Preface

A hundred years ago the high-minded rulers of British India regarded merchants as a lesser breed in the hierarchy of imperial pedigree. To ‘gentlemen in trade’, as to servants, ladies, natives, dogs, the brass-studded doors of Bombay’s and Calcutta’s more exclusive clubs were closed. Like social climbers raising the ladder behind them, the paragons of the Raj preferred to forget that but for the ‘gentlemen in trade’ of the East India Company there would have been no British India.

一百年前，在高贵的英属印度统治者们眼中，商人只是由皇家世系延伸出的社会层级中的低等血统。孟买和加尔各答的高端俱乐部镶嵌着黄铜钉的的大门前，“从事贸易的先生们”和仆从、女士、当地平民、狗一样不得入内。正如奋力攀爬社会阶梯的野心家过河拆桥一般，殖民地的楷模们选择忘记这样一个事实：如果没有东印度公司“从事贸易的先生们”，就不会有英属印度。

The Honourable Company was remembered, if at all, only as an anomalous administrative service; and that was indeed what it had become in the early nineteenth century. But before that, for all of 200 years, its endeavours were seen as having been primarily commercial, often inglorious, and almost never ‘honourable’. Venal and disreputable, its servants were believed to have betrayed their race by begetting a half-caste tribe of Anglo-Indians, and their nation by corrupt government and extortionate trade.

可敬的东印度公司即使存在于人们的记忆当中，也只是一个非常规的管理服务体系——这的确是它在十九世纪初期演变而成的形态。但在那之前的两百年间，它的种种事业被视为以商贸为主，多数并不光彩，遑论“可敬”了。它的职员行贿受贿、声名狼藉，因繁衍出混血的安格鲁-印度族裔而被认为背叛了自己的种族，也因腐化政府以及敲诈勒索的经营方式而被认为背叛了自己的国家。

From those 200 years just a few carefully selected incidents and personalities sufficed by way of introduction to the subsequent 150 years of glorious British dominion. Occasionally greater attention might be paid to the Company’s last decades as an all-conquering force in Indian politics, but still the perspective remained the same: the Company was seen purely as the forerunner to the Raj.

这两百年当中，仅有少数精心挑选出的事件和人物值得作为后续一百五十年光辉英国殖民统治的引子。尽管东印度公司在其最后数十年内作为印度政坛一股无坚不摧的力量这一事实偶尔会受到更多关注，但人们对其历史地位的观点从未改变：东印度公司被单纯地视为英属印度殖民政府的前身。

Closer acquaintance reveals a different story. The career of ‘the Grandest Society of Merchants in the Universe’ spans as much geography as it does history. To follow its multifarious activities involves imposing a chronology extending from the reign of Elizabeth to that of Victoria upon a map extending from southern Africa to north-west America. Heavy are the demands this makes on both writer and reader. (And hence perhaps the dearth of narrative histories of the Company in this post-imperial age.) But the conclusion is inescapable. The East India Company was as much about the East as those in the Indian Ocean; its most successful commercial venture was in China, not India.

近距离的考察则会揭示一个完全不同的故事。“宇宙最大外贸商协会”在生涯中实现的地域跨度与时间跨度同样广阔。为了理解其多样化的商贸活动，就需要在从非洲南部到美洲西北部的版图上构建一个从伊丽莎白一世时期到维多利亚时期的年代框架。如此宏大的背景对于作者和读者都提出了非常苛刻的要求。（这也是为什么在当今后帝国时代涌现出大量关于东印度公司的叙述史。）但是结论是无法逃避的。东印度公司在东方的活动与在印度洋的活动同样重要。而它最成功的商业风险投资在中国，而非印度。

Freed of its subservient function as the unworthy stock on which the mighty Raj would be grafted, the Company stands forth as a robust association of adventurers engaged in hazarding all in a series of preposterous gambles. Some paid off; many did not but are no less memorable for it. Bizarre locations, exotic produce, and recalcitrant personalities combine to induce a sense of romance which, however repugnant to the scholar, is in no way contrived. It was thanks to the incorrigible pioneering of the Company’s servants that the British Empire acquired its peculiarly diffuse character. But for the Company there would have been not only no British India but also no global British Empire.

东印度公司正如不起眼的砧木，于其上嫁接出强大的英属印度。然而抛开这项次要职能，东印度公司屹立于前，作为冒险者坚实的联盟投入到一连串荒诞不经的豪赌当中。其中一些取得了回报，更多的虽然没有收获却同样值得纪念。奇异的地理位置，充满异国情调的产出，桀骜不驯的风云人物共同营造出一种浪漫气息，无论学者多么反感，却是自然天成的。大英帝国独一无二的扩张性特征正是源自于东印度公司雇员九死不悔的开拓精神。如果没有东印度公司，不仅不会有英属印度，遍布全球的日不落帝国更无从谈起。

Excerpt From: John Keay. “Honourable Company: A History of The English East India Company.” iBooks.