单选题 Reading Comprehension
The stability that had marked the Iroquois
Confederacy's generally pro-British position was
shattered with the overthrow of James Ⅱ in 1688,
Line. the colonial uprisings that followed in
(5) Massachusetts, New York, and Maryland, and the
commencement of King William's War against
Louis XIV of France. The increasing French
threat to English hegemony in the interior of
North America was signalized by French-led or
(10) French-inspired attacks on the Iroquois and on
outlying colonial settlements in New York and
New England. The high point of the Iroquois
response was the spectacular raid of August 5,
1689, in which the Iroquois virtually wiped out
(15) the French village of Lachine, just outside
Montreal. A counterraid by the French on the
English village of Schenectady in March, 1690,
instilled an appropriate measure of fear among the
English and their Iroquois allies.
(2O) The Iroquois position at the end of the war,
which was formalized by treaties made during the
summer of 1701 with the British and the French,
and which was maintained throughout most of the
eighteenth century, was one of "aggressive neu-
(25) trality" between the two competing European
powers. Under the new system the Iroquois ini-
tiated a peace policy toward the "far Indians,"
tightened their control over the nearby tribes, and
induced both English and French to support their
(30) neutrality toward the European powers by appro-
priate gifts and concessions.
By holding the balance of power in the
sparsely settled borderlands between English and
French settlements, and by their willingness to
(35) use their power against one or the other nation if
not appropriately treated, the Iroquois played the
game of European power politics with effective-
ness. The system broke down, however, after the
French became convinced that the Iroquois were
(40) compromising the system in favor of the English
and launched a full-scale attempt to establish
French physical and juridical presence in the
Ohio Valley, the heart of the borderlands long
claimed by the Iroquois. As a consequence of the
(45) ensuing Great War for Empire, in which Iroquois
neutrality was dissolved and European influence
moved closer, the play-off system lost its efficacy
and a system of direct bargaining supplanted it.

单选题 The author's primary purpose in this passage is to

单选题 With which of the following statements would the author be LEAST likely to agree?