#22 - Specific Reference, Must Be True, Purpose/Function

[Administrator]

Complete Question Explanation

The correct answer choice is (A).

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

Answer choice (B):

Answer choice (C):

Answer choice (D):

Answer choice (E):

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

[yrivers]

Hi,

I chose E because I thought the "certain notables" were introducing the sentences that discuss enslavement of unemployed laborers, but frankly, I was super confused by this question.

Can you explain how we get to the correct answer please?

Thanks,
Yaesul

[Charlie Melman]

Hi Yaesul,

You're right about what "certain notables" introduces. But the fact that it opens a sentence about people being OK with enslavement, and the fact that that sentence begins with "Indeed," and the fact that sentence's position right after one that says Eltis argued against Drescher's idealization of British conceptions of liberty, means that the thing the notables believed is being cited as evidence against Drescher's view. We don't know that laborers in preindustrial Britain in general had few civil rights.

Hope this helps.

[Katherinthesky]

Can someone explain why B is incorrect?
The previous sentence ends with "to ensure the industriousness of British workers" and I read the next sentence as following from that idea.

TIA

[Jeremy Press]

Hi Katherine,

Good question--go back to the language of the question stem to help guide your approach. They want to know what can be inferred about Eltis's purpose in citing the views of the certain notables. That means we have to pay attention to what Eltis was trying to do in his work (or at least what the author says Eltis was trying to do). Which means that the usual approach of looking for what the author said (just before or after the cited material) may not (and in this case definitely does not) serve us as well.

At the beginning of line 30, the author tells us that, in his work, Eltis was "[e]schewing (i.e. deliberately avoiding) Drescher’s idealization of British traditions of liberty." The author then refers to several examples of how Eltis did this: by pointing to low wages and draconian vagrancy laws, and also by pointing to the views of "certain notables" about forced labor. Thus, all of these examples were the ways that Eltis refused to idealize British traditions of liberty, and instead pointed to economic factors (in a way similar to Williams's work).

So when answer choice B suggests Eltis is trying to "support the contention that a strong labor force was important to Britain’s economy," that just doesn't fit the purpose the author himself attributed to Eltis (of "eschewing Drescher's idealization of British traditions of liberty"). Answer choice A is a better fit for those concerns about traditions of liberty.

I hope this helps!

Jeremy