It was supposed to be a good year for Taoiseach Leo Varadkar. In January, for the first time since 2007, the Irish goernment—which was so savaged by the global financial crisis of 2008 that it was under the International Monetary Fund’s thumb until 2013—announced a budget surplus. Drastic survival tactics had paid off, including cutting public-sector salaries by as much as 20% and freezing all public-sector hiring and promotions. It had been uncomfortable. The collapse of the Celtic Tiger bubble—with its bankruptcies, layoffs, and foreclosures—was anything but a distant memory. But Ireland was back in the black. Imagine the indignity, then, for its top minister to step up to a lectern and tell the press four grim words: “Nobody will go hungry.” A panic over food shortages had gripped the country ahead of Varadkar’s budget announcement, sparked by the specter of a so-called “hard Brexit” by its top trade partner, the United Kingdom. (About half of Ireland’s food and live-animal imports come from the U.K.) The Irish government published a contingency action plan warning of “severe macroeconomic, trade, and sectoral impacts.” A flurry of tense news headlines followed.

Such is the paradox of Ireland in 2019. It has the fastest-growing economy in the European Union for the fourth-straight year with a gross domestic product that shot up from $226 billion in 2012 to $334 billion in 2017, a total that surpasses the GDP of Denmark and is roughly double the per capita count of France or Spain. Yet an uneasiness has permeated since 2015. That was the year the Irish GDP ballooned by 26%, inflated in part by a reclassification that included “inversions,” in which U.S. companies move their headquarters overseas in pursuit of lower corporate taxes. Ireland, it seemed, was Schrödinger’s economy: both flourishing and feigning. Nobody dares lift the lid to find out if the gains are rooted in reality or financial sleight of hand.

Then came Brexit. In 2016, Ireland’s only neighbor by land and erstwhile colonizer voted to walk out on the EU and its $17.3 trillion common market. The move to secede, called Brexit and triggered by a slim majority (51.9%) in a national referendum, has unfolded as a Shakespearean tragedy of reckless vanity and hubris, shaped by quasi-comical political chaos in London. The British powers have not been as riven by intraparty defections, parliamentary defeats, and general acrimony since 1886, when then–Prime Minister William Gladstone announced his support for Irish Home Rule. More than a century later, stiff-upper-lip Britain’s tumble into confusion and calamity has heightened plucky Ireland’s reputation for calm and clarity and turned it into an attractive destination for upwards of 12,000 once-British jobs, according to the City of London’s own estimates.

“Brexit is creating a contrast that hasn’t existed before,” says Kenneth Armstrong, a professor of European law at the University of Cambridge and author of Brexit Time. “It has unleashed Britain’s demons and given Ireland a halo. Ireland seems modern just as Westminster’s system of muddling through makes Britain seem like a Victorian relic.”

In other words, as Britain self-combusts, Ireland—with its young workforce, low taxes, and English fluency—is poised to pounce.

这对爱尔兰总理利奥·瓦拉德卡来说本该是个好年份。今年1月，爱尔兰政府宣布2007年以来首次实现财政盈余。2008年全球金融危机对爱尔兰的打击非常大，让爱尔兰政府受制于国际货币基金组织的情况一直延续到了2013年。重大“求生”举措，包括公务员最多降薪20%，冻结所有公共部门招聘和升迁，取得了回报。此前的状况一直令人不安。“凯尔特之虎”泡沫破裂以及与之相伴的破产、裁员和丧失抵押品赎回权让人记忆犹新。但爱尔兰政府重新实现了盈余。而此前，爱尔兰总理曾经登台很严肃的对媒体说：“没人会挨饿。”——大家可以想象一下那种措颜无地的情形。在瓦拉德卡公布预算计划前，食品短缺恐慌已经笼罩了爱尔兰，肇事元凶是其最大贸易伙伴，也就是英国的所谓“硬脱欧”（爱尔兰约一半的食品和牲畜进口来自于英国）。爱尔兰政府在其颁布的意外事件行动方案中警告说“宏观经济、贸易和各个行业将受到严重影响”。大量令人焦虑的新闻头条接踵而至。

这就是爱尔兰在2019年面临的悖论。它已经连续四年成为欧盟增长最快的经济体，GDP从2012年的2260亿美元增至2017年3340亿美元，总量超过丹麦，人均GDP约为法国或西班牙的两倍。然而，从2015年起，爱尔兰一直都沉浸在紧张气氛中。当年爱尔兰GDP猛增26%，部分原因是包括“税务倒置”在内的重新分类，税务倒置是指美国公司将总部迁至海外以寻求更低的企业税负。爱尔兰的经济看来就像是薛定谔的猫，既繁荣又虚假。没有人敢打开盖子来探究其经济增长究竟是源于实际，还是耍弄财务手腕的结果。

接下来英国脱欧来了。2016年，这个唯一和爱尔兰有陆上边界的国家，前殖民者通过公投决定脱离欧盟及其17.3万亿美元的共同市场。这场由堪堪过半票数（51.9%）引发的脱欧行动宛如一场莎士比亚悲剧，充满了虚荣和自大，塑造它的则是伦敦让人略感滑稽的混乱政治。从1886年英国首相威廉·格莱斯顿提出爱尔兰自治法案至今，英国当局还不曾因为党内背叛、议会否决和全面争吵陷入如此分崩离析的境地。在一个多世纪后，坚定沉着的英国人陷入了困惑和苦难中，进而彰显了勇敢爱尔兰人的冷静和清晰。据伦敦市自行估算，这让爱尔兰获得了吸引力，夺去了逾1.2万个本属于英国的就业机会。

剑桥大学欧洲法律教授、《Brexit Time》一书作者肯尼思·阿姆斯特朗说：“英国脱欧就像进行一次前所未有的比较。它放出了英国的恶魔，却让爱尔兰成了天使。爱尔兰显得很现代，就像英国当局得过且过的体系让英国显得像维多利亚时代的遗迹一样。”

换句话说，在英国内耗之际，拥有年轻劳动力、低税率而且说着流利英语的爱尔兰已经作势要猛扑上来。

It’s not hard to find evidence of economic ambition in Ireland’s largest cities. In the Irish capital, the storied Trinity College is building the first unadjoined part of its campus since its founding in 1592: a billion-euro, 5.5-acre, 400-startup “innovation district” with the aim of turning the university into Europe’s MIT or Stanford. Apple—which has been in Cork, on the southern tip of the island, since 1980—expanded its campus in the city last year from 5,000 to 6,000 employees. In Limerick, Ireland’s third-biggest city, 2 billion euros’ worth of planning projects have been submitted over the past decade, according to estimates by EY-DKM Economic Advisory Services. In Galway, on the west coast, a two-acre, 100-million-euro, 370,000-square-foot waterfront complex is under development, a response to continued demand for Irish office space. Suddenly, Ireland has become a nesting ground for a flock of towering beasts once thought to be the stuff of fantasy: construction cranes.

Executives at some of the world’s largest banks have noticed. Ahead of the Brexit deadline, Bank of America Merrill Lynch and Barclays moved their EU headquarters from London to Dublin in a bid to minimize disruption; Barclays alone has shifted some $215 billion in asset management to the Irish capital. (Both banks declined to comment on the moves.) Rivals Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan, and Goldman Sachs have promised to bulk up their own Dublin operations in the face of U.K. uncertainty, even as they maintain offices in the British capital.

Several multinational tech companies with operations in Ireland have also unveiled plans to deepen their investment, though some say Brexit has little to do with it. Facebook, for example, has expanded its physical footprint in four sites across Ireland—its largest outside the U.S.—and plans to hire 1,000 new employees this year, bringing its total to more than 4,000. Google recently hired 1,000 workers and dedicated a building to its cloud-computing team. Both tech titans were responsible for some of the biggest real estate deals in Irish history; both, it should be noted, have also committed to sizable expansions in London’s Kings Cross district. (Facebook and Google declined to make executives available for comment.) Microsoft, which has operated in Ireland since 1985, will employ 2,200 people after its latest recruitment push, mostly at its campus in Leopardstown, about seven miles from central Dublin.

Last year Ireland counted 230,000 employees of multinational corporations, its highest-ever number and a significant slice of the country’s 4.8 million population. According to the Industrial Development Authority, Ireland’s foreign-investment arm, more than 4,500 jobs will move from London to Dublin as a direct result of Brexit—and with them a sizable chunk of what EY estimates to be a trillion-dollar asset exodus from Britain.

在爱尔兰的几个大城市中，不难发现体现出经济志向的迹象。在爱尔兰首都，饱经风霜的圣三一大学正在打造1592年成立以来第一个远离其校园的区域——这个投资10亿欧元、占地5.5英亩（约2.23万平方米）的“创新区”容纳了400家初创公司，旨在将圣三一大学变成欧洲的麻省理工学院或斯坦福大学。1980年就在爱尔兰最南端城市科克设厂的苹果公司去年将员工人数从5000人提升至6000人。爱尔兰经纪服务机构EY-DKM Economic Advisory Services估算，爱尔兰第三大城市利默里克在过去10年中共提交了20亿欧元的规划项目。爱尔兰西海岸城市高威正在开发占地两英亩（约8092平方米）的临水建筑综合体，后者投资1亿欧元，建筑面积37万平方英尺（约3.44万平方米），旨在应对爱尔兰源源不断的写字楼需求。突然之间，爱尔兰成了众多工程吊车的聚集地，当地人曾认为这些庞然大物只会出现在幻想之中。

世界上一些最大银行的高管注意到了这一点。在英国脱欧最终期限到来前，美银美林和巴克莱都把欧盟总部从伦敦搬到了都柏林，以尽量减轻由此受到的冲击；仅巴克莱一家就把自己管理的大约2150亿美元资产转移到了都柏林（两家银行均拒绝就此发表评论）。它们的竞争对手，花旗集团、摩根士丹利、摩根大通和高盛集团尽管会在伦敦保留办事机构，但也都承诺，面对英国的不确定性，它们会扩大在都柏林的业务规模。

几家在爱尔兰有业务的跨国科技公司也披露了增加投资的计划，只是有公司表示这和英国脱欧几乎无关。举例来说，Facebook在爱尔兰的4处分支机构都进行了扩充，现已成为该公司在美国以外的最大业务，而且Facebook还计划今年再聘用1000人，使爱尔兰员工总数超过4000人。谷歌最近在爱尔兰招聘了1000人，还给云计算团队专门找了一处办公场所。两家大型科技企业都参与了爱尔兰历史上一些规模最大的房地产交易；应当注意的是，两家公司也都承诺在伦敦的国王十字地区进行可观的扩张（Facebook和谷歌均拒绝派高管评论此事）。1985年就开始在爱尔兰开展业务的微软完成最近的招聘活动后将招收2200人，其中大多数将进入Leopardstown的微软园区，距都柏林市中心约有7英里（约11.27公里）。

去年，爱尔兰的跨国公司员工人数达到23万人，创历史新高，和480万的全国人口相比已经占了很大一部分。爱尔兰外国投资管理机构——工业发展局的数据显示，因英国脱欧的直接影响而从伦敦转移到都柏林的就业机会将超过4500个。EY-DKM Economic Advisory Services则估算，随着这些岗位的转移，将有1万亿美元资产“逃离”英国。

Cloistered with his aides in a private meeting room of Dublin Castle, the capital’s seat of political power since 1204, Tánaiste Simon Coveney, with a measured tone that betrays the enthusiasm of his words, argues that there’s nothing precarious about Ireland’s economic position, Brexit or otherwise. “The Irish economy is now more sustainable than it’s ever been,” he says. More than that, even: “We like to see ourselves as the most open economy in the world. Maybe [second] after Singapore.”

He would know. Coveney—who is at once Ireland’s deputy prime minister, its minister of foreign affairs, and its chief negotiator in Brexit matters—says Ireland is in “expansion mode.” He is overseeing a massive buildup of Irish embassies and consulates that he calls a Brexit-aware response to the global community’s “overreliance on the U.K.,” adding: “We’re doing it at a pace that hasn’t happened since independence.”

都柏林城堡1204年就成为爱尔兰的权力中心，在其中一间远离尘嚣的私人会议室里，由助手们陪同的爱尔兰副总理西蒙·科文尼表示，爱尔兰的经济地位毫无疑问，无论英国脱欧与否。他的语调带着节制，和他使用的饱含激情的词汇形成了明显反差。科文尼说：“爱尔兰经济比以往任何时候都更有持续性。”此外，他甚至表示：“我们愿意成为世界上最开放的经济。或许仅次于新加坡。”

他会知道结果的。目前科文尼的职务是爱尔兰副总理、外交部长兼英国脱欧事务首席谈判代表。他说爱尔兰处于“扩张模式”，而且他本人正在监督爱尔兰驻外大使馆和领事馆的大规模修建工作，这正是英国脱欧让国际社会意识到“过度依赖英国”后作出的反应。科文尼还说：“我们推进这些工作的速度也是爱尔兰独立以来未曾出现过的。”

The push so far includes Irish embassies in Amman, Bogotá, Kiev, Manila, Monrovia, Rabat, Santiago, and Wellington, as well as consulates in Cardiff, Frankfurt, Jaipur, Los Angeles, Mumbai, Vancouver, and a pan-cultural hub in Tokyo called Ireland House. Buoyed by the imminent centennial of its nationhood, in 2022, there is a sense that Ireland is flexing its independence.

Irish courtship of Asia, that Western cure-all for economic development, has not gone unrequited. In November, Chinese electronics company Xiaomi partnered with Hong Kong telecom provider Three to launch a rash of new products following an announcement that Xiaomi would set up shop in Dublin. Last year Huawei, which also has Dublin offices, brought broadband optical fiber to 50 Irish towns as part of a contracted partnership with Vodafone. In June, Japan’s SoftBank revealed plans to pilot its “smart city” platform in Dublin as a global prototype.

“It’s all linked to a new confidence in Ireland,” Coveney tells Fortune. “You’re seeing Ireland essentially investing in a footprint.” The best foot forward, surely, yet his boosterism raises questions: Does the world need a European Singapore? Or even want one?

Irish government officials dislike when the country is called a tax haven for its 12.5% corporate tax rate and often respond by pointing to Hungary’s 9% rate, the lowest in the EU. (Britain’s is 19% and will drop to 17% in 2020. The average among EU countries is 21.68%, according to the Tax Foundation.) To Ireland’s credit, the workers coming to the country offer more heft than a post office box in the Cayman Islands. But the overall effect has made Ireland more like Europe’s Delaware than its Singapore. Too many headquarters spoil the broth.

“Moving companies to Dublin does not turn Dublin into London,” says Swati Dhingra, an economist at the London School of Economics. “The dispersal—to Paris, Munich, wherever—means that nobody will inherit the conglomerate force that London had.

You might get a bigger slice of pie, but the pie itself is getting smaller. There are no winners here. London is diminishing, but nowhere is becoming the next London.”

目前的使领馆工程包括爱尔兰设在安曼、波哥大、基辅、马尼拉、蒙罗维亚、拉巴特、圣地亚哥和惠灵顿的大使馆，设在卡迪夫、法兰克福、斋浦尔、洛杉矶、孟买、温哥华的领事馆以及东京的泛文化中心，名为爱尔兰之家。2022年就是爱尔兰独立100周年，这里有一种宣示其独立性的意味。

亚洲是西方经济发展的灵丹妙药，而爱尔兰对亚洲的“追求”并非没有回报。去年11月，小米和香港电信运营商Three宣布小米将在都柏林开店，随即推出了一系列新产品。去年，同样在都柏林设有办事机构的华为收购了50个镇的宽带光纤，这是华为和沃达丰合作协议的一部分。去年6月，日本软银披露了作为全球原型在都柏林试运行其“智慧城市”平台的计划。

科文尼对《财富》杂志表示：“这些都和爱尔兰新的信心有关。你可以看到爱尔兰实际上是在循着自己的脚步投资。”当然是前进的最佳足迹，但他的积极支持也带来了问题，那就是世界需要一个欧洲的新加坡吗？甚至是想要一个吗？

爱尔兰政府官员不喜欢人们因为12.5%的企业税率而将爱尔兰称为避税天堂，而且往往会回应说匈牙利的税率只有9%，是欧盟最低水平（英国目前税率为19%，2020年将降至17%。美国独立税收政策非营利组织Tax Foundation的数据表明，欧盟国家的平均企业税率为21.68%）。值得称道的是，到爱尔兰工作的人带来的效益要超过开曼群岛的邮政信箱。但其整体作用是让爱尔兰变得更像欧洲的特拉华州，而不是新加坡。过多的公司总部让这个问题变了味道。

伦敦政治经济学院的经济学家斯瓦蒂·迪格拉认为：“公司搬到都柏林并不会把都柏林变成伦敦。向巴黎、慕尼黑以及其他任何地方的分流都意味着没有哪个城市能继承伦敦曾经拥有的综合实力。”

“你也许会得到较大的一块蛋糕，但蛋糕本身会变小。在这方面没有赢家。伦敦正在滑坡，但不会再出现另一个伦敦。”

The ascent of Ireland as a global player and the subtle shift in power between it and the U.K. isn’t going over well with some in Britain—namely, the Brexit supporters who remain in Parliament. One Conservative member derided “the obdurate Irish government” for being overly concerned with border issues. Another was widely condemned in December for suggesting that Downing Street use the threat of economic damage, including food shortages, to compel Ireland to agree to a more favorable deal for the U.K.—an uncomfortable echo of the Great Famine of the 19th century. “We simply cannot allow the Irish to treat us this way,” an unnamed member of Parliament reportedly told a BBC columnist that same month, adding: “The Irish really should know their place.”

The Brexit decision remains hotly contested more than two years after the original vote, but despite Britain’s mixed bag of opinions, most agree it’s an existential inflection: Talk of Brexit-abetted Irish reunification has gained traction, and Scotland’s own roiling independence movement continues.

Seated along the cosmopolitan corridor of Dublin’s Capel Street—amid Brazilian, Chinese, and Eastern European grocery stores; Korean barbecue joints; Filipino lunch spots; Malaysian greasy spoons; Moroccan cafés; and sushi bars—Niamh Bushnell, the Irish government’s onetime commissioner of startups who now heads up nonprofit consultancy TechIreland, believes Ireland is poised to benefit from Britain’s momentary mania. “The U.K. doesn’t just have Brexit on its plate,” she says as she digs into a downright San Franciscan brunch of avocado toast with spiced chickpea, beetroot powder, and chorizo. “It’s in the Age of Brexit. Even without this mess, they’d be in a sorry state. They are Europe’s Trump—crazy, but in an unnerving, zeitgeisty way.”

The businesses moving to Dublin, Frankfurt, and Paris are not fly-by-night call centers, sweatshops, or hubs of unattractive work. Rather, they are the white-collar, green-collar, and gold-collar jobs upon which the 21st century’s economic power is being built. Ireland seems prepared to grab them all. “Small is beautiful. It keeps us agile,” says Bushnell, herself not quite 5 feet 3 inches. “We can’t scale nationally. We can only scale internationally. Instead of going wide, we are going deep. That has sent us up the value chain. We’re not call centers anymore. People are taking our calls now.”

If it sounds like the giddy optimism of millennial invincibility, that’s because it is: With a median age of 35.9, Ireland has the youngest population in the EU, putting it on par with such booming populations as those of Brazil, China, Qatar, Singapore, and Thailand. (The EU-wide median is 42.8; Germany claims the highest median age at 45.9.) “We always had cachet but were seen as riding coattails, either of the U.K. or the EU,” says Daniel Mulhall, an Irish ambassador who has served in Britain, Germany, India, and is currently ambassador to the U.S. Times have changed. “We became our own country,” he says. “We have our own ideas at last.”

一些英国人，或者具体来说，支持英国脱欧而且留任的英国议员并不乐于看到爱尔兰在国际舞台上的崛起以及爱尔兰和英国之间的微妙权力转移。英国保守党的一位成员嘲弄“固执的爱尔兰政府”过于担心边界问题。该党的另一位成员在去年12月建议英国政府通过经济损失，包括令人不安而且类似于19世纪大饥荒的食品短缺来胁迫爱尔兰接受对英国更有利的脱欧方案，因而广受谴责。当月，一位未具名的英国议员还对BBC专栏作家表示：“爱尔兰人真的应该清楚自己的地位。”

在投票结束两年后，脱欧决定依然备受争议。但尽管英国有多种方案，大多数人都认为有一点生死攸关，那就是英国脱欧使得爱尔兰重新统一的说法变得越发普遍，而苏格兰谋求独立的行为也仍在搅动局势。

妮娅姆·布什内尔曾任爱尔兰政府初创公司专员，现在是非盈利咨询机构TechIreland负责人。该机构位于都柏林国际化的坎贝尔街街角，周围是巴西、中国和东欧杂货店、合资韩国烤肉餐厅、菲律宾午餐店、马拉西亚小餐馆、摩洛哥咖啡店和寿司店。布什内尔相信英国“一时头脑发热”会让爱尔兰受益。她一边用勺子挖着鳄梨面包片、辣鹰嘴豆、甜菜根粉和口利左香肠做成的典型旧金山早午餐，一边说：“英国要处理的问题不光是脱欧。它处在脱欧时代中。就是没有这些麻烦事，他们的处境也不怎么样。他们是欧洲的特朗普——疯狂，而且是那种让人不安、具有时代性的疯狂。”

那些迁往都柏林、法兰克福和巴黎的公司并非一夜之间就会消失的呼叫中心、血汗工厂或者工作毫无吸引力的单位。相反，它们拥有的是打造21世纪经济力量的白领、绿领和金领工作。爱尔兰看来准备把它们全部收入囊中。还不到5英尺3英寸（约1.6米）的布什内尔说：“小就是美。它让我们保持灵活性。我们的国家无法扩大规模。但我们可以在国际上扩大规模。我们不要广度，而是要深度。这已经提高了我们在产业链上的位置。我们不再是呼叫中心。现在人们都在接我们的电话。”

如果这听起来像是战无不胜的千禧一代忘乎所以的乐观态度，那是因为情况确实如此。爱尔兰人的平均年龄为35.9岁，是欧盟最年轻的国家，和巴西、中国、卡塔尔、新加坡以及泰国等蒸蒸日上的人口群体旗鼓相当（整个欧盟的平均年龄是42.8岁，其中德国最高，为45.9岁）。曾经在英国、德国和印度担任大使的爱尔兰驻美国大使丹尼尔·马尔霍尔表示：“以前我们一直都有威望，但无论英国还是欧盟，他们总觉得我们占了别人的便宜。时代已经变了。我们变成了爱尔兰本身。我们终于有了自己的想法。”

On a brisk winter day in Dublin, I join Des Traynor, a founder of local business software startup Intercom, for a midday stroll through St. Stephen’s Green. A onetime foxhole for rebels in the 1916 Easter Rising, the public park is now a tranquil and tony oasis at the end of a busy shopping thoroughfare. Traynor, 37, is extolling the virtues of Irish culture: “Nothing but saints and scholars, they called us. As it turns out, saints and scholars are exactly what we need these days.”

As we walk along the path, the tech entrepreneur explains why he believes Ireland’s recent economic luck goes beyond a Brexit bump. “Our real talent is hope. And kindness. We don’t gloat, more like bemusement at how fate works its way out,” he says. “The Celtic Tiger had us thinking money didn’t suit us. It was more that arbitrage, marketing, cybersquatting, and the stupidity of stupid money didn’t suit us.” He cocks his head at a bevy of swans idling on a lake and pulls in a whiff of fragrant park air. “There’s more to business than numbers.”

A cultural revolution has certainly helped make Ireland more internationally attractive. By referendum, Ireland last year rewrote its constitution to legalize abortion, just three years after it legalized gay marriage, also by referendum. The Irish government last year barred the Catholic Church, which controls 90% of the school system on its behalf, from admissions discrimination on religious grounds. Look no further than Taoiseach Varadkar to mark social progress; he is a gay, unmarried, 38-year-old man of Indian and Irish descent who is the head of government in a country that only decriminalized homosexuality in 1993. In the U.S., this would be the equivalent of the first black president taking office in 1888, not long after the abolition of slavery. “It’s no coincidence,” Traynor says, “that the people fighting for our future here are the ones who can still remember living in its past.”

Ireland is, however, not without its problems. Income inequality is worsening. (At 150,000 euros, the average Facebook salary in Ireland is triple that of the average Irish worker.) With 37% of its foreign investment from the U.S., Ireland remains susceptible to an economic slowdown across the pond. And those Brexit-boosted numbers won’t last forever. In February, the European Commission revised downward its growth predictions for Ireland for the year, from 4.5% to 4.1%. The culprit? Uncertainty about the fallout from Britain’s exit from the EU, of course.

在都柏林一个清新的冬日，我和当地软件初创公司Intercom的创始人德斯·特雷诺一起在圣斯蒂芬绿地公园漫步。1916年复活节起义中，这里曾经被反叛者作为阵地，现在则是一片安静而时髦的宜人处所，坐落在一条繁忙商业街的尽头。37岁的特雷诺赞颂了爱尔兰文化的美好：“他们只会叫我们圣人和学者。因为实际情况证明，现在我们需要的就是圣人和学者。”

我们在公园小路上走着，这位科技创业者解释了他为什么相信爱尔兰最近的经济运势不会受到英国脱欧的阻碍。他说：“我们真正的才能就是希望，还有善良。我们不会幸灾乐祸，对于命运如何发挥作用，我们更多的是茫然。凯尔特之虎让我们认识到金钱并不适合我们。更确切的说是套利、抢注网络域名以及愚蠢金钱的那些蠢行不适合我们。”他抬头看着一群天鹅在湖上悠闲地游着，然后深吸了一口公园里清新的空气：“事业更重要，而不是数字。”

文化革命确实帮助爱尔兰提高了国际吸引力。去年，爱尔兰通过公投修改了宪法，使堕胎合法化；仅三年前，它也是通过公投将同性婚姻合法化。爱尔兰政府去年禁止天主教会基于信仰进行招生歧视，而天主教会控制着爱尔兰90%的学校体系。总理瓦拉德卡本身就是社会进步的完美标识，他是同性恋，未婚，还是印度-爱尔兰混血。在这个1993年才将同性恋合法化的国家，38岁的瓦拉德卡已经成为政府首脑。在美国，这相当于第一位黑人总统在1888年，也就是废除奴隶制后不久就入主白宫。特雷诺说：“那些正在为我们的未来而战的都是依然记得过去生活的人。”

不过，爱尔兰自己并非没有问题。收入差距正在扩大（Facebook在爱尔兰的平均年薪为15万欧元，是爱尔兰普通工人的三倍）。爱尔兰37%的外国投资来自于美国，而且仍然容易受到英国经济放缓的影响。同时，英国脱欧对爱尔兰经济的推动也不会永远持续下去。今年2月，欧盟委员会将爱尔兰今年的经济增长预期从4.5%下调至4.1%。罪魁祸首是谁呢？当然是英国脱欧的影响存在不确定性。

Patrick Walsh comes to Grogan’s Castle Lounge, largely locked in amber in Dublin since 1899, precisely because he’s confident that it hasn’t changed. It’s cash only. There’s neither television nor music, and don’t even think about asking for Wi-Fi. Walsh, the founder of Dogpatch Labs, an incubator touted as the silicon savior of the city by the likes of Prince Harry himself, calls it an oasis of authenticity—and a barometer of it too.

“We don’t know how to be rich,” Walsh says, noting that the Gaelic toast “Is fearr an tsláinte ná na táinte” translates as “To health not wealth.” He adds with equal parts pride and woe: “We barely know how to be European. We’re kind of our own thing.”

Like many tech entrepreneurs who call Dublin home, Walsh has seen the ups and downs of Ireland’s economy. His office in the city’s Docklands district—the “Digital Docklands” to some—is a short walk to outposts for Airbnb, Facebook, Google, and Twitter. It’s also steps away from JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley, and Citigroup. Washing down bites of a ham-and-cheese toastie with Guinness, Walsh offers a history lesson: “When this was all a British stronghold and they were pushing back the Gaeltacht”—the areas where the Irish language took primacy—“they called Dublin and this whole area the Pale. There’s a wall! And the worst thing a right honorable Englishman could do was go beyond that wall—beyond the Pale. It wasn’t safe.”

Walsh considers Ireland’s recent fortunes and laughs. “We’re beyond the pale now, aren’t we? Time to hold on to our hats,” he says. He raises his eyebrows, spirits, and pint in one fluid move, then grins. “But hey—we’ve got hats.”

This article originally appeared in the March 2019 issue of Fortune.