#23 - Concept Reference, Strengthen/Support

[Administrator]

Complete Question Explanation

The correct answer choice is (C).

Answer choice (A):

Answer choice (B):

Answer choice (C): This is the correct answer choice.

Answer choice (D):

Answer choice (E):

This explanation is still in progress. Please post any questions below!

[NJL2022]

So I chose answer choice "B" due to the second sentence in the third paragraph: "Both serfs and slaves engaged in a wide variety of rebellious activity...much of which has escaped the historical record," however, this seems to be the AU's viewpoint and not Kolchin's.

In regards to answer choice "C," Kolchin never mentions the rebellions in the Western Hemisphere were centered around large estates. He mentions the estates in Russia and the US, but not the US rebellions. What am I missing here? Appreciate the clarification, thanks!

[Poonam Agrawal]

Hi NJL!

This question introduces a set of outside facts as answer choices (facts not from the passage itself) and asks us to find one fact that will strengthen Kolchin's conclusion about the relationship of demographics to slave rebellion in Russia and the United States. We are not really trying to find a fact that is already in the passage. You know this through the language of the question: "Which one of the following assertions, if true, would provide the most support..." When it says, "if true," that indicates outside facts not in the passage that we are assuming are true.

To answer the question, we have to first identify Kolchin's conclusion. This is found in the last sentence of the passage - because slaves in the U.S. worked in smaller groups and more closely with their owners, they did not have as many confrontations and organized rebellions as did Russian serfs.

The next step is to find an answer choice that supports this idea. We are looking for a fact that tells us that organized/collective rebellion is more common when slaves work in large groups like the serfs. This is what answer choice (C) accomplishes. Even though it is not in the passage itself (remember, it doesn't need to be), it tells us that organized rebellion was most common in the U.S. only in large slave groups. This directly supports Kolchin's conclusion, which is why it the correct answer here.

In contrast, answer choice (B) does not really add anything to Kolchin's main conclusion about the relationship of demographics to rebellion method.

Hope that helps clarify this one! Let us know if you have any other questions.

[NJL2022]

Hi Poonam/PS Staff,

Thanks for the redirect. I must have too quickly scanned the question stem and overlooked what was accepted as given, holding onto the conclusion a bit too tightly. My assumption is that the same lessons from the LRB apply here, such that Strengthen (as well as Weaken, Justify, and Assumption), can include outside information not included in the passage. Also that 90% + of RC questions are variations on MBT. Or are these overgeneralizations?

[Rachael Wilkenfeld]

Hi NJ,

Yes, you would treat a strengthen here just as you would in LR. You are looking for information that, if true, would support the argument in the passage. To do that, you need to know the conclusion, as well as how the author reached that conclusion.

Most RC questions are going to be in that prove family, but it's not 100%, so you should be aware and on the lookout for questions type as you read. Even within the prove family, question type will be important. Something that is a correct must be true answer might not be correct for a main point, for example. You should also ideally be prephrasing here in RC to help with both your speed and accuracy, and a good prephrase requires knowing your question.

Hope that helps!

[cnbauer]

Hello! So I chose A because of the direct comparison between the volnenie rebellions and Southern plantation rebellions at the end of the last paragraph, but I see how that answer choice is overextended because of the use of the phrase "confined almost exclusively," which we have no evidence of.

I wanted to choose C, but I was spooked by the use of the phrase "Western Hemisphere". On one hand, I wanted to choose this answer because the second half of it almost exactly describes what is said in the third paragraph to be a factor that "significantly contributed" to the serf revolutions in Russia, but we think of Russia as part of the Eastern Hemisphere and there isn't anywhere in the passage that makes reference to relative hemisphere. Depending on what map projection you use, you could put Russia in the Western Hemisphere, but I thought that was going off into the weeds.

The second option for analyzing why C is right, is by looking at the phrase "Western Hemisphere" as referring to the Southern plantation slavery in the United States. If C is correct, then we can see that organized rebellions could only have occurred in the 2% of plantations where more than 100 slaves worked. If that were the case, it would support Kolchin's theory that larger plantations led to increased rebellion and therefore that there was more rebellion in Russian plantations than in those located in the United States.

I'm assuming that the second way of analyzing the text is the way it was intended? Or is there a better way to reason the right answer that I'm missing entirely? Thanks in advance!

[Amber Thomas]

Hi Cnbauer!

Your second interpretation is correct! In the Western Hemisphere, rebellions were more common in colonies with large estates and over a hundred slaves. This lends credence to the idea that collective rebellion was more common in Russia because they generally had a large number of serfs per estate, thereby making it easier to organize a larger rebellion. It doesn't even necessarily have to refer to United States plantations to be true, it could be colonies in the Caribbean or Bahamas as well.

For this question, we are just looking for an answer choice that offers support for the claim that more serfs/slaves per estate = more collective rebellion.

I hope this helps!