Anderson's new theory is controversial for asserting that Britain might have retained its North American empire had George Ⅲ's ministers proceeded less precipitously. But as Anderson himself concedes to previous historians like Line Henvel and Rhimes, there was no indication whether the persistence of imperial (5) authority would have made much difference for any of the parties involveD.At most, these efforts would have endowed the British government with a 'hollow' empire, wherein the exercise of effective authority would depend on the consent of the colonists and their representatives. While the grip on their colonies was questionable, the British had no option but to curtail their (10) authority, and at no point was the decision to do so more than a temporary expedient. Once the war in French Canada was resolved, England attempted to terminate the costly practices of Indian gift giving and to levy new taxation. Under such circumstances, moreover, Britain would have been able to offer only limited protections to any of America's other inhabitants, especially the (15) Indians whose lands in the Ohio Valley were already being encroached upon by a steady influx of European settlers. In a sense, the Seven Years' War ended up confirming the 'American' character of Britain's North American empire, an entity over which metropolitan authority had never been more than tenuous. Anderson's hypothesis concerning French Canada is corroborated both by (20) the events of the American Revolution, and, less successfully, the contemporaneous case of India, where the British successfully implemented the colonial strategy Anderson recommends. As witnessed in Iroquoia, the Mughal Empire's progressive collapse during the later 1740s and 1750s drew the British, who had been in India as traders since the early seventeenth century, (25) ever more deeply into politics on the subcontinent, first as the auxiliaries of local grandees and eventually as political actors in their own right. When the East India Company governed in Bengal, it did so by virtue of cleverly acting as the Mughal Emperor's diwani (a Muslim office roughly analogous to a European tax farmer). Despite the temptation to act unilaterally, the company's officials (30) were never ignorant of the fact that they owed their authority to the cooperation of local elites, who in turn accepted British rule assuming they could employ it to their own advantagE. Anderson notes that although there were undoubtedly the vast differences between them, India's experience of British rule during the eighteenth century (35) points to the same devolution of imperial agency as in AmericA.It is a pattern Jack P. Greene has identified as 'negotiated authority', whereby the unlimited powers claimed by officials at the empire's center were subject to constant revision by indigenous brokers on the periphery. Despite the fact that the Indian colonial possessions were more enduring as a result, Anderson (40) nevertheless A.survey of the inadequacies of a conventional viewpoint B.reconciliation of opposing points of view C.summary and evaluation of a recent study D.defense of a new thesis from anticipated objections E.review of the subtle distinctions between apparently similar views
A.B. C. D.survey E.reconciliation F.summary G.defense H.review