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  3. Anderson’s new theory is controversial for asserting that Britain might

Anderson’s new theory is controversial for asserting that Britain might

游客2025-02-23  45
问题          Anderson’s new theory is controversial for asserting that Britain might
     have retained its North American empire had George III’s ministers proceeded
     less precipitously. But as Anderson himself concedes to previous historians like
     Henvel and Rhimes, there was no indication whether the persistence of imperial
(5)   authority would have made much difference for any of the parties involved. At
     most, these efforts would have endowed the British government with a
     "hollow" empire, wherein the exercise of effective authority would depend on
     the consent of the colonists and their representatives. While the grip on their
     colonies was questionable, the British had no option but to curtail their
(10)  authority, and at no point was the decision to do so more than a temporary
     expedient. Once the war in French Canada was resolved, England attempted to
     terminate the costly practices of Indian gift giving and to levy new taxation.
     Under such circumstances, moreover, Britain would have been able to offer
     only limited protections to any of America’s other inhabitants, especially the
(15)  Indians whose lands in the Ohio Valley were already being encroached upon by a
     steady influx of European settlers. In a sense, the Seven Years’ War ended up
     confirming the "American" character of Britain’s North American empire, an
     entity over which metropolitan authority had never been more than tenuous.
         Anderson’s hypothesis concerning French Canada is corroborated both by
(20)  the events of the American  Revolution, and, less successfully, the
     contemporaneous case of India, where the British successfully implemented the
     colonial strategy Anderson recommends. As witnessed in Iroquoia, the Mughal
     Empire’s progressive collapse during the later 1740s and 1750s drew the
     British, who had been in India as traders since the early seventeenth century,
(25)  ever more deeply into politics on the subcontinent, first as the auxiliaries of
     local grandees and eventually as political actors in their own right. When the
     East India Company governed in Bengal, it did so by virtue of cleverly acting as
     the Mughal Emperor’s diwani (a Muslim office roughly analogous to a European
     tax farmer). Despite the temptation to act unilaterally, the company’s officials
(30)  were never ignorant of the fact that they owed their authority to the cooperation
     of local elites, who in turn accepted British rule assuming they could employ it
     to their own advantage.
         Anderson notes that although there were undoubtedly the vast differences
     between them, India’s experience of British rule during the eighteenth century
(35)  points to the same devolution of imperial agency as in America. It is a pattern
     Jack P. Greene has identified as "negotiated authority", whereby the unlimited
     powers claimed by officials at the empire’s center were subject to constant
     revision by indigenous brokers on the periphery. Despite the fact that the
     Indian colonial possessions were more enduring as a result, Anderson
(40)  nevertheless fails to successfully argue that the British could have retained other
     parts of their empire for a more significant period through any of the means he
     has suggested.
选项 A、survey of the inadequacies of a conventional viewpoint
B、reconciliation of opposing points of view
C、summary and evaluation of a recent study
D、defense of a new thesis from anticipated objections
E、review of the subtle distinctions between apparently similar views
答案 C
解析
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