A. The main driving force of the British Empire’s global expansion was the pursuit of commercial interests. B. That entailed helping the weaker side in order to promote a regional balance of power and preventing the rise of a regional power, or at least reducing its impact on British security and interests.
C. Creating a balance of power and fostering regional stability could help to realize commercial goals; hence these became the core of the British Empire’s strategy.
D. Britain put these practices to use in its continental policy for hundreds of years.
Both sentences A and C look to be good opening sentences for the paragraph. So we need to look for clues that link the sentences. Let us consider sentence B. It starts off with “that entailed? and discusses how the British tried to orchestrate a regional balance of power. This is obviously linked to sentence C. So B follows C. We also note that sentence A declares commercial interests to be the driving force of the British Empire’s global expansion. Sentence C refers to the factors that help realize commercial goals. So C follows A. D makes a good concluding sentence. The question is " Arrange the sentences in the correct order " The order is ACBD Hence, the answer is ACBD Choice C is the correct answer.