摘要：似乎无人关心纽约建城400周年，但庆祝它却格外重要。今年是纽约市建城400周年，却几乎无人问津，这既令人悲伤，又不乏启发，而且无论如何，这都恰如其分。去年除夕夜，市长埃里克·亚当斯承诺将举行为期一年的庆祝活动，但居民们迄今为止并未注意到太多活动，这也可以理解。
- （下文附有英文原版）
- 原文翻译整理：一派老胡言
似乎无人关心纽约建城400周年，但庆祝它却格外重要。今年是纽约市建城400周年，却几乎无人问津，这既令人悲伤，又不乏启发，而且无论如何，这都恰如其分。去年除夕夜，市长埃里克·亚当斯承诺将举行为期一年的庆祝活动，但居民们迄今为止并未注意到太多活动，这也可以理解。“他们什么也没做，”哥伦比亚大学历史名誉教授、《纽约百科全书》主编肯尼斯·杰克逊说道。
杰克逊先生虽然感到失望，但并不感到惊讶。“纽约从来都不在乎，”他说。与其他纽约历史学家一样，他对波士顿（他指出，波士顿是一座更年轻的城市）唯一怀念的，似乎就是它对过去的迷恋。另一位历史学家拉塞尔·肖托（Russell Shorto）表示，纽约“只是不断地掩盖事实”。
纽约人往往脾气暴躁，这或许也于事无补，甚至连纪念纽约历史的历史也饱受争议。就在61年前，皇后区的世界博览会庆祝了这座城市的300周年诞辰。当时，这座城市将1664年认定为其建城年份，这一年英国人从荷兰人手中夺取了新阿姆斯特丹，并以约克公爵的名字重新命名。但1974年，市议会议长保罗·奥德怀尔（Paul O'Dwyer）将市旗上显示的年份从1664年回溯到1625年。奥德怀尔操着他家乡爱尔兰的口音，坚称他只是出于对历史的尊重。当时的市长亚伯拉罕·比姆（Abraham Beame）赞同这个想法，但一位市政厅助理却将其斥为“保罗·奥德怀尔（Paul O'Dwyer）试图让我们成为一座荷兰城市，而不是英国城市”。
其他可能的日期可能包括1609年，当时一位悬挂荷兰国旗的英国探险船长亨利·哈德逊（Henry Hudson）沿着如今以其名字命名的河流逆流而上；或者1624年，当时荷兰西印度公司将八名定居者登陆纽约港，也就是现在的总督岛；或者1626年，当时定居者臭名昭著地“买下”了曼哈顿，而后来人们认为这些物品只值几美元。肖托先生说，1625年是“他们运来农场动物的年份”。
纽约的历史学家们更关心的不是具体日期，而是纽约人应该停下来思考，他们的城市是如何从港口的那个小小立足点一跃成为全球领军城市的。“重要的不是它是否始于1625年，”杰克逊先生不耐烦地说。“只是这里发生了一些事情，然后成为了金融、文化、艺术、媒体以及几乎所有你能想到的其他事物的中心。”
奥德怀尔走在了时代的前列。就在他开始追溯荷兰建城的时间时，一股新的学术浪潮开始审视荷兰人对纽约乃至美国留下的深远印记。在此之前，纽约的故事一直被置于以英国为中心的视角下，部分原因是讲述这个故事的人是英语使用者，而该定居点的早期文献是用17世纪的荷兰语写成的，在世的人中很少有人能读懂。随着历史学家着手翻译纽约最初几十年的文献，一幅画面逐渐清晰起来：这座荷兰小镇与新大陆其他定居点有着多么截然不同的差异。当波士顿的神权统治者绞死贵格会教徒，以营造一种与世隔绝的清教徒单一文化时，荷兰人却在漫无目的地培育一个多语种社会，这个社会主要因为人们的共同利益——不受干扰地赚钱——而团结在一起。
两栖的荷兰人立刻看到了纽约错综复杂的水道网络的潜力：深水港、穿过长岛海峡向东的受保护航道，以及最重要的，哈德逊河向北延伸的河段，那里有一条山谷向西延伸至美国大陆的广阔内陆（伊利运河最终将通过水路将纽约与底特律和密尔沃基连接起来）。1640年，在荷兰公司放弃垄断并宣布该港为自由贸易区后，新阿姆斯特丹成为大西洋贸易的枢纽。到1645年，一位来访的耶稣会士报告说，在几百名居民中听到了18种语言（他可能还没有算上非洲语言和本土语言）。 “这里的每个人都是商人，”一位居民在1650年说道。
这种贸易部分是以人为本的，是荷兰商业的邪恶遗产。然而，在最初的几年里，这个社会不仅有自由的黑人业主和经营贸易公司的妇女，还有葡萄牙人、波西米亚人、阿拉伯人、波兰人和莫霍克人。甚至犹太人也得到了宽容，尽管他们并不情愿。
AA制
英国人目睹了当时的景象，不仅觊觎港口，还觊觎其文化。这正是肖托先生最新一部引人入胜的历史著作《攻占曼哈顿》的主题，这部著作部分基于他对荷兰文献的持续研究。斯图亚特王朝刚刚推翻清教徒联邦，重新掌权，国王想要让正义的清教徒殖民地屈服。但当一支势不可挡的英国海军部队1664年，新阿姆斯特丹建城后，指挥官理查德·尼科尔斯通过谈判达成了一项协议，用肖托先生的话来说，与其说是投降，不如说是合并或权利法案。这项协议保障了居民的财产权，以及继续自由贸易和信仰的权利。它甚至允许他们保留在荷兰统治下赢得的一项不同寻常的自由，即选择自己的市政领导人。
“这在殖民地美国构建了两种意识形态权力基础的动态，这两种力量对世界的看法截然不同，”肖托先生说道。“你可以从这两者之间的反复来审视美国历史，你知道，一个总部设在纽约，保持着外向型、商业头脑和全球导向。”另一个最初设在波士顿，“是清教徒式的、基督教的、美国优先的。而这正是这个国家DNA的一部分。”不仅是纽约，整个美国都应该庆祝并思考这个特殊的生日。
2025.8.30《经济学人》对应本文原文
以下为英文原版
LEXINGTON
Making it there
No one seems to care about New York's 400th birthday, but it's a particularly important time to celebrate itsad, yet also somewhat inspiring, and in any event altogether fitting, that New York City is marking its 400th birth day this year and almost no one gives a damn. Last New Year's Eve the mayor, Eric Adams, promised a year-long celebration, but denizens would be forgiven for not having detected many events so far. "They're not doing squat," says Kenneth Jackson, an emeritus professor of history at Columbia University and the editor-in-chief of "The Encyclopedia of New York City".
Though disappointed, Mr Jackson is not surprised. "New York has never cared," he says. As with other historians of New York, the only thing that seems to make him wistful about Boston (a youn-ger city, he notes) is its fascination with its past. Russell Shorto, another historian, says New York "just keeps paving over things".
It probably does not help that New Yorkers tend to be fractious, and even the history of commemorating the history of New York is ripe for disputation. Just 61 years ago the World's Fair in Queens celebrated the city's 300th birthday. Back then the city recognised as its foundational year 1664, when the British seized New Amsterdam from the Dutch and renamed it after the Duke of York. But in 1974 Paul O'Dwyer, the president of the city council, moved to backdate the year displayed on the municipal flag from 1664 to 1625. O'Dwyer, who spoke with the lilt of his native Ire-land, insisted he was just out to respect history. The mayor at the time, Abraham Beame, went along with the idea, though one city hall aide dismissed it as "Paul O'Dwyer's attempt to make us a Dutch city instead of an English one".
Other possible dates might have included 1609, when Henry Hudson, an English captain exploring under a Dutch flag, sailed up the river that now bears his name; or 1624, when the Dutch West India Company landed settlers-eight of them-on what is now called Governors Island, in New York's harbour; or 1626, when the settlers notoriously "bought" Manhattan for what was later judged to be a few dollars' worth of stuff. The year 1625, Mr Shorto says, was "when they sent over shipments of farm animals".
New York's historians care less about the date than that New Yorkers should pause to consider how their city vaulted to global pre-eminence from that tiny toehold in the harbour. "What's important is not whether it started in 1625," Mr Jackson says impatiently. "It's just that something happened here, and then became the headquarters of finance and culture and arts and media and just about everything else you can think of."
O'Dwyer was ahead of his time. Just as he moved to backdate the founding, a new wave of scholarship was starting to reckon with the profound imprint of the Dutch on New York, and on America. Until then New York's story was seen through an Anglo-centric lens, in part because English-speakers told the story and the settlement's early documents were written in 17th-century Dutch, which few alive could understand. As historians set to work translating documents from New York's first decades, a picture came into focus of how radically different the Dutch town was from other settlements in the New World. While the theocrats in Boston were hanging Quakers to create a Puritan mono-culture apart from the world, the Dutch were haphazardly fostering a polyglot society united largely by a shared interest in being left alone to make money.
The amphibious Dutch immediately saw the potential in New York's intricate tracery of waterways: the deep harbour, the protected passage eastward through Long Island Sound, and, most of all, the Hudson's reach to the north, where a valley opened west-ward to the continent's vast interior (and where the Erie canal would eventually join New York by water to Detroit and Milwaukee). In 1640, after the Dutch company gave up its monopoly and declared the port a free-trade zone, New Amsterdam became a hub for Atlantic trade. By 1645 a visiting Jesuit reported hearing 18 languages among the few hundred residents (and he probably did not count African and native languages). "Everyone here is a trad-er," a resident observed in 1650.
That trade was partly in human beings, a satanic legacy of Dutch commerce. Yet the society in those first years also included free black property owners and women who ran trading com-panies as well as Portuguese, Bohemians, Arabs, Poles and Mo-hawks. Even Jews were tolerated, if reluctantly.
Going Dutch
The English saw what was happening and coveted not just the port but its culture. This is the subject of "Taking Manhattan", Mr Shorto's latest, fascinating history based partly on the continuing work on Dutch documents. The Stuart monarchy had just re-turned to the throne, overcoming a Puritan Commonwealth, and the king wanted to bring the righteous Puritan colonies to heel. But when an overwhelming English naval force menaced New Amsterdam in 1664, the commander, Richard Nicholls, negotiated an agreement that, in Mr Shorto's telling, was less like a surrender than a merger or bill of rights. It guaranteed the residents their rights to property and to keep trading and worshipping freely. It even let them retain an unusual freedom they had won under the Dutch, to choose their own municipal leaders.
"That sets up this dynamic of two ideological power bases in colonial America with very different ways of seeing the world," Mr Shorto says. "And you can look at a lot of American history as this, you know, back-and-forth between these two, the one based in New York, remaining outward-looking and business-minded and globally oriented." The other, originally based in Boston, "is puritanical and Christian and America-first. And that's part of the DNA of the country." Not just New York, but America, should be celebrating, and pondering, this particular birthday.
来源：一派老胡言