place with, notice, thesame basic traditional culture,and we divided them in two, and we gave the Northernerscommunism.
我们决定将生活在同一地理位置拥有共同文化习俗的朝鲜人，分为两部分 并在北朝鲜实行共产主义。
And the result is an even bigger divergence in a very short space of time than happened inGermany.
结果 朝韩两方在更短的时间内出现了大分流，比起德国的更甚。
Not a big divergence in terms of uniform design for border guards admittedly,but in almostevery other respect,it's a huge divergence.
我承认 他们边防军制服的款式区别不大，但在其它方面，双方存在极大差异。
Which leads me to think that neither geography nor national character,popular explanations forthis kind of thing,are really significant.
这让我不得不想到地理国家特征，以及其它主流解释，都站不住脚。
It's the ideas.
真正发挥作用的是思想。
It's the institutions.
是制度。
This must be true because a Scotsman said it.
这千真万确，这可是一位苏格兰人说的。
And I think I'm the only Scotsman here at the Edinburgh TED.
我想我是这里唯一的苏格兰人。
So let me just explain to you that the smartest man ever was a Scotsman.
我来解释一下世界上最聪明的人是一个苏格兰人。
He was Adam Smith,not Billy Connolly, not Sean Connery though he is very smart indeed.
他就是亚当·斯密，不是比利·康诺利或肖恩·康纳利，虽然他也很聪明。
Smith-and I want you to go and bow down before his statue in the Royal Mile;it's a wonderfulstatue Smith, in the Wealth of Nations published in 1776 that's the most important thing thathappened that year.
斯密，你们都应该到他在皇家麦尔大道的雕像前鞠一躬;这座雕像非常宏伟，斯密在1776年发表了《国富论》,这可是当年最了不起的历史事件。
You bet.
难道不是吗?
There was a little local difficulty in some of our minor colonies, but...
虽然当时我们一些次要的殖民地出了点问题。
China seems to have been long stationary,and probably long ago acquired that fullcomplement of riches,which is consistent with the nature of its laws and institutions.
他说：中国似乎已经停滞很久了，也许在很久以前 中国创造财富的能力已经发挥到了极致，而这取决于该国法律和制度的性质。
But this complement may be much inferior to what, with other laws and institutions,thenature of its soil, climate, and situation might admit of.
但是如果中国采用其它形式的法律和制度,那么这一能力，反而无法在同样的土壤，气候和条件下得到完全发挥。
That is so right and so cool.
这说得一点不假。
And he said it such a long time ago.
在那么久以前他就说出了这番话。
But you know, this is a TED audience,and if I keep talking about institutions,you're going toturn off.
但是我面对的是TED观众，如果我继续谈论制度，你们可能就听不下去了。
不知你们是否记得，到了二十世纪七十年代，大分流在殖民时期结束后又过了很长一段时间最终走到了尽头。
So I'm going to translate this into language that youcan understand.
所以 我要把它翻译成通俗易懂的语言。
Let's call them the killer apps.
我们就把这些制度称作致命 应用程序吧。
I want to explain to you that there were six killerapps that set the West apart from the rest.
我会逐一介绍六个致命应用程序解释它们如何让西方脱颖而出。
And they're kind of like the apps on your phone,in the sense that they look quite simple.
它们就像你手机上的应用程序，因为它们都很容易上手。
They're just icons; you click on them.
它们就像一个个图标手指一点就行了。
But behind the icon, there's complex code.
然而在图标背后则是复杂的程序。
It's the same with institutions.
制度也是如此。
There are six which I think explain the Great Divergence.
我认为这六个应用程序能够解释大分流的形成。
One, competition.
第一 竞争。
Two, the scientific revolution.
第二 科技革命。
Three, property rights.
第三 产权。
Four, modern medicine.
第四 现代医药。
Five, the consumer society.
第五 消费者导向社会。
And six, the work ethic.
第六 职业道德。
You can play a game and try and think of one I've missed at,or try and boil it down to justfour,but you'll lose.
你可以玩这个游戏看看我有没有漏掉什么，或者试试看能不能砍掉两个，但是你输定了。
Let me very briefly tell you what I mean by this,synthesizing the work of many economichistorians in the process.
通过综合经济历史学家的观点，我来简短解释一下我的意思。
Competition means,not only were there a hundred different political units in Europe in 1500,butwithin each of these units,there was competition between corporations as well as sovereigns.
竞争意味着，1500年,欧洲不仅拥有100多个政治单位，而在这些单位中，既有组织间的竞争,又有主权国家之间的竞争。
The ancestor of the modern corporation, the City of London Corporation,existed in the 12thcentury.
公司集团的鼻祖,伦敦金融城集团，存在于12世纪。
Nothing like this existed in China,where there was one monolithic state covering a fifth ofhumanity,and anyone with any ambition had to pass one standardized examination,whichtook three days and was very difficult and involved memorizing vast numbers of characters andvery complex Confucian essay writing.
中国没有这样的制度，中国的人口占世界总人口的五分之一,国家实现中央集权制度，胸怀大志的人必须通过统一的科举考试，一考就是三天,考试难度很大，要求记忆大量汉字，还要写繁冗复杂的儒家文章。
The scientific revolution was different from the science that had been achieved in the Orientalworld in a number of crucial ways,the most important being that, through the experimentalmethod,it gave men control over nature in a way that had not been possible before.
科技革命与东方的科学成就在很多重要方面都有不同，其中最大的不同之处就是科技革命通过实验性方法，让人们用前所未见的方式掌控自然。
Example: Benjamin Robins's extraordinary application of Newtonian physics to ballistics.
本杰明?罗宾斯将牛顿物理学运用到弹道研究就是个很好的例子。
Once you do that,your artillery becomes accurate.
这么做，能够保证炮弹打击的精准度。
Think of what that means.
这意味着什么。
That really was a killer application.
这个应用程序果然厉害。
Meanwhile, there's no scientific revolution anywhere else.
同时 科技革命只发生在西方。
The Ottoman Empire's not that far from Europe,but there's no scientific revolution there.
奥斯曼帝国离欧洲并不远，而这里并没有发生科技革命。
In fact, they demolish Taqi al-Din's observatory,because it's considered blasphemous toinquire into the mind of God.
该国政府拆毁了科学家达兹?艾-丁的天文观测台，认为该观测台窥视上帝亵渎圣灵。
Property rights: It's not the democracy, folks;it's having the rule of law based on privateproperty rights.
产权：而不是民主，同志们;通过法律管理私有知识产权。
That's what makes the difference between North America and South America.
北美洲和南美洲为何如此不同。
You could turn up in North America having signed a deed of indenture saying, I'll work fornothing for five years.
你到北美洲去签一个契约说：我愿意无偿工作五年。
You just have to feed me.
你只要管我饭吃就行。
But at the end of it, you've got a hundred acres of land.
而五年之后 你得到了一百公顷的土地。
That's the land grant on the bottom half of the slide.
这张幻灯片下面的就是土地赠与书。
That's not possible in Latin America where land is held onto by a tiny elite descended from the conquistadors.
但在拉丁美洲,这是不可能的这里的土地,都集中在极少数西班牙征服者后裔手上。
And you can see here the huge divergence that happens in property ownership betweenNorth and South.
你们看南北美洲由于产权不同而出现了大分流。
Most people in rural North America owned some land by 1900.
到1900年为止北美洲的大部分人都拥有了土地。
Hardly anyone in South America did.
而在南美洲 拥有土地的人寥寥无几。
That's another killer app.
这又是一个致命应用程序。
Modern medicine in the late 19th century began to make major breakthroughs against theinfectious diseases that killed a lot of people.
19世纪末期,现代医药在治疗致命传染病方面取得重大突破。
And this was another killer app the very opposite of a killer,because it doubled, and then morethan doubled, human life expectancy.
这又是一个致命应用程序,但这个程序并不致命,反而将人类的寿命提高了一倍又一倍。
It even did that in the European empires.
现代医药在欧洲帝国的殖民地中 也发挥了作用。
Even in places like Senegal,beginning in the early 20th century,there were major breakthroughsin public health,and life expectancy began to rise.
即使是在塞内加尔(西非国家)，公共卫生也在20世纪早期，取得了重大突破，延长了人们的寿命。
It doesn't rise any faster after these countries become independent.
而这些国家独立之后,人们的寿命并没有继续增加。
The empires weren't all bad.
所以说帝国也不见得都是不好的。
The consumer society is what you need for the Industrial Revolution to have a point.
工业革命在一个消费者导向社会进行才有实际意义。
You need people to want to wear tons of clothes.
你需要大量需要购买衣服的人。
You've all bought an article of clothing in the last month;I guarantee it.
你们上个月肯定都买过衣服;我敢保证。
That's the consumer society,and it propels economic growth more than even technologicalchange itself.
正是消费者导向社会，推动了经济的增长,其力量超过了技术革新本身。
Japan was the first non-Western society to embrace it.
日本是第一个非西方国家以消费为导向的社会。
