【分析解答题】

(46) A、long-held view of the history of theEnglish colonies that became the United States has been thatEngland’ s policy toward these colonies before 1763 was dictated by commercial interests and that a change to a more imperial policy, dominated by expansionist militarist objectives, generated the tensions that ultimately led to theAmerican Revolution. In a recent study, Stephen Saunders Webb has resented a formidable challenge to this view.According to Webb,England already had a military imperial policy for more than a century before theAmerican Revolution. He seesCharles Ⅱ, theEnglish monarch between 1660 and 1685, as the proper successor of the Tudor monarchs of the sixteenth century and of OliverCromwell, all of whom were bent on extending centralized executive power overEngland’ s possessions through the use of what Webb calls "garrison government." Garrison government allowed the colonists a legislative assembly, but real authority, in Webb’ s view, belonged to the colonial governor, who was appointed by the king and supported by the "garrison," that is. by the local contingent ofEnglish troops under the colonial governor’ s comman

D、
According to Webb, the purpose of garrison government was to provide military support for a royal policy designed to limit the power of the upper classes in theAmerican colonies. (47) Webb argues that the colonial legislative assemblies represented the interests not of the common people but of the colonial upper classes, a coalition of merchants and nobility who favored self-rule and sought to elevate legislative authority at the expense of the executive. It was, according to Webb, the colonial governors who favored the small farmer, opposed the plantation system, and tried through taxation to break up large holdings of lan
D、Backed by the military presence of the garrison, these governors tried to prevent the gentry and merchants, allied in the colonial assemblies, from transforming colonialAmerica into a capitalistic oligarchy.
(48) Webb’ s study illuminates the political alignments that existed in the colonies in the century prior to theAmerican Revolution, but his view of the crown’ s use of the military as an instrument of colonial policy is not entirely convincing.England during the seventeenth century was not noted for its military achievements.Cromwell did mountEngland’s most ambitious overseas military expedition in more than a century, but it proved to be an utter failure. UnderCharles Ⅱ, theEnglish army was too small to be a major instrument of government. (49) Not until the war in France in 1697 did William Ⅲ persuade Parliament to create a professional standing army, and Parliament’ s price for doing so was to keep the army under tight legislative control. (50) While it may be true that the crown attempted to diminish the power of the colonial upper classes, it is hard to imagine how theEnglish army during the seventeenth century could have provided significant military support for such a policy.