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  3. In the early 1950’s, historians who studied preindustrial Europe (which we may define here as Europe in the period from roughly

In the early 1950’s, historians who studied preindustrial 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 preindustrial 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 preindustrial 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 nonelite 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 nonelite 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 Ladurie 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 records may be put. Historians who study preindustrial 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 the records does yield some information about the nonelite, but this information gives us little insight into the mental lives of the nonelite. We also know that the number of indictments in preindustrial 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 preindustrial period with rates in another decade. Given these inadequacies, it is clear why the case history use of court records is to be preferred.
According to the passage, which of the following is true of indictments for crime in Europe in the preindustrial period?
选项 A、They have, in terms of their numbers, remained relatively constant over time.
B、They give the historian important information about the mental lives of those indicted.
C、They are not a particularly accurate indication of the extent of actual criminal activity.
D、Their importance to historians of the nonelite has been generally overestimated.
答案C
解析 事实细节题。最后一段第二句提到，一些研究前工业化时期的欧洲的历史学家如何利用这些记录，而第三至五句在介绍其一些缺陷，比如并没有使我们深入了解他们的精神生活，这些起诉书并不是欧洲前工业化时期犯罪行为的真实反映等。由此可知，这些控告书并非是对当时现实犯罪行为程度的确切显示，故[C]项正确。
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