Oppression and Class warfare Exposed in Dr. Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States

Dr. 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 A...

... middle of paper ...

...form of rhetoric, concessions, and propaganda calling for

loyalty to America’s upper classes and rebellion, first quiet and then

loud, against England. “[The bind of loyalty] was the language of

liberty and equality, which could unite just enough whites to fight a

Revolution against England, without ending either slavery or inequality”

(58). Zinn is absolutely correct in seeing the ulterior motives of our

founding fathers; they realized that splitting from England would be

good for them financially, socially, and politically. What they did was

harness the people’s anger against them and used it, quite ironically,

for their own advancement.

Ultimately, for the first 250 years of America’s history, there was

oppression and class warfare on varying scales that are traditionally

ignored or unemphasized by traditional history texts, but Zinn

masterfully shows the reader are major and influencial parts of American

history. To ignore the plight of the conquored and oppressed is to

ignore a part of history that cannot be ignored.

Work Cited

Zinn, Howard, A People’s History of the United States, New York: Harper and Row Publishers, 1980