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Book review: Turkey and the Ottomans
书评：土耳其与奥斯曼人
Twilight of empire
帝国的黄昏
The Last Days of the Ottoman empire: 1918-1922. By Ryan Gingeras.
《奥斯曼帝国最后的日子：1918-1922》瑞安·金格拉斯著
As it turned out, more than six centuries of Ottoman rule ended with a whimper rather than a bang, though there had been a racket in the preceding years.
事实证明，奥斯曼帝国六个多世纪的统治并非轰然落幕，而是缓缓落幕的，尽管在之前的几年里曾有过喧嚣。
The old regime was abolished on November 1st 1922 by Turkey’s Grand National Assembly, representing the nationalist forces that had triumphed in the war with Greece—reversing the humiliations that followed the first world war.
1922年11月1日，土耳其大国民议会废除了旧政权，代表了在与希腊的战争中取得胜利的民族主义力量-扭转了第一次世界大战后的耻辱。
The last sultan was soon spirited away on a British warship; he lived on in Italian penury.
最后一位苏丹很快就被一艘英国军舰偷偷带走了；他一直生活在意大利式的贫困中。
Ryan Gingeras, a prolific American chronicler of Ottoman and Turkish history, has marked the centenary of these events with a stimulating book that traces, in rich but digestible detail, the build-up to that furtive exit by Mehmed VI, who was also caliph, or spiritual leader, of all Muslims.
美国作家瑞安·金格拉斯是一名多产的奥斯曼帝国和土耳其历史编年史家，在这些事件过去的百年之际，他写了一本激动人心的书，这本书以丰富但容易理解的细节追溯了穆罕默德六世偷偷离开的过程，穆罕默德六世也是所有穆斯林的哈里发或精神领袖。
Mr Gingeras sets out the broad context: the rise of Europe’s colonising democracies—largely liberal at home but prone to heavy-handed imperialism abroad—at the expense of traditional theocracies, organised around fealty to a sovereign whose power was more than symbolic.
金格拉斯阐述了大背景：欧洲殖民民主国家的崛起--在国内基本上是自由主义，但在国外倾向于高压帝国主义--以牺牲传统神权政体为代价，这些政体是围绕着对一个君主的效忠而建立的，君主的权力不止具有象征意义。
This culminated in a global conflict that doomed the tsars, the Habsburgs—and the sultans.
这最终导致了一场全球冲突，注定了沙皇、哈布斯堡家族和苏丹的灭亡。
The author generally admires the way great geopolitical entities adapt to new circumstances.
作者对伟大的地缘政治实体适应新环境的方式总体上表示赞赏。
His focus is on Turkey, but he describes other shape-shifting regimes, such as the Soviet leaders who assumed the foreign policy of imperial Russia, even as they celebrated its overthrow.
他的重点是土耳其，但他也描述了其他正在改变形态的政权，比如在庆祝俄罗斯被推翻的同时，采取了俄罗斯帝国外交政策的苏联领导人。
As adaptations go, modern Turkey’s was long seen as successful, albeit with terrible costs for Anatolia’s persecuted Christians.
就适应而言，现代土耳其的适应一直被认为是成功的，尽管安纳托利亚遭受迫害的基督徒付出了可怕的代价。
Out of the core of a ramshackle empire, the republic’s founders fashioned a more or less modern statehood, with a secular constitution, universal entitlements and obligations (at least in theory) and intermittent multi-party democracy.
这个共和国的缔造者们从一个摇摇欲坠的帝国的核心出发，建立了一个或多或少的现代化国家，这个国家拥有世俗的宪法，普遍的权利和义务(至少在理论上是这样)和间歇性的多党民主。
译文由可可原创，仅供学习交流使用，未经许可请勿转载。
