段落A

Alan Macfarlane, professor of anthropological science at Kings College, Cambridge, has, like other historians, spent decades wrestling with the enigma of the Industrial Revolution. Why did this particular Big Bang – the world-changing birth of industry – happen in Britain? And why did it strike at the end of the 18th century?

段落A：剑桥大学国王学院人类学科学教授阿兰·麦克法兰（Alan Macfarlane）与其他历史学家一样，花费了数十年的时间探讨工业革命的谜团。为什么这场特殊的“大爆炸”——即改变世界的工业诞生——会在英国发生？为什么它偏偏发生在18世纪末？

段落B

B Macfarlane compares the puzzle to a combination lock, ‘There are about 20 different factors and all of them need to be present before the revolution can happen,’ he says. For industry to take off, there needs to be the technology and power to drive factories, large urban populations to provide cheap labour, easy transport to move goods around, an affluent middle-class willing to buy mass-produced objects, a market-driven economy and a political system that allows this to happen. While this was the case for England, other nations, such as Japan, the Netherlands and France also met some of these criteria but were not industrialising. ‘All these factors must have been necessary but not sufficient to cause the revolution,’ says Macfarlane. ‘After all, Holland had everything except coal, while China also had many of these factors. Most historians are convinced there are one or two missing factors that you need to open the lock.’

段落B：麦克法兰将这个谜题比喻成一个组合锁，“大约有20个不同因素，在革命发生之前，所有这些因素都需要同时存在。”他说。要实现工业化，需要有驱动工厂的技术和能源、提供廉价劳动力的大城市人口、便捷的交通运输来运送货物、愿意购买大规模生产商品的富裕中产阶级、以市场驱动的经济体系以及允许这一切发生的政治体制。尽管这些条件在英格兰是存在的，但其他国家如日本、荷兰和法国也满足了其中的一部分条件，但却没有进行工业化。“大多数历史学家都相信，还有一两个缺失的因素需要打开这把锁。”麦克法兰说道。

段落C

The missing factors, he proposes, are to be found in almost every kitchen cupboard. Tea and beer, two of the nation’s favourite drinks, fuelled the revolution. The antiseptic properties of tannin, the active ingredient in tea, and of hops in beer – plus the fact that both are made with boiled water – allowed urban communities to flourish at close quarters without succumbing to water-borne diseases such as dysentery. The theory sounds eccentric but once he starts to explain the detective work that went into his deduction, the scepticism gives way to wary admiration. Macfarlane’s case has been strengthened by support from notable quarters – Roy Porter, the distinguished medical historian, recently wrote a favourable appraisal of his research.

段落C：他提出，这些缺失的因素可以在几乎每个厨柜中找到。茶和啤酒，这两种国民最喜爱的饮料推动了工业革命。茶中的单宁酸和啤酒中的酒花具有抗菌作用，而且它们都使用煮沸的水制作，这使得城市社区能够在狭小空间内繁荣发展，而不会受到痢疾等水传播疾病的困扰。这个理论听起来有些古怪，但一旦他开始解释背后的推理过程，怀疑态度就会转变为谨慎的钦佩。麦克法兰的理论得到了一些知名人士的支持——杰出的医学历史学家罗伊·波特（Roy Porter）最近对他的研究给予了积极评价。

段落D

Macfarlane had wondered for a long time how the Industrial Revolution came about. Historians had alighted on one interesting factor around the mid-18th century that required explanation. Between about 1650 and 1740, the population in Britain was static. But then there was a burst in population growth. Macfarlane says: ‘The infant mortality rate halved in the space of 20 years, and this happened in both rural areas and cities, and across all classes. People suggested four possible causes. Was there a sudden change in the viruses and bacteria around? Unlikely. Was there a revolution in medical science? But this was a century before Listers revolution*. Was there a change in environmental conditions? There were improvements in agriculture that wiped out malaria, but these were small gains. Sanitation did not become widespread until the 19th century. The only option left: is food. But the height and weight statistics show a decline. So the food must have got worse. Efforts to explain this sudden reduction in child deaths appeared to draw a blank.’

段落D：麦克法兰很长一段时间以来一直在思考工业革命是如何发生的。历史学家们已经注意到大约在18世纪中叶有一个有趣的因素需要解释。在1650年至1740年期间，英国的人口一直保持稳定。但后来出现了人口增长的突发，麦克法兰说：“婴儿死亡率在20年内减半，而且这种情况在农村和城市、各个阶层中都出现了。人们提出了四种可能的原因。病毒和细菌是否突然发生了变化？这是不太可能的。医学科学是否发生了变革？但这是在利斯特尔革命之前一个世纪的事情。环境条件是否发生了变化？农业方面有改进措施，消灭了疟疾，但这些只是小幅度的改善。直到19世纪，卫生设施才得到广泛普及。唯一剩下的选择就是食物。但身高和体重的统计数据显示有所下降，所以食物肯定变差了。对于这种儿童死亡率突然下降的解释努力似乎没有结果。”

段落E

This population burst seemed to happen at just the right time to provide labour for the Industrial Revolution. ‘When you start moving towards an industrial revolution, it is economically efficient to have people living close together,’ says Macfarlane. ‘But then you get disease, particularly from human waste.’ Some digging around in historical records revealed that there was a change in the incidence of water-borne disease at that time, especially dysentery. Macfarlane deduced that whatever the British were drinking must have been important in regulating disease. He says, ‘We drank beer. For a long time, the English were protected by the strong antibacterial agent in hops, which were added to help preserve the beer. But in the late 17th century a tax was introduced on malt, the basic ingredient of beer. The poor turned to water and gin and in the 1720s the mortality rate began to rise again. Then it suddenly dropped again. What caused this?’

段落E：这种人口激增恰好发生在为工业革命提供劳动力的时机。“当你开始走向工业革命时，让人们住得更近在经济上更高效，”麦克法兰说。“但接着你会遇到疾病，尤其是来自人类排泄物的病菌。”在历史记录中进行一些搜寻后发现，那个时候水传播的疾病，特别是痢疾，发生了变化。麦克法兰推断，不管英国人喝什么对于调节疾病来说一定很重要。他说：“我们喝啤酒。很长一段时间以来，英国人靠啤酒中强大的抗菌剂——酒花保护着自己，酒花被添加到啤酒中可以帮助保持其新鲜。但在17世纪末，麦芽（啤酒的基本成分）上征收了税收。穷人开始喝水和杜松子酒，在18世纪20年代，死亡率又开始上升。然后它突然再次下降。这是什么原因造成的呢？”

段落F

Macfarlane looked to Japan, which was also developing large cities about the same time, and also had no sanitation. Water-borne diseases had a much looser grip on the Japanese population than those in Britain. Could it be the prevalence of tea in their culture? Macfarlane then noted that the history of tea in Britain provided an extraordinary coincidence of dates. Tea was relatively expensive until Britain started a direct clipper trade with China in the early 18th century. By the 1740s, about the time that infant mortality was dipping, the drink was common. Macfarlane guessed that the fact that water had to be boiled, together with the stomach-purifying properties of tea meant that the breast milk provided by mothers was healthier than it had ever been. No other European nation sipped tea like the British, which, by Macfarlane’s logic, pushed these other countries out of contention for the revolution.

段落F：麦克法兰参考了日本，该国约在同一时期也开始发展大城市，并且同样没有卫生设施。与英国相比，水传播的疾病在日本人口中的影响要小得多。这是否与日本文化中茶的盛行有关？麦克法兰注意到，英国的茶史提供了一个非同寻常的巧合。在18世纪初，茶是相对昂贵的，直到英国与中国开始直接的快速航线贸易之后，茶才普及起来。在大约婴儿死亡率下降的1740年代，茶已经很常见了。麦克法兰猜测，茶需要用开水冲泡，再加上茶具有净化胃的特性，意味着母亲提供的母乳比以往更健康。没有其他欧洲国家像英国人那样热衷于喝茶，按照麦克法兰的逻辑，这使得其他国家失去了进行工业革命的机会。

段落G

But, if tea is a factor in the combination lock, why didn’t Japan forge ahead in a tea-soaked industrial revolution of its own? Macfarlane notes that even though 17th-century Japan had large cities, high literacy rates, even a futures market, it had turned its back on the essence of any work-based revolution by giving up labour-saving devices such as animals, afraid that they would put people out of work. So, the nation that we now think of as one of the most technologically advanced entered the 19th century having ‘abandoned the wheel’.