siege, plague and flood which gave Muscovite Russia final control of a starved and destroyed Riga during the Great Northern War (1700–21). O’Connor tells his story well, using a wide focus which embraces notable individuals and the social and cultural life of the city and its people as well as providing clear background information on political and historical events. The detail of his brisk and wideranging narration sometimes obscures the larger historical outline, but this is an absorbing and engaging account. It is also well and carefully balanced – O’Connor is an outsider, with no national axe to grind in a field where much historiography has nationalistic emphases. One small point of contention, however, is his translation of the term undeutsch, the word used by early Baltic Germans to describe indigenous (principally Latvian, but also Liv, Finnish etc.) inhabitants of the city and area. O’Connor translates it without comment (p. 7) as ‘non-German’, which in modern German would be nichtdeutsch. In the early medieval period undeutsch seems to have been purely factual in its implication, but between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries, as O’Connor himself points out (pp. 220–21), the economic and social differences between Germans and others sharpened. If any Latvians rose socially they were absorbed and became German so that the term acquired a derogatory meaning. Should undeutsch be ‘un-German’ (cf. ‘unAmerican’ as opposed to ‘non-American’)? The term’s meaning should at least be discussed. But this query does not detract from the book’s overall value. This vivid and readable account is an excellent concise exposition of the early history of a great city. As the author says (p. 11), ‘The history of old Riga is worth knowing. Here [he] will show you why.’

中文翻译：

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书评：Malyn Newitt：布拉干萨。葡萄牙和巴西统治王朝的兴衰，1640-1910

在大北方战争（1700-21 年）期间，围攻、瘟疫和洪水使莫斯科俄罗斯最终控制了饥饿和被摧毁的里加。奥康纳很好地讲述了他的故事，使用广泛的焦点，包括著名人物和城市及其人民的社会和文化生活，并提供有关政治和历史事件的清晰背景信息。他轻快而广泛的叙述的细节有时会掩盖更大的历史轮廓，但这是一个引人入胜且引人入胜的叙述。它也得到了很好和仔细的平衡——奥康纳是一个局外人，在一个很多历史编纂都强调民族主义的领域里，没有民族斧头可以磨砺。然而，一个争论点是他对 undeutsch 一词的翻译，早期波罗的海德国人用这个词来描述土著（主要是拉脱维亚语，但也有 Liv，芬兰语等）城市和地区的居民。O'Connor 不加评论地将其翻译为“非德语”（第 7 页），在现代德语中将是 nichtdeutsch。在中世纪早期，非德语的含义似乎完全符合事实，但在 14 和 16 世纪之间，正如奥康纳本人所指出的（第 220-21 页），德国人和其他人之间的经济和社会差异变得更加尖锐。如果任何拉脱维亚人在社会上崛起，他们就会被吸收并成为德语，因此该术语具有贬义意义。undeutsch 是否应该是“非德国人”（参见“非美国人”而不是“非美国人”）？至少应该讨论该术语的含义。但是这个查询并没有减损这本书的整体价值。这部生动易读的记述是对一座伟大城市早期历史的极好的简明阐述。正如作者所说（p。11), '老里加的历史值得了解。在这里[他]会告诉你为什么。