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Question

Difficulty: HardSingle-Sentence Inferences

Read the following sentence from a historical study of eighteenth-century European agriculture:

"Although eighteenth-century agrarian historians routinely attributed the persistence of common-land grazing rights in western France to peasant resistance against feudal enclosure, recent archival evidence reveals that seigneurial landowners themselves actively defended these communal usages whenever communal pasturage rights lowered their own costs of maintaining draught animals."

Which of the following can be inferred from the sentence above regarding the persistence of common-land grazing rights in western France?

  1. The continuation of communal grazing rights was supported, under specific economic circumstances, by individuals other than agricultural peasants.Answer
  2. B
    Seigneurial landowners systematically preferred communal pasturage rights over feudal enclosure across all agricultural regions of eighteenth-century France.
  3. C
    Eighteenth-century agrarian historians accurately identified peasant resistance as the sole factor preserving communal land access.
  4. D
    Seigneurial landowners organized peasant resistance against enclosure primarily to weaken regional monarchical authority.
  5. E
    Peasant resistance was entirely ineffective in maintaining grazing rights unless seigneurial landowners directly intervened.

Answer

The continuation of communal grazing rights was supported, under specific economic circumstances, by individuals other than agricultural peasants.
The correct answer is strictly supported by the final clause of the sentence, which states that 'seigneurial landowners themselves actively defended these communal usages whenever communal pasturage rights lowered their own costs.' Because landowners are non-peasants and their defense occurred under specific financial conditions (when costs were lowered), it directly follows that parties other than peasants supported communal grazing rights under certain economic circumstances.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Identify the target statement and its core logical components.
The target sentence contains a contrastive clause ('Although...') acknowledging traditional historiography (peasant resistance caused common-land persistence), followed by new evidence showing seigneurial landowners also defended communal grazing when it lowered their draught animal maintenance costs.
Single-sentence inference questions require strict adherence to the explicit facts and conditional qualifiers present in the text.
2
Evaluate the exact logical deduction that must be true based on the target sentence.
Since landowners (who are not peasants) actively defended communal grazing under specific cost-reduction conditions, it must be true that non-peasants supported the continuation of these rights under certain economic circumstances.
A valid GMAT inference must be completely provable from the sentence without introducing outside assumptions.
3
Eliminate options that overgeneralize, misattribute cause, or ignore structural pivots.
Claims of nationwide systematic preference, claims that peasant resistance was useless, or claims validating the traditional historians' view contradict or exceed the provided evidence.
Distractors in GMAT Reading Comprehension rely on scope shifts, extreme language, and structural misinterpretations.

Key Concept

Single-Sentence Logical Inference
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Topics

Single-Sentence Inferences

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