背景介绍：
工业革命是西方认为人类进入现代社会的起点，从工业革命开始西方的生产力终于开始逆转，让东方充裕的人力变得无关紧要。技术革新的力量成为了社会的主要发展动力，任何落后于这个技术变革潮流的国家都会发现不管自己历史上有多么丰富文化的积累沉淀和多少的人力与资源，都不可避免地被工业化国家轻松的击败，于是全球工业化便不可避免。现在回头来看工业革命发生在英国似乎有点不可思议，为什么是在英国而不是法国、荷兰以及其他国家？
A flurry ofnew studies identifies causes of the Industrial Revolution
一系列新的研究找出了工业革命的原因
Slave-ownership, entrepreneurs and labour shortages played key roles
奴隶所有制、企业家和劳动力短缺发挥了重要作用
The industrial revolution was the biggesttransformationin economic history. For centuries scholars have sought to understand why this process occurred in Britain around 1750. But without the ability to run counter-factual experiments, it is hard to prove any single explanation.
工业革命是经济史上最大的变革。几个世纪以来，学者们一直试图理解为什么这个过程会在1750年左右发生在英国。但是，如果没有进行反事实实验的能力，就很难证明任何单一的解释。
Researchers are now testing theories by studying why similar parts of Britain industrialised at different rates. New papers haveyieldedevidence for a few key factors: slave-owners’ capital, entrepreneurs who stood to benefit from investing, and shortages of lower-skilled workers.
研究人员现在正在通过研究与英国类似的地区为何以不同的速度工业化来验证这些理论。新的论文为几个关键因素提供了证据：奴隶主的资本、从投资中获益的企业家以及低技能工人的短缺。
Industrialisation requires investment, which requires capital. To measure the impact ofavailable wealth, Stephan Heblich, Stephen Redding and Hans-Joachim Voth analysed geographic variation in ownership of plantations.
工业化需要投资，而投资需要资本。为了衡量现有财富的影响，斯蒂芬·赫布里奇、斯蒂芬·雷丁和汉斯-约阿希姆·沃斯分析了种植园所有权的地理差异。
The riches Britonsextracted fromslaves in the Americas flowed mainly to a few cities, such as Liverpool. By the 1830s these regions had large numbers of cotton mills andshares of workers employed in manufacturing.
英国人从美洲奴隶身上榨取的财富主要流向了利物浦等少数几个城市。到19世纪30年代，这些地区已经有了大量的棉纺厂和从事制造业的工人。
Other factors could have made these areas both amass wealth from slavery and industrialise quickly. But the paper tries toisolateslavery’s impact using slave ships’ voyages. Long journeys, caused mainly by bad weather, reduced the share of captives who survived and thus traders’ profits.
其他因素可能使这些地区既从奴隶制中积累财富，又迅速工业化。但这篇论文试图通过奴隶船的航行来分离奴隶制的影响。主要由恶劣天气引起的长途旅行降低了俘虏的存活率，从而降低了商人的利润。
And among similar areas, those where the trips of the slave-trading ancestors of residents in the 1830s were unusually short industrialised faster than did those where residents’ ancestors’ trips wereatypicallylong.
在类似的地区，那些19世纪30年代从事奴隶贸易的居民祖先旅程异常短的地区，比那些旅程异常长的地区工业化速度更快。
Investors still needed financial incentives to buy machines. In early modern Britain, mosttenantfarmers paid fixed rents, stopping both workers who moved elsewhere and landlords from profiting from investment.
投资者仍然需要经济激励来购买机器。在近代早期的英国，大多数佃农支付固定租金，阻止了移居别处的工人和地主从投资中获利。
An exception was monasteries’ land, where such contracts were rarer. In 1536-40 Henry VIII dissolved these monasteries and sold their land. The buyers could farm or rent it on market terms.
修道院的土地是一个例外，这种合同很少。1536年至1540年，亨利八世解散了这些修道院，并出售了他们的土地。买家可以根据市场条件耕种或出租。
A studyby Leander Heldring, James Robinson and Sebastian Vollmer shows that areas once owned by monasteries were at thevanguardof industrialisation. By the 1830s they had unusually large numbers of workers in trades and crafts, agricultural-machine patents, textile mills and grain separators. The authors say that market-based farms, common on ex-monastic land, created an entrepreneurial class and incentives for technological advances.
利安德·赫尔德林、詹姆斯·罗宾逊和塞巴斯蒂安·沃尔默的一项研究表明，曾经由修道院所有的地区是工业化的先锋。到19世纪30年代，他们在贸易和手工艺、农业机械专利、纺织厂和谷物分离机方面拥有异常庞大的工人数量。作者表示，以市场为基础的农场在曾经的修道院土地上很常见，这创造了一个企业家阶层，并激励了技术进步。
Another factor that has gained support is labour shortages. Mr Voth, Bruno Caprettini and Alex Trew studied Britain’s wars with France in 1793-1815, whenconionshrank the workforce abruptly.
另一个获得支持的因素是劳动力短缺。沃斯、布鲁诺·卡普雷蒂尼和亚历克斯·特鲁研究了1793年至1815年的英法战争，当时征兵导致劳动力急剧减少。
They found that adoption of devices replacing manual labour was greatest in areas that provided the most servicemen—so long as those regions also had mechanics. The effect was weaker without such skilled workers, and on non-labour-saving machines.
他们发现，在征兵最多的地区，使用设备取代体力劳动的现象更常见——只要这些地区也有设备。如果没有这样的熟练工人或无法节省劳动力的设备，这种影响就会减弱。
The strength of evidence for each of these causes implies that industrialisation probably required a complex mix of conditions. Many important variables are hard to test statistically. But measuring even a few is a promising advance.
所有这些原因的有力证据表明，工业化可能需要多种复杂的条件。许多重要的变量很难用统计方法检验。但即使只是测量其中的几个也是一个有希望的进步。
(红色标注词为重难点词汇)
重难点词汇：
A flurry of一阵 ; 一系列
tenant[ˈtenənt] n. 租户；佃户；房客
vanguard[ˈvænɡɑːrd] n. 先驱者；前卫
conion[kənˈskrɪpʃ(ə)n] n. 征召；征募
来源：每日双语经济学人
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