在不列颠帝国的巅峰时期，为什么它没有选择征服欧洲？【下】

Mert Toker
They would risk losing their own ‘’Empire’’. The reason Britain was successful they made a great trading empire backed by a wonderful navy in that age. Any large-scale attempt to conquer Europe would require a permanent land army and huge amounts of soldiers. Most importantly, trade would have been halted. Since Britain did not have the population figures of Germany and France on the continent, Britain would bleed white to death.
British diplomacy was based on pulling the chestnuts out of the fire by using allies instead of taking full responsibility. Like dealing with Bonaparte. Knowing Britain had the most advantage in trade, Bonaparte wanted to use a continental blockade for British goods. Russian economy and Czar could not support Napoleon’s policy for long and the allies became enemies. It led to a disastrous campaign in Russia.
Even in the 20th century, France bled for Britain in WW1 and Russia in WWII. Britain’s model for foreign policy was based on keeping the balance of power like in the case of the destiny of the decaying Ottoman Empire. British managed to run India with only a small army. They played local powers against each other and left the burden to their local allies. They got the reward and sent the bill to others.

（如果英国胆敢试图征服欧洲，）他们可能会失去自己的“帝国”。英国成功的原因是他们在那个时代建立了一个强大的贸易帝国，拥有强大的海军。但任何征服欧洲的大规模尝试都需要一支永久性的陆军和大量的士兵。最重要的是，贸易将会中断。由于英国没有欧洲大陆上德国和法国的人口数字，英国将会流血至死。
英国外交的基础不是承担全部责任，而是利用盟国，从火坑里捞栗子。 就像对付拿破仑一样，他知道英国在贸易上有巨大优势，也因此他想对英国的货物实行大陆封锁。俄国的经济和沙皇无法长期支持拿破仑的政策，盟国成了敌人。这导致了在俄罗斯的灾难性战役。
即使在20世纪，法国在一战中为英国流血，在二战中为俄罗斯流血。英国的外交政策模式是建立在保持力量平衡的基础上的，就像衰败的奥斯曼帝国的命运一样。英国人只用了一小支军队就控制了印度。 他们利用地方势力相互对抗，把负担留给地方盟友，自己得到奖励，而让其他人承担代价。

In short, Britain’s economic model and foreign policy had been coordinated into achieving a balance of power in the European continent.
Number 1 rule: Do not let any power be the supreme one on the continent and keep them divided.
A full-scale British conquest of Europe would unite the divided powers of the continent. Eventually, they would even go after British Empire itself. That’s why Hitler provided ‘’guarantees’’ for British Empire during the peace gestures in WW2. At the back of his head, probably he was seeing an opportunity in weakening British Empire once Europe was in his full control.
‘’The British empire never lacked contradictions. A global juggernaut standing with its military boot on millions of necks, practicing commercial coercion and diplomatic cynicism, it nonetheless routinely thought of itself as a plucky underdog. Its heroes were the handful of redcoats at Rorke’s Drift fighting off the Zulu masses, or General Charles Gordon of Khartoum, going down against the odds in the last stand against religious zealots in Sudan.
British soldiers, diplomats, and traders pictured themselves as almost accidental conquerors, vanquishing a quarter of the planet’s landmass in between tea, tiffin, and cricket matches. They maintained a detached stiff upper lip and publicly ignored the unpleasant reality of the Maxim gun – a luxury not afforded to the locals on its business end.
Britain preferred to see its dominance of a fifth of the world’s population as some sort of benevolent, God-given mission to bring law, order, and free trade to benighted corners of the world. As George Bernard Shaw complained: ‘The ordinary Britisher imagines that God is an Englishman.’’ Source of the quoted paragraphs:

简而言之，英国的经济模式和外交政策已经协调一致，以实现欧洲大陆的力量平衡。
第一条准则:不要让任何势力成为大陆上的最高力量，让他们分裂。英国对欧洲的全面征服将使分裂的欧洲大陆各国联合起来。最终，他们甚至会攻击大英帝国。这就是为什么希特勒在二战的和平姿态中为大英帝国提供了“保证”。在他的背后，也许他看到了一个机会，一旦欧洲完全在他的控制之下，将削弱大英帝国。
“大英帝国从不缺乏矛盾。作为一个全球巨人，它的军靴踩在数百万人的脖子上，实行商业胁迫和外交冷嘲热讽。尽管如此，它还是习惯性地认为自己是一匹勇敢的黑马。它的英雄是在Rorke’s Drift与祖鲁人民战斗的少数英国士兵，或者是喀土穆的、在与苏丹宗教狂热分子战斗后最终屈服的查尔斯·戈登将军。
英国士兵、外交官和商人把自己描绘成几乎是偶然的征服者，在喝茶、午餐和板球比赛之间征服了地球上四分之一的陆地。他们保持着一种冷漠的态度，公然无视马克西姆手枪的令人不快的现实——这是当地人无法享受到的奢侈品。
英国更愿意将其占世界人口五分之一的主导地位视为某种仁慈的、上帝赋予的使命，即为世界上愚昧的角落带来法律、秩序和自由贸易。正如萧伯纳抱怨的那样:‘普通的英国人认为上帝就是英国人。’“
————引用自：链接略

Anton Van Niekerk
Because for the concept of colonies to work, it could only be applied to non-European territory. European conquests would only have been a temporary gain. Its worth bearing in mind that European territory was, in Medi times, under the control of families, not nations, so at one time, the King of England was also the King of Normany, Aquitaine, or, in simpler terms, all of the land in the attached map was ruled by a single man, but this did not make some parts of it a colony of the other. The second image illustrates all the land ruled by the Kings of Britain before Victoria, again, nether were colonies of the other.

因为要让殖民地的概念发挥作用，它只能适用于非欧洲领土。对欧洲的征服的好处只是暂时的。
值得注意的是，在中世纪，欧洲的领土是由家族而不是国家控制的，所以有一段时间，英格兰国王也是诺曼底国王，阿基坦国王。或者简单地说，所附地图上的所有土地都由一个人统治，但这并没有使它的某些部分成为另一个人的殖民地。这幅图展示了维多利亚时期之前英国国王统治下的所有土地。

Robert Blake
If we consider the hight of British power relative to others, 1850-1860s, they also simply weren't powerful enough to invade and annex any part of Europe. It would have met too fierce a resistance from superior continental armies.
The strength of Britain lied in her navy, her ability to reduce the trade of hostile nations, not in her ability to win massive land wars.

如果我们考虑到1850-1860年代英国相对于其他国家的强大程度，他们也没有强大到足以入侵和吞并欧洲的任何一部分。它可能会遇到来自优势大陆军队的激烈抵抗。
英国的力量在于她的海军，在于她减少敌对国家贸易的能力，而不是在于她赢得大规模陆地战争的能力。

Anton Van Niekerk
Indeed, at the height of British Empire, which would arguably have been around the time of the Boer War, it would not have been feasible to have waged war for territorial gain against a European nation.

事实上，在大英帝国的鼎盛时期，也就是布尔战争时期，对一个欧洲国家发动领土战争也是不可能的。
原创翻译：龙腾网 http://www.ltaaa.cn 转载请注明出处

Nachi Sawrikar
if you look at Austria-Hungarian empire and Russian empire, they both had a lot of colonies in Eastern Europe.

但，奥匈帝国和俄罗斯帝国在东欧都有很多殖民地。

Anton Van Niekerk
They were not colonies, they formed part of those Empires, so for example, if you were from Prague, you were an Austro-Hungarian during the period the Czech lands were part of that Empire. Colonies, in the general sense of the word, do not form part of the state that they are being colonised by. The Russians and the Austrians sought to expand their Empires, but only land that was adjacent to it was of interest…..that means they expanded, rather than colonised lands that bordered their own. Most European states sought to expand their territory, but none of them sought those additional territories as colonies, all wanted them to form part of their own unified states instead. Corsica, for example, was Italian before 1776, and is now French, so it has been part of France for less time than America has been in existence, so do you consider that a French Colony that ought to be returned to the Italians ?

他们不是殖民地，他们是帝国的一部分，举个例子，如果你来自布拉格，你是奥匈帝国的一员，在那个时期捷克领土是帝国的一部分。一般意义上的殖民地，并不构成被殖民国家的一部分。
俄国人和奥地利人想要扩张他们的帝国，但是他们只对邻近的土地感兴趣。这意味着他们扩张了与自己接壤的土地，而不是殖民。大多数欧洲国家都想扩大自己的领土，但没有一个国家想把这些额外的领土作为殖民地，而是想把它们组成自己统一的国家的一部分。
例如，科西嘉在1776年之前是意大利的，现在是法国的，所以它成为法国的一部分的时间比美国存在的时间还短，所以你认为它应该归还给意大利人吗?

Colin Reid
By this logic, Angola wasn’t a colony of Portugal during the Estado Novo period, because formally speaking it was an integral part of the Portugal itself. I don’t think most Angolans saw it that way, though. In the case of the British empire you can say similar things about Ireland until the early 20th century, as the politically and economically dominant “Anglo-Irish” minority had much more in common culturally with the English gentry than they had with their largely Catholic Irish tenants. (This even went as far as a narrative in 19th-century Anglophone countries that the poor of Ireland were “racially” inferior to English people and their descendants.)

按照这种逻辑，安哥拉在Estado Novo时期并不是葡萄牙的殖民地，因为从形式上讲，它是葡萄牙本身不可分割的一部分。但我不认为大多数安哥拉人是这么想的。
以大英帝国为例，在20世纪早期之前，你可以对爱尔兰说类似的话，因为在政治和经济上占主导地位的“盎格鲁-爱尔兰”少数民族与英国绅士在文化上的共同点，远远超过了他们与以天主教为主的爱尔兰佃户的共同点。
(这种说法甚至在19世纪的英语国家流传开来，说爱尔兰的穷人在“种族”上不如英国人及其后代。)

Ernest W. Adams
Because Europe was the home of other, competing empires. France, Spain and the Netherlands were all major powers. These various empires could conquer and colonize indigenous peoples, and they fought each other elsewhere—mostly at sea—but were not in any position to conquer and hold each other’s European lands. After the British defeated Napoleon, they restored the French crown, but they didn't try to annex France. They couldn't have done it. It's too big and there would have been endless rebellions.

因为欧洲是相互竞争的帝国的家园。法国、西班牙和荷兰当时都是强国。这些不同的帝国可以征服和殖民土著人民，他们在其他地方战斗——主要是在海上，但却无法征服和控制彼此的欧洲领土。在英国打败拿破仑之后，他们恢复了法国的王位，但他们没有试图吞并法国。不可能这样干。它太大了，会导致无休止的反抗。

Kevin Richardson
Greetings! What a most interesting question, and one which does not actually have a proper “answer” in the sense of a “this old chap, is why we didn’t decide to conquer those bloody continentals.” There were a variety of interesting reasons why the British did not conquer Europe, though they certainly formed ideas about how the British Empire ought to deal with the European nations throughout the nineteenth century. Speaking of which, it should be noted here that “the height of the British Empire,” as OP has put it in their question, is definitely a time period up for interpretation, but the “Pax Britannica” of 1815 - 1914 seems a good time period to explore. Let’s begin.
Europe and The Empire
“[France’s greatest goal] was the humbling of England, the traditional Rival of France, and the main obstacle to French supremacy in Europe and all over the world.”
- Lord Palmerston during his time as Home Secretary under the prime ministership of the Earl of Aberdeen
When the “Great War” of the 1800s had finished in 1815 (almost a century before another, far larger one would break out), Britain had emerged as the supreme victor over the forces of Napoléon Bonaparte. She had resisted the French threat of a cross-channel invasion, used the resources of her growing empire to survive the (poorly enforced) Continental System, and her armed forces had distinguished themselves over two decades of tumult in Europe. Perhaps most critically of all however, Britain had won from the Napoleonic Wars a guarantee against European threats.

这是一个非常有趣的问题，一个实际上没有一个合适的“答案”的问题。……
英国人没有征服欧洲有许多有趣的原因，尽管这些原因肯定形成了大英帝国在整个19世纪应该如何与欧洲国家打交道的想法。说到这一点，这里应该指出的是，问题中提到的“大英帝国的鼎盛时期”，是一个有待解释的时期，我觉得1815年至1914年的“不列颠的和平”似乎是一个探索的好时期。让我们开始吧。
欧洲和帝国
“(法国最伟大的目标)是让英国颜面尽失，英国是法国的传统对手，也是法国在欧洲乃至世界霸权的主要障碍。”——Palmerston 勋爵担任内政大臣期间
当19世纪的“伟大战争”在1815年结束时(几乎比另一场更大的战争爆发早了一个世纪)，英国成为了拿破仑势力的绝对胜利者。她抵抗了法国跨海峡入侵的威胁，利用其不断发展的帝国资源在(执行不力的)大陆体系中生存下来，她的武装力量在20年的欧洲动荡中表现突出。然而，也许最关键的是，英国从拿破仑战争中赢得了抵御欧洲威胁的保证。

Britain against Napoleon: The Organisation of Victory, 1793-1815. By Roger Knight.
In the “Concert of Europe,” which followed the Congress of Vienna, the great powers of Europe pledged that they would maintain the status quo in territorial matters, and that any hostile attempts to gain more land by one power would be checked by the threat of war against all the others. John Darwin on what this meant for the British:
“For almost a century, the concert principle held - to the huge relief of the British. The supreme threat to their empire - a Europe united against them - receded into the shadows.”
London’s Foreign Secretaries and Prime Ministers continued to follow a general maxim laid down by the great diplomats of Lord Castlereagh and George Canning in the early 1800s: Britain would keep an eye on Europe, but seek to avoid all involvement on the continent which did not directly threaten her own national security, or that of her empire. It was such thinking which influenced British involvement in the Crimean War, allying with France (and a reluctant Austria-Hungary) to see off the Russian threat to the Mediterranean and the overland route to India.
Yet why not invade Europe? The question commands some serious thinking. If the Royal Navy controlled the sea lanes and earned the ire of every leader who spied a British fleet off their coasts, then why did the British government not send expeditions to Europe in much the same way they had dispatched troops to quell the Sepoy Mutiny or to blast open Qing China during the Opium Wars? Surely, if the British sought to diminish the gravest threat to their empire, then was direct conquest, not the most effective way of neutralizing the other Europeans?


图：英国对抗拿破仑，胜利团体(1793-1815) Roger Knight
在“欧洲协调”、维也纳会议后, 欧洲大国承诺，他们将在领土问题上维持现状，任何敌对势力夺取更多领土的企图，都将以对其他所有国家发动战争的威胁加以制止。约翰·达尔文认为这对英国意味着:“在近一个世纪的时间里，这种协调原则得以坚持，让英国人如释重负。他们帝国的最大威胁——一个联合起来反对他们的欧洲——已经消失在阴影中。”
伦敦的外交大臣和首相们继续遵循着由Castlereagh勋爵和George Canning两位伟大外交官在19世纪初提出的普遍格言:英国将密切关注欧洲，但要避免在欧洲大陆上的一切活动，只要这些活动不会直接威胁到她自己或她的帝国的国家安全。正是这种想法影响了英国卷入克里米亚战争，与法国(以及不情愿的奥匈帝国)结盟，以击退俄罗斯对地中海和通往印度的陆路威胁。
然而，为什么不入侵欧洲呢?这个问题需要认真思考。如果皇家海军控制航道会激怒了每一位在他们海岸附近发现英国舰队的领导人，那么，英国政府为什么不派遣远征队去欧洲，就像他们在鸦片战争期间派遣军队去镇压印度兵哗变或轰开清朝一样? 当然，如果英国人想要消除对他们帝国的最大威胁，那么直接征服而不是与其他欧洲人妥协才是最有效的方式，不是吗?
原创翻译：龙腾网 http://www.ltaaa.cn 转载请注明出处

For two key reasons, this was not possible. The first is more practical and economical: funding a European war. In the Napoleonic Wars, Britain had served as banker and paymaster to its allies in the Grand Coalitions, ensuring that they maintained the economic strength to continue fighting Napoleon’s French Empire. If Britain were to invade Europe, then it would find itself against the French in addition to multiple other powers (recall the Concert system and its conditions for hostile expansionism discussed earlier). The cost of financing a war against multiple highly modernized, effective, and well-led armies in Europe would all but break the City of London’s financial capabilities. It was also particularly problematic that, of the great powers, Britain was actually the least prepared for war at a moment’s notice. After the “imperial peace” of 1815 and the Crimean War of 1856, the British were the only great power in Europe without a general conscxtion law. It was certainly something the government liked to show off as proof of British democracy and individual freedoms, but it also meant that mobilizing an army in wartime would require disproportionately more time and effort than Prussia (Germany), Russia, France, and Austria-Hungary (where reserves could be called up in a matter of weeks, and in some cases even days). A war in Europe would be particularly troublesome to win, if not downright impossible.
Let us then turn to the second consideration, which is in a way tied to the first. If Britain were indeed capable of conquering Europe, then controlling it would be more difficult. Across the Empire, the British had been able to cement their rule through alliances with local leaders, or through “cession treaties” which granted formal control from a prior holder of power. In Europe, the highly centralized and constitutional (not to mention rising national) polities would likely be extremely uncooperative, and at the very least, highly resent British rule. The thought of aristocrats from Britain taking over the landed estates of the Junkers in Prussia seems most amusing, but in reality, such a situation (amongst many others in the process of implementing ‘imperial rule’ in Europe) might have led to open revolt and rebellion, something the British absolutely abhorred within their administration of the empire. Active diplomacy, not armed campaigns, was Britain’s byword in the “Pax Britannica” period of the 1800s. They maintained a reluctant (and at times rather condescending) hand in European great power politics, but preferred to keep the “balance of power” strictly within the boundaries, which best favoured their continued imperial prosperity and “empire economics.”

但由于以下两个关键原因，这是不可能的。更实际、更经济的方法是: 资助一场欧洲战争。在拿破仑战争中，英国曾是大联盟盟国的银行家和发薪官，确保它们保持经济实力，继续对抗拿破仑的法兰西帝国。如果英国入侵欧洲，那么它就会发现自己要与法国以及其他多个强国对抗(回想一下之前讨论过的协约国体系及其敌对扩张的条件)。为对抗欧洲多个高度现代化、高效和领导良好的军队而筹措资金的成本几乎会摧毁伦敦金融城的财政能力。还有一个特别的问题是，在所有大国中，英国实际上是最没有准备好随时发动战争的。
在1815年的“帝国和平”和1856年的克里米亚战争之后，英国是欧洲唯一没有普遍征兵法的大国。政府喜欢炫耀这是英国民主和个人自由的证明，但这也意味着在战时动员军队需要的时间和精力要比普鲁士(德国)、俄罗斯、法国和奥匈帝国(奥匈帝国的预备役可以在几周甚至几天内召集起来)多得多。欧洲的战争如果不是完全不可能的话，想要赢得战争将会特别麻烦。
然后让我们转到第二个原因，它在某种程度上与第一个原因相联系。如果英国真的有能力征服欧洲，那么控制它将更加困难。在整个帝国，英国人都能够通过与地方领导人的联盟，或通过“割让条约”来巩固他们的统治，割让条约授予先前掌权的人的正式控制权。在欧洲，高度集权和宪政(更不用说正在崛起的国家)政治可能根本无法兼容，而且必定会对英国的统治非常不满。
英国贵族接管普鲁士容克家族地产的想法似乎很有趣，但实际上，这种情况(在欧洲实施“帝国统治”的过程中还有许多其他情况)可能会导致公开的反抗和叛乱，这是英国人在他们的帝国管理下绝对厌恶的。在19世纪的“不列颠和平”时期，积极的外交，而不是武装运动，是英国的代名词。他们在欧洲强权政治中保持着一种不情愿的(有时甚至是相当屈尊的)手，但更愿意将“权力平衡”严格地保持在疆界之内，这对他们持续的帝国繁荣和“帝国经济”是最有利的。

When the Third Derby-Disraeli Ministry was formed in 1866, this idea was entrenched even deeper in the minds of the British cabinet and government. Their empire was the first and primary concern, and (as some more imperialist elements argued), it should indeed have been the only thing British foreign policy was concerned with, to the exclusion of all others. Under this Conservative government, The Right Honourable Earl of Derby, or Lord Stanley, served as Foreign Secretary. The Austrian Ambassador to Britain, Count Rudolph von Apponyi, gave a rather insightful overview into the new Foreign Office and its vision of the British foreign policy, which helps explain why they did not conquer Europe.
“[Lord Stanley] belongs to that school of statesmen who make a dogma of the most complete non-intervention and the most absolute abstention of Great Britain from the affairs and quarrels of Europe. According to Lord Stanley, the only great interests of this country consists in the pacific [peaceful, not the ocean] development of its prosperity and its colonial and commercial power, and, as England could not attain this goal and at the same time interfere actively and influentially in the affairs of Europe, she ought not to hesitate between the two courses.”
William Gladstone, another architect of British foreign policy in the latter half of the 1800s, also eschewed a similar set of ideals, remarking on the British commitment to Europe:
“England should keep entire in her own hands the means of estimating her own obligations upon the various states of fact as they arise … that it is dangerous for her to assume an advanced, and therefore an isolated position in regard to European controversies; that come what may, it is better for her to promise too little than too much.”
Thus to conclude, the British Empire did not conquer Europe for both the practical reason that such an invasion would have been disastrous for its economy and military (to the point where such a war would produce little gain for unacceptably high costs), and also the geopolitical reason that the 19th-century “Concert system” had neutralized the threat of a united Europe, and also provided the pretext for Britain to turn towards the security of its Empire from individual states rather than an entire continent of rivals.
I hope this response helps, and feel free to ask any follow-ups as you see fit!

当1866年第三届Derby-Disraeli内阁成立时，这种想法在英国内阁和政府的头脑中更加根深蒂固。他们的帝国是首要的，而且(正如一些帝国主义分子所主张的那样)它确实应该是英国外交政策唯一关心的事情，而不是其他的事情。在这届保守党政府中，Derby伯爵或Stanley勋爵担任外交大臣。奥地利驻英国大使Rudolph von Apponyi伯爵对新外交部及其对英国外交政策的看法作了相当深刻的概述，这有助于解释为什么他们没有征服欧洲：“英国属于那一种、彻底、绝对不干涉欧洲事务和争端作为一种信条的政治派别。根据Stanley勋爵的说法，这个国家唯一的巨大利益在于太平洋的繁荣发展及其殖民和商业实力，由于英国无法达到这一目标，同时又不能积极地、有影响力地干预欧洲事务，所以她不应该在两种方针之间犹豫不决。“
19世纪下半叶英国外交政策的另一位设计师 William Gladstone也回避了类似的理念，他在谈到英国对欧洲的承诺时说: “ 英格兰应该完全掌握自己的手段，在各种情况出现时评估自己的义务……对她来说，在欧洲争端中采取激进的、孤立的立场是危险的; 不管结果如何，对她来说，现实都要比预期的少得多。”
综上所述，大英帝国没有征服欧洲的实际原因是，这样的入侵对其经济和军事都是灾难性的，以至于这样的战争只会带来难以接受的高成本，同时几乎没有收益。再者，19世纪的“协议制度”消除了欧洲统一的威胁，这也是地缘政治的原因。也为英国只是单个国家而不是整个大陆的竞争对手，从而为保障帝国的安全提供了借口。

原创翻译：龙腾网 http://www.ltaaa.cn 转载请注明出处