2003 AFTERWORD: Guns, Germs, and Steel Today
2003年后记：今天的枪构、病菌和钢铁
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL (GGS) IS ABOUT WHY THE RISE OF complex human societies unfolded differently on different continents over the last 13,000 years. I finished revising the manuscript in 1996, and it was published in 1997. Since then, I have been involved mostly in work on other projects, especially on my next book about collapses of societies. Hence seven years' distance in time and focus now separates me from GGS's writing. How does the book look in retrospect, and what has happened to change or extend its conclusions since its publication? To my admittedly biased eye, the book's central message has survived well, and the most interesting developments since its publication have involved four extensions of the story to the modern world and to recent history.
枪炮、细菌和钢铁(GGS)是关于为什么复杂人类社会的崛起在过去13000年中在不同的大陆上表现不同。我在1996年完成了手稿的修订，并于1997年出版。从那时起，我主要参与了其他项目的工作，尤其是我的下一本关于社会崩溃的书。因此，七年的时间和焦点距离现在将我与GGS的写作分开。回顾这本书，它看起来怎么样？自出版以来，它的结论发生了什么变化或扩展？在我公认的偏见眼中，这本书的核心信息保存得很好，自出版以来最有趣的发展涉及到故事对现代世界和近代历史的四个延伸。
My main conclusion was that societies developed differently on different continents because of differences in continental environments, not in human biology. Advanced technology, centralized political organization, and other features of complex societies could emerge only in dense sedentary populations capable of accumulating food surpluses—populations that depended for their food on the rise of agriculture that began around 8,500 B.C. But the domesticable wild plant and animal species essential for that rise of agriculture were distributed very unevenly over the continents. The most valuable domesticable wild species were concentrated in only nine small areas of the globe, which thus became the earliest homelands of agriculture. The original inhabitants of those homelands thereby gained a head start toward developing guns, germs, and steel. The languages and genes of those homeland inhabitants, as well as their livestock, crops, technologies, and writing systems, became dominant in the ancient and modern world.
我的主要结论是，不同大陆上的社会发展不同，是因为大陆环境的差异，而不是人类生物学的差异。先进的技术、中央集权的政治组织和复杂社会的其他特征只能出现在能够积累食物剩余的密集定居人口中。这些人口依赖于公元前8500年左右开始的农业崛起。但对于农业的崛起至关重要的家养野生动植物物种在各大洲的分布非常不均匀。最有价值的家养野生物种仅集中在全球九个小地区，因此成为最早的农业家园。这些家园的原始居民因此在发展枪支、细菌和钢铁方面取得了领先。这些本土居民的语言和基因，以及他们的牲畜、作物、技术和书写系统，在古代和现代世界占据主导地位。
Discoveries in the last half-dozen years, by archaeologists, geneticists, linguists, and other specialists, have enriched our understanding of this story, without changing its main outlines. Let me mention three examples. One of the biggest gaps in GGS's geographic coverage involved Japan, about whose prehistory I had little to say in 1996. Recent genetic evidence now suggests that the modern Japanese people are the product of an agricultural expansion similar to others discussed in GGS: an expansion of Korean farmers, beginning around 400 B.C., into southwestern Japan and then advancing northeast up the Japanese archipelago. The immigrants brought intensive rice agriculture and metal tools, and they mixed with the original Japanese population (related to the modern Ainu) to produce the modern Japanese, much as expanding Fertile Crescent farmers mixed with Europe's original hunter/gatherer population to produce modern Europeans.
考古学家、遗传学家、语言学家和其他专家在过去六年中的发现丰富了我们对这个故事的理解，但没有改变故事的主要轮廓。让我举三个例子。GGS的地理覆盖范围最大的差距之一涉及日本，1996年我对日本的史前史几乎无话可说。最近的基因证据表明，现代日本人是农业扩张的产物，与GGS中讨论的其他人类似：从公元前400年左右开始的韩国农民的扩张进入日本西南部，然后向东北方向进入日本群岛。移民带来了密集的水稻农业和金属工具，他们与原始日本人口(与现代阿伊努人有关)混合生产现代日本人，就像扩大肥沃的新月农民与欧洲原始狩猎/采集人口混合生产现代欧洲人一样。
As another example, archaeologists originally assumed that Mexican corn, beans, and squashes reached the southeastern United States by the most direct route via northeastern Mexico and eastern Texas. But it is now becoming clear that this route was too dry for farming; those crops instead took a longer route, spreading from Mexico into the southwestern United States to trigger the rise of Anasazi societies there, and then spreading east from New Mexico and Colorado through river valleys of the Great Plains into the southeastern United States.
另一个例子是，考古学家最初假设墨西哥玉米、豆类和南瓜通过墨西哥东北部和得克萨斯州东部的最直接路线到达美国东南部。但现在越来越清楚的是，这条路线对于农业来说太干燥了；这些作物反而走了更长的路，从墨西哥传播到美国西南部，引发了那里阿纳萨齐人社会的兴起，然后从新墨西哥州和科罗拉多州向东传播，穿过大平原的河谷进入美国东南部。
As a final example, in Chapter 10 I contrasted the frequency of repeated independent domestications and slow spreads of the same or related plants along the Americas' north/south axis with the predominantly single domestications and rapid east/west spreads of Eurasian crops. Even more examples of those two contrasting patterns have continued to turn up, but it now appears that most or all of Eurasia's Big Five domestic mammals also underwent repeated independent domestications in different parts of Eurasia—unlike Eurasia's plants, but like the Americas' plants.
作为最后一个例子，在第10章中，我对比了重复独立驯化的频率和相同或相关植物沿美洲南北轴的缓慢传播，以及欧亚作物的主要单一驯化和快速东/西传播。这两种截然不同模式的例子不断出现，但现在看来，欧亚大陆五大家养哺乳动物中的大部分或全部也在欧亚大陆的不同地区经历了反复的独立驯化，这与欧亚大陆的植物不同，但与美洲的植物相似。
These and other discoveries add details, which continue to fascinate me, to our understanding of how agriculture's rise triggered the rise of agriculturally based complex societies in the ancient world. However, the biggest advances building on GGS have involved extensions into areas that were not the book's main focus. Since publication, thousands of people have written, phoned, e-mailed, or buttonholed me to tell me of parallels or contrasts that they noticed between the ancient continental processes of GGS and the modern or recent processes that they study. I'll tell you about four of these revelations: briefly, the illuminating example of New Zealand's Musket Wars; the perennial question “Why Europe, not China?” in more detail, parallels between competition in the ancient world and in the modern business world; and GGS's relevance to why some societies today are rich while others are poor.
这些和其他发现为我们理解农业的崛起如何引发古代以农业为基础的复杂社会的崛起增添了细节，这些细节一直让我着迷。然而，在GGS的基础上取得的最大进步涉及到扩展到本书主要关注的领域。自出版以来，成千上万的人写信、打电话、发电子邮件或给我打电话，告诉我他们注意到的古大陆GGS过程与他们研究的现代或近期过程之间的相似之处或对比。我将告诉你其中的四个启示：简单地说，新西兰步枪战争的启发性例子；长期存在的问题是“为什么是欧洲而不是中国？”更详细地说，古代世界和现代商业世界竞争的相似之处；以及GGS与当今一些社会富裕而另一些社会贫穷的相关性。
IN 1996 I DEVOTED one brief paragraph (in Chapter 13) to a phenomenon in 19th-century New Zealand history termed the Musket Wars, as an illustration of how powerful new technologies spread. The Musket Wars were a complicated, poorly understood series of tribal wars among New Zealand's indigenous Maori people, between 1818 and the 1830s—wars by which European guns spread among tribes that had previously fought one another with stone and wooden weapons. Two books published since then have increased our understanding of that chaotic period of New Zealand history, placed it in a broader historical context, and made its relevance to GGS even clearer.
1996年，我用了一个简短的段落(在第13章)描述了19世纪新西兰历史上的一个现象，称为“毛瑟枪战争”，以说明强大的新技术是如何传播的。毛瑟枪战争是新西兰土著毛利人之间一系列复杂的、鲜为人知的部落战争，发生在1818年至1830年代之间，当时欧洲的枪械在以前用石头和木头武器相互作战的部落之间传播。自那时以来出版的两本书增加了我们对新西兰混乱历史时期的理解，将其置于更广泛的历史背景中，并使其与GGS的相关性更加明确。
In the early 1800s, European traders, missionaries, and whalers began to visit New Zealand, which had been occupied 600 years previously by Polynesian farmers and fishermen known as Maoris. The first European visitors were concentrated at New Zealand's northern end. Those northern Maori tribes with the earliest access to Europeans thereby became the first tribes to acquire muskets, which gave them a big military advantage over all the other tribes lacking muskets. They used that advantage to settle scores with neighboring tribes that were their traditional enemies. But they also used muskets for a new type of warfare: long-distance raids against Maori tribes hundreds of miles away, carried out in order to outdo rivals in acquiring slaves and prestige.
19世纪初，欧洲商人、传教士和捕鲸者开始访问新西兰。600年前，新西兰被波利尼西亚农民和渔民毛利人占领。第一批欧洲游客集中在新西兰北端。这些最早接触欧洲人的北部毛利部落因此成为第一批获得步枪的部落，这使他们比所有其他缺乏步枪的部落拥有巨大的军事优势。他们利用这一优势与他们的传统敌人相邻的部落算账。但他们也使用步枪进行了一种新型的战争：对数百英里外的毛利部落进行远程袭击，目的是在获得奴隶和声望方面胜过对手。
At least as important as European muskets in making long-distance raids feasible were European-introduced potatoes (originating in South America), which yielded many more tons of food per acre or per farmer than did traditional Maori agriculture based on sweet potatoes. The main limitation that had previously prevented Maoris from undertaking long raids had been the twin problems of feeding warriors away from home for a long time, and feeding the at-home population of women and children dependent on the would-be warriors to stay home and grow sweet potatoes. Potatoes solved that bottleneck. Hence a less heroic term for the Musket Wars would be the Potato Wars.
欧洲引进的马铃薯(原产于南美洲)在使远程袭击成为可能方面至少与欧洲步枪同等重要，它每英亩或每名农民生产的粮食比传统的以甘薯为基础的毛利农业多得多。以前阻止毛利人进行长期袭击的主要限制是两个问题，一个是长期在外地为战士提供食物，另一个是为在家里的妇女和儿童提供食物，这些妇女和儿童依赖于未来的战士留在家里种植甘薯。土豆解决了这个瓶颈。因此，对步枪战争来说，一个不那么英勇的术语是土豆战争。
Whatever they are called, the Musket/Potato Wars proved very destructive, killing about one-quarter of the original Maori population. The highest body counts arose when a tribe with lots of muskets and potatoes attacked a tribe with few or none. Of the tribes not among the first to acquire muskets and potatoes, some were virtually exterminated before they could acquire them, while others made determined efforts to acquire them and thereby restore the previous military equilibrium. One episode in these wars was the conquest and mass killing of Moriori tribes by Maori tribes, as described in Chapter 2.
不管他们叫什么，步枪/土豆战争证明是极具破坏性的，杀死了大约四分之一的原始毛利人。当一个拥有大量步枪和土豆的部落攻击一个只有很少或根本没有步枪和马铃薯的部落时，尸体数量最高。在不是最先获得步枪和土豆的部落中，有些部落在获得之前就被消灭了，而另一些部落则下定决心要获得它们，从而恢复以前的军事平衡。这些战争中的一个插曲是毛利部落征服和大规模屠杀莫里奥里部落，如第2章所述。
The Musket/Potato Wars illustrate the main process running through the history of the last 10,000 years: human groups with guns, germs, and steel, or with earlier technological and military advantages, spreading at the expense of other groups, until either the latter groups became replaced or everyone came to share the new advantages. Recent history furnishes innumerable examples as Europeans expanded to other continents. In many places the non-European locals never got a chance to acquire guns and ended up losing their lives or their freedom. However, Japan did succeed in acquiring (actually, reacquiring) guns, preserved its independence, and within 50 years used its new guns to defeat a European power in the Russo-Japanese war of 1904–5. North American Plains Indians, South American Araucanian Indians, New Zealand's Maoris, and Ethiopians acquired guns and used them to hold off European conquest for a long time, though they were ultimately defeated. Today, Third World countries are doing their best to catch up with the First World by acquiring the latter's technological and agricultural advantages. Such spreads of technology and agriculture, arising ultimately from competition between human groups, must have happened at innumerable other times and places over the past 10,000 years.
步枪/土豆战争说明了过去10000年历史中的主要过程：人类群体拥有枪支、病菌和钢铁，或者拥有早期的技术和军事优势，以牺牲其他群体为代价进行传播，直到后者被取代或者所有人都分享到新的优势。随着欧洲人向其他大陆扩张，近代历史提供了无数的例子。在许多地方，非欧洲当地人从来没有机会获得枪支，最终失去了生命或自由。然而，日本确实成功地获得了枪支(实际上是重新获得了枪支)，保持了独立，并在50年内使用了新枪支在1904-1905年的日俄战争中击败了一个欧洲大国。北美平原印第安人、南美南欧印第安人、新西兰毛利人和埃塞俄比亚人获得了枪支，并用它们阻止了欧洲的长期征服，尽管他们最终被打败了。今天，第三世界国家正通过获得第一世界的技术和农业优势，竭尽全力赶超第一世界。这种技术和农业的传播最终源于人类群体之间的竞争，在过去10000年中，肯定在无数其他时间和地点发生过。
In that sense, there was nothing unusual about New Zealand's Musket/Potato Wars. While those wars were a purely local phenomenon confined to New Zealand, they are of worldwide interest because they furnish such a clear example, so narrowly confined in space and time, of so many other similar local phenomena. Within about two decades following their introduction to the northern end of New Zealand, muskets and potatoes had spread 900 miles to the southern end of New Zealand. In the past, agriculture, writing, and improved pre-gun weapons took much longer to spread much greater distances, but the underlying social processes of population replacement and competition were essentially the same. Now we are wondering whether nuclear weapons will proliferate around the world by the same often-violent process, from the eight countries that presently possess them.
从这个意义上讲，新西兰的步枪/土豆战争没有什么不寻常之处。虽然这些战争纯粹是局限于新西兰的局部现象，但它们具有全世界的利益，因为它们为如此众多的其他类似局部现象提供了一个在空间和时间上如此狭隘的明确例子。在传入新西兰北部后的大约20年内，毛瑟枪和土豆已经传播到新西兰南部900英里。在过去，农业、写作和改进的枪前武器需要更长的时间才能传播更远的距离，但人口置换和竞争的基本社会过程基本相同。现在我们想知道，核武器是否会以同样的、往往是暴力的方式从目前拥有核武器的八个国家扩散到全世界。
A SECOND AREA of active discussion since 1997 falls under a heading that could be termed “Why Europe, not China?” Most of GGS concerned differences between continents: i.e., the question of why some Eurasians rather than Aboriginal Australians, sub-Saharan Africans, or Native Americans were the ones to expand over the world within the past millennium. However, I realized that many readers would also wonder “Why, among Eurasians, was it Europeans rather than Chinese or some other group that expanded?” I knew that my readers would not let me get away with concluding GGS without saying anything about this obvious question.
1997年以来积极讨论的第二个领域属于“为什么是欧洲，而不是中国？”大多数GG关注的是大陆之间的差异：即为什么一些欧亚大陆人而不是澳大利亚土著人、撒哈拉以南非洲人或美洲土著人在过去的千年里在世界各地扩张。然而，我意识到许多读者也会想，“为什么在欧亚大陆人中，是欧洲人而不是中国人或其他群体在扩张？”我知道我的读者不会让我不提这个显而易见的问题就结束GGS。
Hence I briefly considered it in the book's epilogue. I suggested that the underlying reason behind Europe's overtaking China was something deeper than the proximate factors suggested by most historians (e.g., China's Confucianism vs. Europe's Judeo-Christian tradition, the rise of western science, the rise of European mercantilism and capitalism, Britain's deforestation coupled with its coal deposits, etc.). Behind these and other proximate factors, I saw an “Optimal Fragmentation Principle”: ultimate geographic factors that led to China becoming unified early and mostly remaining unified thereafter, while Europe remained constantly fragmented. Europe's fragmentation did, and China's unity didn't, foster the advance of technology, science, and capitalism by fostering competition between states and providing innovators with alternative sources of support and havens from persecution.
因此，我在书的结语中简要地考虑了这一点。我认为，欧洲赶超中国背后的深层原因比大多数历史学家提出的近因更为深刻(例如，中国的儒家思想与欧洲的犹太-基督教传统、西方科学的兴起、欧洲重商主义和资本主义的兴起、英国的森林砍伐加上其煤矿等)。在这些和其他近因的背后，我看到了一个“最优分裂原则”：最终的地理因素导致中国早期统一，此后大部分保持统一，而欧洲则持续分裂。欧洲的分裂确实促进了技术、科学和资本主义的进步，而中国的统一却没有，因为它促进了国家之间的竞争，为创新者提供了替代性的支持来源和免受迫害的庇护所。
Historians have subsequently pointed out to me that Europe's fragmentation, China's unity, and Europe's and China's relative strengths were all more complex than depicted in my account. The geographic boundaries of the political/social spheres that could usefully be grouped as “Europe” or “China” fluctuated over the centuries. China led Europe in technology at least until the 15th century and might do so again in the future, in which case the question “Why Europe, not China?” might only refer to an ephemeral phenomenon without deep explanation. Political fragmentation has more complex effects than only providing a constructive forum for competition: for instance, competition can be destructive as well as constructive (think of World Wars I and II). Fragmentation itself is a multifaceted rather than a monolithic concept: its effect on innovation depends on factors such as the freedom with which ideas and people can move across the boundaries between fragments, and whether the fragments are distinct or just clones of each other. Whether fragmentation is “optimal” may also vary with the measure of optimality used; a degree of political fragmentation that is optimal for technological innovation may not be optimal for economic productivity, political stability, or human happiness.
历史学家随后向我指出，欧洲的分裂、中国的统一以及欧洲和中国的相对优势都比我的描述更加复杂。政治/社会领域的地理边界可以有效地归为“欧洲”或“中国”，几个世纪以来一直在波动。至少在15世纪之前，中国在技术上一直领先于欧洲，未来可能还会这样，在这种情况下，问题是“为什么是欧洲，而不是中国？”可能只是指一种短暂的现象，没有深入的解释。政治分裂的影响比仅仅为竞争提供建设性论坛更为复杂：例如，竞争既可以是建设性的，也可以是破坏性的(想想第一次和第二次世界大战)。碎片化本身是一个多方面的概念，而不是一个单一的概念：它对创新的影响取决于各种因素，例如思想和人可以自由地跨越碎片之间的边界，以及碎片是不同的还是只是彼此的克隆。碎片化是否“最优”也可能因所使用的最优度量而不同；对技术创新最有利的一定程度的政治分裂对经济生产率、政治稳定或人类幸福可能不是最佳的。
My sense is that a large majority of social scientists still favors proximate explanations for the different courses of European and Chinese history. For example, in a thoughtful recent essay Jack Goldstone stressed the importance of Europe's (especially Britain's) “engine science,” meaning the applications of science to the development of machines and engines. Goldstone wrote, “Two problems faced all pre-industrial economies in regard to energy: amount and concentration. The amount of mechanical energy available to any pre-industrial economy was limited to water flows, animals or people who could be fed, and wind that could be captured. In any geographically fixed area, this amount was strictly limited.…It is difficult to overstate the advantage given to the first economy or military/political power to devise a means to extract useful work from the energy in fossil fuels…. [It was] the application of steam power to spinning, to water and surface transport, to brick-making, grain-threshing, iron-making, shoveling, construction, and all sorts of manufacturing processes that transformed Britain's economy…. It thus may be that, far from a necessary development of European civilization, the rich development of engine science was the chance outcome of specific, even if highly contingent, circumstances that happened to arise in 17th- and 18th-century Britain.” If this reasoning is correct, then a search for deep geographic or ecological explanations will not be profitable.
我的感觉是，绝大多数社会科学家仍然倾向于对欧洲和中国历史的不同过程进行近似解释。例如，杰克·戈德斯通(Jack Goldstone)在最近一篇深思熟虑的文章中强调了欧洲(特别是英国)“发动机科学”的重要性，这意味着科学在机器和发动机开发中的应用。戈德斯通写道， “在能源方面，所有前工业经济体都面临两个问题：数量和集中度。任何前工业经济的机械能供应量都仅限于水流、可以喂养的动物或人，以及可以捕获的风。在任何地理固定的地区，这一数量都受到严格限制……第一种能源的优势很难夸大。”经济或军事/政治力量来设计一种从化石燃料中的能源中提取有用工作的方法…。正是蒸汽动力在纺纱、水陆运输、制砖、谷物脱粒、炼铁、铲土、建筑和各种制造工艺中的应用改变了英国的经济…。因此，发动机科学的丰富发展可能远不是欧洲文明的必要发展，而是17世纪和18世纪英国发生的特定(即使是高度偶然)情况的偶然结果。”如果这一推理是正确的，那么寻找深层地理或生态解释将无利可图。
The opposite minority view, similar to my view expressed in the epilogue of GGS, has been argued in detail by Graeme Lang: “Differences between Europe and China in ecology and geography helped to explain the very different fates of science in the two regions. First, [rainfall] agriculture in Europe provided no role for the state, which remained far from local communities most of the time, and when the agricultural revolution in Europe produced a growing agricultural surplus, this allowed the growth of relatively autonomous towns along with urban institutions such as universities prior to the rise of the centralized states in the late Middle Ages. [Irrigation and water-control] agriculture in China, by contrast, favored the early development of intrusive and coercive states in the major river valleys, while towns and their institutions never achieved the degree of local autonomy found in Europe. Second, the geography of China, unlike that of Europe, did not favor the prolonged survival of independent states. Instead, China's geography facilitated eventual conquest and unification over a vast area, followed by long periods of relative stability under imperial rule. The resulting state system suppressed most of the conditions required for the emergence of modern science…. The explanation outlined above is certainly oversimplified. However, one of the advantages of this kind of account is that it escapes the circularity which often creeps into explanations which do not go deeper than social or cultural differences between Europe and China. Such explanations can always be challenged with a further question: why were Europe and China different with regard to those social or cultural factors? Explanations rooted ultimately in geography and ecology, however, have reached bedrock.”
相反的少数人观点，类似于我在GGS的结语中表达的观点，格雷姆·朗(Graeme Lang)对此进行了详细论证：“欧洲和中国在生态和地理方面的差异有助于解释这两个地区科学的不同命运。首先，[降雨]欧洲的农业没有为国家提供任何作用，因为国家大部分时间远离当地社区，当欧洲的农业革命产生了越来越多的农业盈余时，这使得相对自治的城镇以及城市机构(如大学)得以发展，直到中世纪晚期中央集权国家崛起。相比之下，中国的农业有利于在主要河谷地区早期发展侵扰性和强制性国家，而城镇及其机构从未达到欧洲的地方自治程度。其次，与欧洲不同，中国的地理位置不利于独立国家的长期生存。相反，中国的地理位置促进了对大片地区的最终征服和统一，随后在帝国统治下实现了长期的相对稳定。由此产生的国家体系抑制了现代科学出现所需的大部分条件…。上述解释显然过于简单。然而，这种解释的优点之一是，它避开了通常潜入解释的循环性，而这些解释并不比欧洲和中国之间的社会或文化差异更深。这种解释总是会受到另一个问题的挑战：为什么欧洲和中国在这些社会或文化因素方面有所不同？然而，最终植根于地理和生态学的解释已经达到了基础。”
It remains a challenge for historians to reconcile these different approaches to answering the question “Why Europe, not China.” The answer may have important consequences for how best to govern China and Europe today. For example, from Lang's and my perspective, the disaster of China's Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s, when a few misguided leaders were able to close the school systems of the world's largest country for five years, may not be a unique one-time-only aberration, but may presage more such disasters in the future unless China can introduce far more decentralization into its political system. Conversely, Europe, in its rush toward political and economic unity today, will have to devote much thought to how to avoid dismantling the underlying reason behind its successes of the last five centuries.
对于历史学家来说，调和这些不同的方法来回答“为什么是欧洲而不是中国”的问题仍然是一个挑战。这个答案可能会对当今如何更好地治理中国和欧洲产生重要影响。例如，从朗和我的角度来看，20世纪60年代和70年代中国文化大革命的灾难，当时一些被误导的领导人能够关闭这个世界上最大的国家的学校系统五年，可能不是唯一的一次性反常现象，但除非中国能在其政治体系中引入更多的分权，否则这可能预示着未来会发生更多的此类灾难。相反，欧洲在今天走向政治和经济统一的过程中，将不得不花很多心思来避免瓦解其过去五个世纪成功背后的根本原因。
THE THIRD RECENT extension of GGS's message to the modern world was to me the most unexpected one. Soon after the book's publication, it was reviewed favorably by Bill Gates, and then I began receiving letters from other business people and economists who pointed out possible parallels between the histories of entire human societies discussed in GGS and the histories of groups in the business world. This correspondence concerned the following broad question: what is the best way to organize human groups, organizations, and businesses so as to maximize productivity, creativity, innovation, and wealth? Should your group have a centralized direction (in the extreme, a dictator), or should there be diffuse leadership or even anarchy? Should your collection of people be organized into a single group, or broken down into a small or large number of groups? Should you maintain open communication between your groups, or erect walls of secrecy between them? Should you erect protectionist tariff walls against the outside, or should you expose your business to free competition?
GGS的信息最近第三次延伸到现代世界，这对我来说是最意想不到的。这本书出版后不久，比尔·盖茨对它进行了好评，然后我开始收到其他商界人士和经济学家的来信，他们指出了GGS中讨论的整个人类社会的历史与商界团体的历史之间可能存在的相似之处。这封信函涉及以下广泛的问题：组织人类团体、组织和企业以最大限度地提高生产力、创造力、创新和财富的最佳方式是什么？你的团队应该有一个集中的方向(在极端情况下，是独裁者)，还是应该有分散的领导，甚至是无政府状态？你的团队应该被组织成一个单一的团队，还是被分解成一个小的或大量的团队？你应该在你的团队之间保持开放的交流，还是在他们之间竖起保密墙？你是应该对外竖起保护主义关税壁垒，还是应该让你的企业面临自由竞争？
These questions arise at many different levels and for many types of groups. They apply to the organization of entire countries: remember the perennial arguments about whether the best form of government is a benign dictatorship, a federal system, or an anarchical free-for-all. The same questions arise about the organization of different companies within the same industry. How can we account for the fact that Microsoft has been so successful recently, while IBM, which was formerly successful, fell behind but then drastically changed its organization and improved its success? How can we explain the different successes of different industrial belts? When I was a boy growing up in Boston, Route 128, the industrial belt around Boston, led the world in scientific creativity and imagination. But Route 128 has fallen behind, and now Silicon Valley is the center of innovation. The relations of businesses to one another in Silicon Valley and on Route 128 are very different, possibly resulting in those different outcomes.
这些问题出现在许多不同的层面和许多类型的群体中。它们适用于整个国家的组织：请记住关于政府的最佳形式是良性独裁、联邦制还是无政府主义的全民自由的长期争论。同样的问题也出现在同一行业内不同公司的组织上。我们如何解释这样一个事实，即微软最近取得了如此成功，而以前成功的IBM却落后了，但随后彻底改变了其组织结构并提高了其成功率？我们如何解释不同产业带的不同成功？当我还是个孩子的时候，在波士顿长大，128号公路是波士顿周围的工业带，在科学创造力和想象力方面引领着世界。但128号公路已经落后，现在硅谷是创新中心。硅谷和128号公路上的企业之间的关系非常不同，可能导致这些不同的结果。
Of course, there are also the famous differences between the productivities of the economies of whole countries, such as Japan, the United States, France, and Germany. Actually, though, there are big differences between the productivity and wealth of different business sectors even within the same country. For example, the Korean steel industry is equal in efficiency to ours, but all other Korean industries lag behind their American counterparts. What is it about the different organization of these various Korean industries that accounts for their differences in productivity within the same country?
当然，日本、美国、法国和德国等整个国家的经济生产率之间也存在着著名的差异。然而，事实上，即使在同一个国家，不同行业的生产率和财富也存在巨大差异。例如，韩国钢铁工业的效率与我们的相同，但所有其他韩国工业都落后于美国同行。这些不同韩国产业的不同组织是什么导致了它们在同一个国家内生产率的差异？
Obviously, answers to these questions about differences in organizational success depend partly on the idiosyncrasies of individuals. For example, the success of Microsoft has surely had something to do with the personal talents of Bill Gates. Even with a superior corporate organization, Microsoft would not be successful with an ineffectual leader. Nevertheless, one can still ask: all other things being equal, or else in the long run, or else on the average, what form of organization of human groups is best?
显然，这些关于组织成功差异的问题的答案部分取决于个人的特质。例如，微软的成功肯定与比尔·盖茨的个人才能有关。即使有一个优秀的企业组织，如果有一个无能的领导者，微软也不会成功。然而，人们仍然可以问：在所有其他条件相同的情况下，或者从长远来看，或者从平均来看，什么样的人类群体组织形式是最好的？
My comparison of the histories of China, the Indian subcontinent, and Europe in the epilogue of GGS suggested an answer to this question as applied to technological innovation in whole countries. As explained in the preceding section, I inferred that competition between different political entities spurred innovation in geographically fragmented Europe, and that the lack of such competition held innovation back in unified China. Would that mean that a higher degree of political fragmentation than Europe's would be even better? Probably not: India was geographically even more fragmented than Europe, but less innovative technologically. This suggested to me the Optimal Fragmentation Principle: innovation proceeds most rapidly in a society with some optimal intermediate degree of fragmentation: a too-unified society is at a disadvantage, and so is a too-fragmented society.
在GGS的尾声中，我对中国、印度次大陆和欧洲的历史进行了比较，提出了这个问题的答案，适用于整个国家的技术创新。如前一节所述，我推断不同政治实体之间的竞争刺激了地理上分散的欧洲的创新，而缺乏这种竞争阻碍了统一的中国的创新。这是否意味着比欧洲更高程度的政治分裂会更好？可能不是：印度在地理上甚至比欧洲更为分散，但在技术上创新较少。这向我提出了最优分割原则：创新在具有某种最优中间分割程度的社会中进行得最快：一个过于统一的社会处于不利地位，一个过于分散的社会也是如此。
This inference rang a bell with Bill Lewis and other executives of McKinsey Global Institute, a leading consulting firm based in Washington, D.C., which carries out comparative studies of the economies of countries and industries all over the world. The executives were so struck by the parallels between their business experience and my historical inferences that they presented a copy of GGS to each of the firm's several hundred partners, and they presented me with copies of their reports on the economies of the United States, France, Germany, Korea, Japan, Brazil, and other countries. They, too, detected a key role of competition and group size in spurring innovation. Here are some of the conclusions that I gleaned from conversations with McKinsey executives and from their reports:
这一推断让比尔·刘易斯(BillLewis)和麦肯锡全球研究所(McKinseyGlobal Institute)的其他高管们大吃一惊。麦肯锡是一家总部位于华盛顿的领先咨询公司，该公司对世界各国和各行业的经济进行了比较研究。高管们被他们的商业经验与我的历史推断之间的相似之处深深打动，他们向公司的数百名合伙人每人提交了一份GGS，并向我提交了他们关于美国、法国、德国、韩国、日本、巴西和其他国家经济的报告。他们也发现了竞争和团队规模在刺激创新方面的关键作用。以下是我从与麦肯锡高管的对话和他们的报告中得出的一些结论：
We Americans often fantasize that German and Japanese industries are super-efficient, exceeding American industries in productivity. In reality, that's not true: on the average across all industries, America's industrial productivity is higher than that in either Japan or Germany. But those average figures conceal big differences among the industries of each country, related to differences in organization—and those differences are very instructive. Let me give you two examples from McKinsey case studies on the German beer industry and the Japanese food-processing industry.
我们美国人经常幻想德国和日本的工业是超级高效的，在生产力上超过了美国的工业。事实上并非如此：在所有行业中，美国的平均工业生产率都高于日本或德国。但这些平均数字掩盖了每个国家行业之间的巨大差异，与组织结构的差异有关，这些差异非常有启发性。让我给大家举两个麦肯锡案例研究的例子，分别是德国啤酒行业和日本食品加工业。
Germans make wonderful beer. Every time that my wife and I fly to Germany for a visit, we carry with us an empty suitcase, so we can fill it with bottles of German beer to bring back to the United States and enjoy over the following year. Yet the productivity of the German beer industry is only 43 percent that of the U.S. beer industry. Meanwhile, the German metalworking and steel industries are equal in productivity to their American counterparts. Since the Germans are evidently perfectly capable of organizing industries well, why can't they do so when it comes to beer?
德国人酿的啤酒很棒。每次我和妻子飞往德国访问时，我们都会随身携带一个空手提箱，这样我们就可以装满几瓶德国啤酒，带回美国，在接下来的一年里尽情享受。然而，德国啤酒行业的生产率仅为美国啤酒行业的43%。与此同时，德国金属加工和钢铁行业的生产率与美国同行相当。既然德国人显然完全有能力很好地组织工业，为什么在啤酒方面他们就不能这样做呢？
It turns out that the German beer industry suffers from small-scale production. There are a thousand tiny beer companies in Germany, shielded from competition with one another because each German brewery has virtually a local monopoly, and they are also shielded from competition with imports. The United States has 67 major beer breweries, producing 23 billion liters of beer per year. All of Germany's 1,000 breweries combined produce only half as much. Thus the average U.S. brewery produces 31 times more beer than the average German brewery.
事实证明，德国啤酒行业受到小规模生产的影响。德国有上千家小型啤酒公司，它们彼此之间没有竞争，因为每个德国啤酒厂实际上都是当地的垄断企业，它们也免受进口啤酒的竞争。美国有67家主要的啤酒厂，每年生产230亿升啤酒。德国1000家啤酒厂的产量加起来只有原来的一半。因此，美国啤酒厂的平均产量是德国啤酒厂的31倍。
This fact results from local tastes and German government policies. German beer drinkers are fiercely loyal to their local brand, so there are no national brands in Germany analogous to our Budweiser, Miller, or Coors. Instead, most German beer is consumed within 30 miles of the factory where it is brewed. Therefore, the German beer industry cannot profit from economies of scale. In the beer business, as in other businesses, production costs decrease greatly with scale. The bigger the refrigerating unit for making beer, and the longer the assembly line for filling bottles with beer, the lower the cost of manufacturing beer. Those tiny German beer companies are relatively inefficient. There's no competition; there are just a thousand local monopolies.
这一事实源于当地口味和德国政府政策。德国啤酒饮用者非常忠于他们的本土品牌，因此德国没有一个国家品牌可以与我们的百威、米勒或库尔斯相媲美。相反，大多数德国啤酒都是在距离啤酒酿造厂30英里的范围内消费的。因此，德国啤酒行业无法从规模经济中获利。与其他行业一样，啤酒行业的生产成本随着规模的扩大而大幅下降。生产啤酒的制冷装置越大，灌装啤酒的装配线越长，生产啤酒的成本就越低。那些小型德国啤酒公司的效率相对较低。没有竞争；只有上千家地方垄断企业。
The local beer loyalties of individual German drinkers are reinforced by German laws that make it hard for foreign beers to compete in the German market. The German government has so-called beer purity laws that specify exactly what can go into beer. Not surprisingly, those government purity specifications are based on what German breweries put into beer, and not on what American, French, and Swedish breweries like to put into beer. Because of those laws, not much foreign beer gets exported to Germany, and because of inefficiency and high prices much less of that wonderful German beer than you would otherwise expect gets sold abroad. (Before you object that German L wenbr u beer is widely available in the United States, please read the label on the next bottle of L wenbr u that you drink here: it's not produced in Germany but in North America, under license, in big factories with North American productivity and efficiencies of scale.)
德国法律强化了个别德国饮酒者对当地啤酒的忠诚，使外国啤酒难以在德国市场竞争。德国政府制定了所谓的啤酒纯度法，明确规定了啤酒的成分。毫不奇怪，这些政府纯度规范是基于德国啤酒厂在啤酒中的添加量，而不是美国、法国和瑞典啤酒厂喜欢在啤酒中添加什么。由于这些法律，没有多少外国啤酒出口到德国，而且由于低效率和高价格，这种美妙的德国啤酒比你想象的要少得多。(在你反对德国L wenbr u啤酒在美国广泛销售之前，请阅读你在这里喝的下一瓶L wenbr u啤酒上的标签：它不是在德国生产的，而是在北美生产的，根据许可证，在北美生产率和规模效率都很高的大工厂生产的。)
The German soap industry and consumer electronics industry are similarly inefficient; their companies are not exposed to competition with one another, nor are they exposed to foreign competition, and so they do not acquire the best practices of international industry. (When is the last time that you bought an imported TV set made in Germany?) But those disadvantages are not shared by the German metal and steel industries, in which big German companies have to compete with one another and internationally, and thus are forced to acquire the best international practices.
德国肥皂行业和消费电子行业同样效率低下；他们的公司没有相互竞争，也没有外国竞争，因此他们没有获得国际行业的最佳实践。(你上一次购买德国制造的进口电视机是什么时候？)但这些劣势并不是德国金属和钢铁行业所共有的，在这些行业中，大型德国公司必须相互竞争，在国际上竞争，因此被迫获得最佳国际实践。
My other favorite example from the McKinsey reports concerns the Japanese food-processing industry. We Americans tend to be paranoid about Japanese efficiency, and it is indeed formidable in some industries—but not in food-processing. The efficiency of the Japanese food-processing industry is a miserable 32 percent that of ours. There are 67,000 food-processing companies in Japan, compared to only 21,000 in the United States, which has twice Japan's population—so the average U.S. food-processing company is six times bigger than its Japanese counterpart. Why does the Japanese food-processing industry, like the German beer industry, consist of small companies with local monopolies? Basically, the answer is the same two reasons: local taste and government policies.
麦肯锡报告中我最喜欢的另一个例子涉及日本食品加工业。我们美国人倾向于对日本的效率持偏执态度，在某些行业，效率确实令人望而生畏，但在食品加工行业却不是。日本食品加工业的效率比我们低32%。日本有67000家食品加工公司，而美国只有21000家，而美国的人口是日本的两倍，因此美国食品加工公司的平均规模是日本的六倍。为什么日本的食品加工业像德国的啤酒工业一样，由当地垄断的小公司组成？基本上，答案是相同的，原因有两个：地方品味和政府政策。
The Japanese are fanatics for fresh food. A container of milk in a U.S. supermarket bears only one date: the expiration date. When my wife and I visited a Tokyo supermarket with one of my wife's Japanese cousins, we were surprised to discover that in Japan a milk container bears three dates: the date the milk was manufactured, the date it arrived at the supermarket, and the expiration date. Milk production in Japan always starts at one minute past midnight, so that the milk that goes to market in the morning can be labeled as today's milk. If the milk were produced at 11:59 P.M., the date on the container would have to indicate that the milk was made yesterday, and no Japanese consumer would buy it.
日本人热衷于新鲜食物。美国一家超市的牛奶容器上只有一个日期：过期日期。当我和妻子与我妻子的一个日本表亲参观东京一家超市时，我们惊讶地发现，在日本，牛奶容器上有三个日期：牛奶的生产日期、到达超市的日期和过期日期。日本的牛奶生产总是在午夜后一分钟开始，所以早上上市的牛奶可以被标记为今天的牛奶。如果牛奶是在晚上11:59生产的，容器上的日期必须表明牛奶是昨天生产的，没有日本消费者会购买。
As a result, Japanese food-processing companies enjoy local monopolies. A milk producer in northern Japan cannot hope to compete in southern Japan, because transporting milk there would take an extra day or two, a fatal disadvantage in the eyes of consumers. These local monopolies are reinforced by the Japanese government, which obstructs the import of foreign processed food by imposing a 10-day quarantine, among other restrictions. (Imagine how Japanese consumers who shun food labeled as only one day old feel about food 10 days old.) Hence Japanese food-producing companies are not exposed to either domestic or foreign competition, and they don't learn the best international methods for producing food. Partly as a result, food prices in Japan are very high: the best beef costs $200 a pound, while chicken costs $25 a pound.
因此，日本食品加工公司享有当地垄断地位。日本北部的一家牛奶生产商不能指望与日本南部竞争，因为在那里运输牛奶需要多花一两天时间，这在消费者眼中是一个致命的劣势。日本政府通过实施10天检疫等限制措施来阻止外国加工食品的进口，从而强化了这些地方垄断。(想象一下，日本消费者不喜欢贴上“只有一天久”标签的食品，他们对10天久的食品的感觉。)因此，日本食品生产公司既没有面临国内竞争，也没有学习到最好的国际食品生产方法。部分原因是，日本的食品价格非常高：最好的牛肉每磅200美元，而鸡肉每磅25美元。
Some other Japanese industries are organized very differently from the food processors. For instance, Japanese steel, metal, car, car parts, camera, and consumer electronic companies compete fiercely and have higher productivities than their U.S. counterparts. But the Japanese soap, beer, and computer industries, like the Japanese food-processing industry, are not exposed to competition, do not apply the best practices, and thus have lower productivities than the corresponding industries in the United States. (If you look around your house, you are likely to find that your TV set and camera, and possibly also your car, are Japanese, but that your computer and soap are not.)
日本其他一些行业的组织结构与食品加工商非常不同。例如，日本的钢铁、金属、汽车、汽车零部件、相机和消费电子公司竞争激烈，生产率高于美国同行。但日本肥皂、啤酒和计算机行业，如日本食品加工行业，没有受到竞争的影响，没有采用最佳实践，因此生产率低于美国的相应行业。(如果你环顾你的房子，你可能会发现你的电视机和照相机，可能还有你的车，都是日本人，但你的电脑和肥皂不是。)
Finally, let's apply these lessons to comparing different industrial belts or businesses within the United States. Since the publication of GGS, I've spent much time talking with people from Silicon Valley and from Route 128, and they tell me that these two industrial belts are quite different in terms of corporate ethos. Silicon Valley consists of lots of companies that are fiercely competitive with one another. Nevertheless, there is much collaboration—a free flow of ideas, people, and information among companies. In contrast, I'm told, the businesses of Route 128 are much more secretive and insulated from one another, like Japanese milk-producing companies.
最后，让我们将这些经验教训应用于比较美国的不同产业带或企业。自从GGS出版以来，我花了很多时间与来自硅谷和128号公路的人交谈，他们告诉我这两个产业带在企业精神方面有很大的不同。硅谷由许多相互竞争激烈的公司组成。然而，公司之间有很多合作——思想、人员和信息的自由流动。据我所知，相比之下，128号公路的业务更加神秘，彼此隔绝，就像日本的牛奶生产公司一样。
What about the contrast between Microsoft and IBM? Since GGS was published, I've acquired friends at Microsoft and have learned about that corporation's distinctive organization. Microsoft has lots of units, each comprised of 5 to 10 people, with free communication among units, and the units are not micromanaged; they are allowed a great deal of freedom in pursuing their own ideas. That unusual organization at Microsoft—which in essence is broken into many competing semi-independent units—contrasts with the organization at IBM, which until some years ago consisted of much more insulated groups and resulted in IBM's loss of competitive ability. Then IBM acquired a new chief executive officer who changed things drastically: IBM now has a more Microsoft-like organization, and I'm told that IBM's innovativeness has improved as a result.
微软和IBM之间的对比如何？自从GGS出版以来，我在微软结识了朋友，了解了该公司独特的组织结构。微软有很多部门，每个部门由5到10人组成，各部门之间可以自由交流，这些部门不受微观管理；他们在追求自己的想法时有很大的自由。微软的这一不同寻常的组织本质上被划分为许多相互竞争的半独立单位，这与IBM的组织形成了鲜明的对比。几年前，IBM的组织由更为孤立的集团组成，导致IBM失去了竞争能力。然后IBM收购了一位新的首席执行官，他彻底改变了一切：IBM现在有了一个更像微软的组织，我听说IBM的创新能力因此得到了提高。
All of this suggests that we may be able to extract a general principle about group organization. If your goal is innovation and competitive ability, you don't want either excessive unity or excessive fragmentation. Instead, you want your country, industry, industrial belt, or company to be broken up into groups that compete with one another while maintaining relatively free communication—like the U.S. federal government system, with its built-in competition between our 50 states.
所有这些都表明，我们可能能够提取出一个关于团队组织的一般原则。如果你的目标是创新和竞争能力，你不希望过度团结或过度分裂。相反，你希望你的国家、行业、产业带或公司被分解成相互竞争的集团，同时保持相对自由的沟通，比如美国联邦政府系统，它在我们50个州之间具有内在的竞争。
THE REMAINING EXTENSION of GGS has been into one of the central questions of world economics: why are some countries (like the United States and Switzerland) rich, while other countries (like Paraguay and Mali) are poor? Per-capita gross national products (GNP) of the world's richest countries are more than 100 times those of the poorest countries. This is not just a challenging theoretical question giving employment to economics professors, but also one with important policy implications. If we could identify the answers, then poor countries could concentrate on changing the things that keep them poor and on adopting the things that make other countries rich.
GGS的剩余延伸已经成为世界经济的核心问题之一：为什么一些国家(如美国和瑞士)富有，而其他国家(如巴拉圭和马里)贫穷？世界上最富裕国家的人均国民生产总值是最贫穷国家的100多倍。这不仅是一个给经济学教授提供就业机会的具有挑战性的理论问题，也是一个具有重要政策意义的问题。如果我们能够找到答案，那么穷国就可以专注于改变让它们贫穷的东西，并采纳让其他国家富裕的东西。
Obviously, part of the answer depends on differences in human institutions. The clearest evidence for this view comes from pairs of countries that divide essentially the same environment but have very different institutions and, associated with those institutions, different per-capita GNPs. Four flagrant examples are the comparison of South Korea with North Korea, the former West Germany with the former East Germany, the Dominican Republic with Haiti, and Israel with its Arab neighbors. Among the many “good institutions” often invoked to explain the greater wealth of the first-named country of each of these pairs are effective rule of law, enforcement of contracts, protection of private property rights, lack of corruption, low frequency of assassinations, openness to trade and to flow of capital, incentives for investment, and so on.
显然，部分答案取决于人类制度的差异。这一观点最明显的证据来自于两个国家，它们在本质上划分了相同的环境，但拥有非常不同的制度，与这些制度相关的是不同的人均国民生产总值。四个明显的例子是将韩国与朝鲜、前西德与前东德、多米尼加共和国与海地以及以色列与其阿拉伯邻国进行比较。在许多经常被用来解释第一个国家更大财富的“好制度”中，每一对都包括有效的法治、合同的执行、私有产权的保护、缺乏腐败、暗杀频率低、贸易和资本流动的开放性、投资激励等。
Undoubtedly, good institutions are indeed part of the answer to the different wealths of nations. Many, perhaps most, economists go further and believe that good institutions are overwhelmingly the most important explanation. Many governments, agencies, and foundations base their policies, foreign aid, and loans on this explanation, by making the development of good institutions in poor countries their top priority.
毫无疑问，良好的制度确实是解决各国不同财富问题的答案的一部分。许多(或许是大多数)经济学家走得更远，认为良好的制度绝对是最重要的解释。许多政府、机构和基金会的政策、对外援助和贷款都基于这一解释，将在穷国建立良好的机构作为首要任务。
But there is increasing recognition that this good-institutions view is incomplete—not wrong, just incomplete—and that other important factors need addressing if poor countries are to become rich. This recognition has its own policy implications. One cannot just introduce good institutions to poor countries like Paraguay and Mali and expect those countries to adopt the institutions and achieve the per-capita GNPs of the United States and Switzerland. The criticisms of the good-institutions view are of two main types. One type recognizes the importance of other proximate variables besides good institutions, such as public health, soil- and climate-imposed limits on agricultural productivity, and environmental fragility. The other type concerns the origin of good institutions.
但人们越来越认识到，这种良好制度的观点是不完整的，不是错误的，只是不完整，如果穷国要致富，其他重要因素也需要解决。这一认识有其自身的政策含义。我们不能仅仅向巴拉圭和马里等穷国引进良好的制度，并期望这些国家采用这些制度，实现美国和瑞士的人均国民生产总值。对良好制度观点的批评主要有两种。一类认识到良好制度之外的其他近因变量的重要性，如公共卫生、土壤和气候对农业生产力的限制以及环境脆弱性。另一类涉及良好制度的起源。
According to the latter criticism, it is not enough to consider good institutions as a proximate influence whose origins are of no further practical interest. Good institutions are not a random variable that could have popped up anywhere around the globe, in Denmark or in Somalia, with equal probability. Instead, it seems to me that, in the past, good institutions always arose because of a long chain of historical connections from ultimate causes rooted in geography to the proximate dependent variables of the institutions. We must understand that chain if we hope, now, to produce good institutions quickly in countries lacking them.
根据后一种批评，仅仅将良好制度视为其起源没有进一步实际意义的直接影响是不够的。好的制度不是一个随机变量，它可能会以同样的概率出现在全球任何地方，比如丹麦或索马里。相反，在我看来，在过去，好的制度总是因为一长串的历史联系而产生的，从根源于地理的最终原因到制度的近因变量。如果我们现在希望在缺乏良好制度的国家迅速建立良好制度，我们就必须理解这条链条。
At the time that I wrote GGS, I commented, “The nations rising to new power [today] are still ones that were incorporated thousands of years ago into the old centers of dominance based on food production, or that have been repopulated by peoples from those centers…. The hand of history's course at 8,000 B.C. lies heavily on us.” Two new papers by economists (Olsson and Hibbs, and Bockstette, Chanda, and Putterman) have subjected this postulated heavy hand of history to detailed tests. It turns out that countries in regions with long histories of state societies or agriculture have higher per-capita GNP than countries with short histories, even after other variables have been controlled. The effect explains a large fraction of the variance in GNP. Even just among countries with still-low or recently low GNPs, countries in regions with long histories of state societies or agriculture, like South Korea, Japan, and China, have higher growth rates than countries with short histories, such as New Guinea and the Philippines, even though some of the countries with short histories are much richer in natural resources.
在我写GGS的时候，我评论道：“崛起为新强国的国家(今天)仍然是几千年前并入以粮食生产为基础的旧统治中心的国家，或者是那些中心的人民重新定居的国家……公元前8000年的历史进程在很大程度上掌握在我们手中。经济学家的两篇新论文(奥尔森和希布斯，以及博克斯泰特、钱达和普特曼)对这一假定的历史重拳进行了详细的检验。结果表明，即使在控制了其他变量后，国家社会或农业历史悠久的地区的国家人均国民生产总值也高于历史较短的国家。这一效应解释了国民生产总值变化的很大一部分。即使只是在国民生产总值仍然较低或最近较低的国家中，国家社会或农业历史悠久的地区，如韩国、日本和中国，其增长率也高于历史较短的国家，如新几内亚和菲律宾，尽管一些历史较短国家的自然资源要丰富得多。
There are many obvious reasons for these effects of history, such as that long experience of state societies and agriculture implies experienced administrators, experience with market economies, and so on. Statistically, part of that ultimate effect of history proves to be mediated by the familiar proximate causes of good institutions. But there is still a large effect of history remaining after one controls for the usual measures of good institutions. Hence there must be other mediating proximate mechanisms as well. Thus a key problem will be to understand the detailed chain of causation from a long history of state societies and agriculture to modern economic growth, in order to help developing countries advance up that chain more quickly.
历史的这些影响有许多明显的原因，例如国家社会和农业的长期经验意味着有经验的管理者、市场经济的经验等等。从统计上看，历史的最终影响部分被证明是由良好制度的常见近因所介导的。但在人们控制了良好制度的通常衡量标准后，历史仍有很大影响。因此，还必须有其他调解机制。因此，一个关键问题将是理解从国家社会和农业的悠久历史到现代经济增长的详细因果关系链，以帮助发展中国家更快地向这条链上推进。
In short, the themes of GGS seem to me to be not only a driving force in the ancient world but also a ripe area for study in the modern world.
简而言之，在我看来，GGS的主题不仅是古代世界的驱动力，也是现代世界研究的成熟领域。