2. 外语
  3. In the early 1950’s historians who studied pre-industrial Europe (which we may define here as Europe in the period from roughly

In the early 1950’s historians who studied pre-industrial Europe (which we may define here as Europe in the period from roughly

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问题    In the early 1950’s historians who studied pre-industrial Europe (which we may define here as Europe in the period from roughly 1300 to 1800) began, for the first time in large numbers, to investigate more of the pre-industrial European population than the 2 or 3 percent who comprised the political and social elite; the kings, generals, judges, nobles, bishops and local magnates who had hitherto usually filled history books. One difficulty, however, was that few of the remaining 97 percent recorded their thoughts or had them chronicled by contemporaries. Faced with this situation, many historians based their investigations on the only records that seemed to exist: birth, marriage, and death records. As a result, much of the early work on the non-elite was aridly statistical in nature; reducing the vast majority of the population to a set of numbers was hardly more enlightening than ignoring them altogether. Historians still did not know what these people thought or felt.
   One way out of this dilemma was to turn to the records of legal courts for here the voices of the non-elite can most often be heard, as witnesses, plaintiffs, and defendants. These documents have acted as "a point of entry into the mental world of the poor." Historians such as Le Roy Ladurle have used the documents to extract case histories, which have illuminated the attitudes of different social groups (these attitudes include, but are not confined to, attitudes toward crime and the law) and have revealed how the authorities administered justice. It has been societies that have had a developed police system and practiced Roman law, with its written depositions, whose court records have yielded the most data to historians. In Anglo-Saxon countries hardly any of these benefits obtain, but it has still been possible to glean information from the study of legal documents.
   The extraction of case histories is not, however, the only use to which court record may be put. Historians who study pre-industrial Europe have used the records to establish a series of categories of crime and to quantify indictments that were issued over a given number of years. This use of records does yield some information about the non-elite, but this information gives us little insight into the mental lives of the non-elite. We also know that the number of indictments in pre-industrial Europe bears little relation to the number of actual criminal acts, and we strongly suspect that the relationship has varied widely over time. In addition, aggregate population estimates are very shaky, which makes it difficult for historians to compare rates of crime per thousand in one decade of the pre-industrial period with rates in another decade. Given these inadequacies, it is clear why the case history use of court records is to be preferred.
It can be inferred from the passage that much of the early work by historians on the European non-elite of the pre-industrial period might have been more illuminating if these historians had______
选项 A、used different methods of statistical analysis to investigate the non-elite
B、been more successful in identifying the attitudes of civil authorities, especially those who administered justice, toward the non-elite
C、been able to draw on more accounts written by contemporaries of the non-elite that described what these non-elite thought
D、relied more heavily on the personal records left by members of the European political and social elite who lived during the period in question
答案B
解析 根据文章第一段第四句“As a result，much of the early work on the non-elite was aridly statistical in nature；reducing the vast majority of the population to a set of numbers was hardly more enlightening than ignoring them altogether．”可知，对这些非精英群体的研究著作的 统计成果都是贫瘠的；将这批巨大的人口群体简化为一组简单的数据的启发意义不大，几乎 等同于将其全部忽略。下文接着给出了一个解决途径：解决这个困境的一个方法是考察法庭 记录，因为这些非精英群体的声音通常可以作为证人、原告或被告的身份而留存下来。据此 判断，答案是B。
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