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DURING its rise in the 17th century, Amsterdam was animportant haven for religious dissidents. It was also the publishing centre forthe racyphilosophical tracts that were too hot to be printed in France or England. The city’s economicfortunes were born of its embrace of international trade and of financialinnovation. And the highly profitable Dutch East IndiaCompany was the world’s first joint-stock company, leading in time to theworld’s first stock and options markets.
在17世紀崛起期間，阿姆斯特丹是宗教異議分子的重要避難所，也是激進哲學冊子的出版中心，因為這些冊子過于惹火而不能在法國和英國出版。國際貿易和金融創新為這座城市帶來了經濟財富。荷蘭東印度公司作為世界上首家股份公司，有著很高的盈利水平，它開創了世界上首個股票和期權市場。
In the late 20th century the Dutch capitalwas famous for its tolerance of marijuana cafés and prostitution. But Amsterdam’s liberalheritage has become a battleground. The murder by an Islamist fanatic of Theovan Gogh, a controversial film-maker, in 2004 sparked clashes over relationswith the city’s Muslim minority. City planners have shifted from a socialistvision of liberalism to a yuppified one, rooting out squatters and shrinkingthe red-light district while courting multinational corporations withfavourable tax conditions.
20世紀末，阿姆斯特丹因容許咖啡館出售大麻和賣淫現象的存在而著名。但是阿姆斯特丹的自由主義傳統已經使這里演變成了戰場。2004年，伊斯蘭狂熱分子、飽受爭議的電影制作人特奧·梵高制造的謀殺案引發了（伊斯蘭）同穆斯林少數民族之間的沖突。城市規劃師的視角已經從社會主義者的自由主義過渡到雅皮化，在根除棚戶區和縮小紅燈區的同時，用優惠的稅收條件吸引跨國公司的到來。
Mr Shorto, an American who has lived in theDutch capital for six years, sprinkles the book with personal anecdotes thatillustrate how history suffuses the present. While studying the journal of anAugustinian prior who had fled to the city to escape the religious violence ofthe Netherlands’war of independence, the author realises that the diary was written, in 1572,next door to his flat. To illustrate a later episode of religious conflict, heintroduces the reader to a Holocaust survivor, a childhood acquaintance of Anne Frank. His account of Amsterdam’s physical growth is just asengrossing. The ring of canals, which visitors nowadays think of as quaint,were a marvel of engineering when they were built in the 1600s, a testament tothe city’s status as Europe’s premier trading entrepot.
索托先生（Mr Shorto）是一位已在荷蘭首都生活了6個年頭的美國人，他的書中都是闡明現時阿姆斯特丹彌漫著歷史印記的個人軼事。在研究先前一名逃離到阿姆斯特丹躲避荷蘭獨立戰爭宗教暴力的奧古斯丁修會會士寫的日記時，索托先生發現該日記寫于1572年，記錄地點就位于他公寓的隔壁。為了闡述下一場宗教沖突，他向讀者介紹了大屠殺中的一名幸存者、安妮·弗蘭克（Anne Frank）的童年朋友。他記錄的阿姆斯特丹有形發展也同樣引人入勝。如今讓游客們覺得怪異的運河回蕩聲，是17世紀建造它們的設計師們創造的工程奇跡，這證明了阿姆斯特丹作為歐洲最早的貿易中心的地位。
But Mr Shorto’s main ambition is to showhow the liberal idea was born in Amsterdam.He leans here on the recent work of Jonathan Israel, a British-born professorof modern European history at Princeton, whose influential three-volumerethinking of the Enlightenment gives a central place to Amsterdam’s most famous philosopher, BaruchSpinoza. For Mr Israel,Spinoza was the progenitor of the “radical” Enlightenment, those thinkers whorefused any accommodation with religion or traditional authority. It isinteresting to consider Amsterdam’s currenttensions in the light of the struggles Spinoza witnessed between tolerantrationalism and religious nationalism, which ended with the lynching in 1672 ofhis political heroes, the De Witt brothers, and the end of Holland’s Golden Age.
但是索托先生主要的目的在于告訴人們自由主義思想是如何在阿姆斯特丹誕生的。在書中，他借助了出生于英國的普林斯頓大學歐洲現代史教授喬納森·伊斯雷爾最近發表的作品，伊斯雷爾具有影響力的啟蒙運動反思三大卷奠定了阿姆斯特丹最負盛名的哲學家巴魯赫·斯賓諾莎的中心地位。對于伊斯雷爾先生來說，斯賓諾莎是“激進”啟蒙運動的先驅，這些思想家們與宗教或傳統權威不可相容。從斯賓諾莎目睹的寬容理性主義和宗教民族主義之間斗爭的角度來看阿姆斯特丹當前的緊張局勢是很有趣的，兩者的斗爭以他的政治英雄德威特兄弟在1672年被處以私刑以及荷蘭黃金時代的終結而告終。
