Howard Zinns A Peoples History of the United States
Howard Zinns A Peoples History of the United StatesDr. Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States might be
better titled A Proletarian’s History of the United States. In the first
three chapters Zinn looks at not only the history of the conquerors,
rulers, and leaders; but also the history of the enslaved, the
oppressed, and the led. Like any American History book covering the time
period of 1492 until the early 1760’s, A People’s History tells the
story of the “discovery” of America, early colonization by European
powers, the governing of these colonies, and the rising discontent of
the colonists towards their leaders. Zinn, however, stresses the role of
a number of groups and ideas that most books neglect or skim over: the
plight of the Native Americans that had their numbers reduced by up to
90% by European invasion, the equality of these peoples in many regards
to their European counterparts, the importation of slaves into America
and their unspeakable travel conditions and treatment, the callous
buildup of the agricultural economy around these slaves, the
discontented colonists whose plight was ignored by the ruling
bourgeoisie, and most importantly, the rising class and racial struggles
in America that Zinn correctly credits as being the root of many of the
problems that we as a nation have today. It is refreshing to see a book
that spends space based proportionately around the people that lived
this history. When Columbus arrived on the Island of Haiti, there were
39 men on board his ships compared to the 250,000 Indians on Haiti. If
the white race accounts for less than two hundredths of one percent of
the island’s population, it is only fair that the natives get more than
the two or three sentences that they get in most history books. Zinn
cites population figures, first person accounts, and his own
interpretation of their effects to create an accurate and fair depiction
of the first two and a half centuries of European life on the continent
of North America.
The core part of any history book is obviously history. In the first
three chapters of the book, Zinn presents the major historical facts of
the first 250 years of American history starting from when Christopher
Columbus’s Niña, Pinta, and Santa Maria landed in the Bahamas on October
12, 1492. It was there that Europeans and Native Americans first came
into contact; the Arawak natives came out to greet the whites, and the
whites were only interested in finding the gold. From the Bahamas,
Columbus sailed to Cuba and Hispañola, the present-day home of Haiti and
the Dominican Republic. One-hundred fifteen years later and 1,500 miles
to the north, the colony of Jamestown was founded by a group of English
settlers led by John Smith; shortly after that the Massachusetts Bay
Colony was founded by a group of Puritans known to us today...
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