2. 外语
  3. In the early 1950s,historians who studied pre-industrial Europe (which we may define here as Europe in the period from roughly 1

In the early 1950s,historians who studied pre-industrial Europe (which we may define here as Europe in the period from roughly 1

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问题      In the early 1950s,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 or3 per cent 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 Ladurie have used the documents to extract case histories, which have illustrated 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 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 the re cords 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.
According to the text, Case history is
选项 A、a study that researches in the records of legal courts.
B、a discipline founded by Le Roy Ladurie.
C、the only study that use the records of legal courts.
D、based on the data obtained from the records of legal courts.
答案D
解析 根据文章第三段第二句可知个案历史是通过对庭审记录文献的提取而得出来的。 A与文意不符，因为个案历史并不是研究庭审记录文献本身，而是通过它来研究历史。 B与文意不符，Le Roy Ladurie只是做个案历史研究的一位历史学者，文章没说他创立了这个学科。C个案历史并不是使用庭审记录文献的唯一途径，下一段还说了其他的。
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