分裂的歐洲還能繼續繁榮發展嗎？

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分裂的歐洲還能繼續繁榮發展嗎？ 

Can a fragmented Europe continue to prosper?

曾經使這些主權國家強大而富裕的因素，如今可能成為它們繼續保持這種狀態的障礙。 

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 羅馬人究竟為我們做過什麼？

在蒙提派森的喜劇《布萊恩的一生》中，答案包括引水渠、浴場和和平。

但如果正確答案是：

「他們的帝國衰落了」呢？

簡言之，西歐在世界歷史上的變革性角色源自於歐洲缺乏一個橫跨整個歐洲的帝國。

這造就了古代歷史學家沃爾特·沙伊德爾所說的西歐「競爭性分裂」。

競爭推動了商業、知識、技術、法律和政治的變革，最終導致了工業革命。

自此，一切都改變了。 

 分裂的益處是謝德爾2019年出版的《逃離羅馬》一書的核心思想。

這個觀點並非新穎，但謝德爾賦予了它新的生命力，他將西歐的進步根植於後世任何強權都無法複製羅馬的成就。

與中國、中東或印度不同，包羅萬象的帝國再也沒有出現過。 

 一千五百年來，歐洲各國彼此競爭。不妨將此比喻為歐洲歷史中的「瓶中蝎子」理論。蝎子為了在如此殘酷的環境中生存繁衍，必須進化出毒刺。它們做到了——事實上，一個歐洲小島征服了世界的大部分地區，並開啟了工業革命。

一些國家退出了競爭。

但某些地方被壓制的創新和思想，只是轉移到了其他地方。

 歐洲人在世界其他地區建立了帝國，唯獨在歐洲本土沒有。

謝德爾認為，這才是關鍵。

他將歐洲的競爭與世界其他地區的帝國停滯進行了對比。

他寫道，中國和羅馬帝國的共同之處在於「某種程度的市場一體化和不均衡的增長……受到國家能力低下、精英階層普遍侵蝕以及長期缺乏創新、人力資本積累和熊彼特式（創新驅動型）增長的限制」。

帝國在一段時間內帶來了和平，但它們本質上是掠奪財富的機器。

在歐洲，那些成功推動創新的政權最終擊敗了這類政權。 

 歐洲為何持續分裂？

答案似乎在於地理——山脈和海洋。

能夠養活大量人口並繳納高額稅賦的肥沃土地面積不大，彼此距離也不遠。

羅馬相對高效的軍事力量未能被複製。

 19世紀和20世紀，西歐經濟快速發展：

2022年，西歐人均實際GDP是200年前的19倍。預期壽命也大幅提高，從1820年的36歲增加到2020年的82歲。這場變革從歐洲席捲全球。

自19世紀下半葉以來，美國一直是世界領先的經濟體。

近年來，中國的繁榮也突飛猛進。世界格局已然改變，變得更加富裕。 

 科技進步也為激烈的全球競爭創造了可能，意義深遠。

直到不久前，唯一擁有技術先進、橫跨大陸規模的經濟體還是美國。

蘇聯曾試圖成為這樣的國家，但除了軍事領域外，其他方面都以失敗告終。然而，

如今中國已成為這樣的強國。

印度也可能成為其中之一。

因此，如今的「瓶子」指的是整個世界，而非歐洲；

而最危險的「蝎子」的體型與昔日的帝國不相上下：

事實上，中國正是古代帝國的典型代表。 

 那麼，作為這場革命發源地的歐洲又將何去何從？

歐盟人口4.5億，遠少於中國，更遑論印度，但遠大於美國。

以購買力平價計算，其經濟規模雖不及美國和中國，但仍十分龐大。

然而，正如德拉吉報告以及路易斯·加里卡諾、本特·霍爾姆斯特倫和尼古拉斯·佩蒂特近期發表的論文《創新憲章》中所指出的，歐盟和歐元區的生產力正在落後。

此外，儘管歐盟的經濟和人口資源遠遠超過俄羅斯，但在缺乏美國防務保護傘的情況下，歐盟卻難以有效調動這些資源來保障自身安全。 

 或許，歐盟能夠做到它必須做的事情，儘管其分裂的歷史注定它更像是一個爭吵的主權國家聯盟，而不是一個真正的主權國家。

如上文所述，這正是「單一市場」的承諾所在：

它必須更加努力。我們也可以說，這同樣適用於安全方面的挑戰。 

 然而，這種說法並不完全令人信服。

主權、民族認同、政治和稅收（其他方面的體現）仍然牢牢地屬於國家範疇。

這正是單一市場建設如此艱難的原因。

在國防領域，這種情況更為突出，缺乏協調使得搭便車行為不可避免。 此外，規模經濟、範圍經濟，尤其是集聚效應，在最先進的現代技術中發揮著至關重要的作用。

正如保羅‧克魯曼所指出的，數位革命集中在矽谷絕非偶然。

歐洲人會接受（或能夠建構）這樣一個超級集群嗎？

這令人懷疑。 如果情況確實如此，而且這不僅影響生產力，還影響其安全保障能力，那麼結論或許是：

歐洲如今正遭受其歷史悖論的困擾：

曾經使其國家強大富裕的分裂狀態，在新世界卻成了它們保持這種狀態的障礙。

在洲際超級大國林立的時代，歐洲的分裂或許成為難以克服的障礙。 

 然而，還有一種更令人欣慰的可能性。帝國僵化仍是龐大國家面臨的一大威脅。

我們可以在中國權力過度集中以及美國試圖建立腐敗獨裁政權的案例中看到這一點。

或許，歐洲人應該慶幸羅馬帝國的衰落，以及它儘管屢遭挫敗卻始終未能復興。

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Can a fragmented Europe continue to prosper?

 What once made its sovereign states powerful and rich could now be a barrier to their remaining so MARTIN WOLFAdd to myFT © James Ferguson Can a fragmented Europe continue to prosper? on x (opens in a new window) Can a fragmented Europe continue to prosper? on facebook (opens in a new window) Can a fragmented Europe continue to prosper? on linkedin (opens in a new window) Can a fragmented Europe continue to prosper? on whatsapp (opens in a new window) Save Martin Wolf PublishedYESTERDAY 329 Print this page Stay informed with free updates Simply sign up to the Geopolitics myFT Digest -- delivered directly to your inbox. What have the Romans ever done for us? In Monty Python’s Life of Brian, the answers included aqueducts, baths and peace. But what if the right answer is: “their empire fell”? In short, western Europe’s transformative role in world history is due to the absence of a Europe-wide empire. That created what the ancient historian Walter Scheidel calls the “competitive fragmentation” of western Europe. Competition drove the commercial, intellectual, technological, legal and political changes that led in the end to the industrial revolution. Thereupon, everything changed. The benefit of fragmentation is the central idea of Scheidel’s Escape from Rome, published in 2019. The idea was not new. But Scheidel brought it to life, by rooting the progress of western Europe in the inability of any later power to repeat what Rome did. Unlike in China, the Middle East or India, encompassing empire never returned. For 1,500 years, European states competed with one another. Think of this as “the scorpions in a bottle” theory of European history. The scorpions needed to develop venomous stings to survive and prosper in this ferocious environment. They did so — so much so, in fact, that a small European island conquered much of the world and began the industrial revolution. Some states dropped out of the competition. But innovations and ideas repressed in some places just moved elsewhere. Europeans created empires in the rest of the world, but not in Europe. That, argues Scheidel, is what mattered. He contrasts European competition with imperial stagnation elsewhere. Chinese and Roman empires had in common, he writes, “some degree of market integration and unevenly distributed . . . growth . . . constrained by low state capacity, pervasive elite encroachment and secular lack of innovation, human capital formation, and Schumpeterian [innovation-led] growth”. Empires provided peace, for a time, but they were rent-extraction machines. In Europe, such regimes were defeated by the ones that successfully promoted innovation. Why did Europe remain fragmented? The answer seems to be geography — mountains and seas. Fertile areas that can support large populations and so pay high taxes were not too big and not too close. The relative military efficiency of Rome was not replicated. In the 19th and 20th centuries, the economies of western Europe grew dramatically: in 2022, western Europe’s real GDP per head was 19 times that of 200 years before. Life expectancy also rose, from 36 in 1820 to 82 in 2020. The revolution spread from Europe across the world. The US has been the world’s leading economy since the second half of the 19th century. More recently, China’s prosperity has soared. The world has transformed. It is far richer. Technological advances have also opened up possibilities for intense global competition. That has huge implications. Until recently, the only technologically advanced, continental-scale economy was that of the US. The Soviet Union tried to become one, but failed, except in the military domain. Today, however, China is such a power. India might become one, too. Today, then, the “bottle” is the world, not Europe, and the most dangerous scorpions are of the same size as the old empires: indeed, one of them, China, is the paradigmatic example of an ancient empire. Where does this leave Europe, the origin of this revolution? The EU’s population is 450mn, far smaller than China’s, let alone India’s, but substantially bigger than that of the US. At PPP, its economy is smaller than those of the US and China, yet still very large. But, as noted in the Draghi report and also in “The Constitution of Innovation”, a recent paper by Luis Garicano, Bengt Holmström and Nicolas Petit, the EU and Eurozone are falling behind in productivity. It also finds it hard to mobilise its economic and demographic resources, far greater than Russia’s though they are, to guarantee its own security without the protection of the US defence umbrella. Maybe, the EU can do what it has to do even though its history of fragmentation will always make it more of a squabbling league of sovereigns than a sovereign state. That, as the paper noted above argues, has been the promise of the “single market”: it must just try harder. One can also argue that this is true for the challenge of security, too. Yet this is not altogether convincing. Sovereignty, national identity, politics and taxation (an expression of the others) remain firmly national. This is why completing the single market has been so hard. It is even truer of defence, where the lack of co-ordination makes freeriding inevitable. Furthermore, economies of scale, scope and, above all, agglomeration play a huge role in the most advanced modern technologies. It is surely no accident, as Paul Krugman notes, that the digital revolution has been concentrated in Silicon Valley. Would Europeans accept (or be able to engineer) such a supercluster? One has to doubt it. If so and if, too, this bears not just on productivity, but also on the ability to defend its security, then the conclusion might be that Europe now suffers from a paradox of its history: the fragmentation that made its states powerful and rich is, in the new world, a barrier to their remaining so. In an age of continental-scale superpowers, European fragmentation may be an insuperable handicap. Yet a happier possibility also exists. Imperial ossification remains a threat to huge states. We see this in the over-centralisation of Chinese power and the attempted creation of a corrupt autocracy in the US. Maybe, Europeans should remain delighted that Rome fell, and despite many efforts, has never returned. martin.wolf@ft.com Follow Martin Wolf with myFT and on X Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2025. All rights reserved.Reuse this content(opens in new window) CommentsJump to comments section Latest on Geopolitics The Big Read The Trump doctrine: don’t rely on America Free LunchMartin Sandbu The four horsemen of Europe’s tech dependency PREMIUM content Janan Ganesh Europe and the curse of geography The Big Read Can Pakistan’s military strongman fix a failing nation? Aukus Trump signals backing for Aukus nuclear deal with Australia The FT ViewThe editorial board Gen Z is the new force in global politics Janan Ganesh Why the US could not shake off the Middle East Edward Luce US-China déjà vu all over again Follow the topics in this article Martin Wolf Add to myFT Global Economy Add to myFT Geopolitics Add to myFT Europe Add to myFT Comments Useful links Support Legal & Privacy Services Tools Community & Events More from the FT Group Markets data delayed by at least 15 minutes. © THE FINANCIAL TIMES LTD 2025. FT and ‘Financial Times’ are trademarks of The Financial Times Ltd. 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