Currently Reading: A Peoples History of the United States by Howard Zinn (Chapter 1)

 

I've heard about this book for many years, but just recently picked one up to read. I haven't been disappointed so far. I'm about halfway through it but I thought review the first chapter as it also assets the tone and object of the book. Unlike traditional history texts's Howard Zinn focus's less on the famous figures of United States history and more on the common people involved. I think Zinn encapsulates his goal here:

"My viewpoint, in telling the history of the United States, is different: that we must not accept the memory of the states as our own. Nations are not communities and never have been.The history of any country, presented as the history of a family, conceals fierce conflicts of interest (sometimes exploding, most often repressed) between conquerors and conquered, masters and slaves, capitalists and workers, dominators and the dominated in in race and sex. And in such a world of conflict, a world of victims and executioners, it is the job of thinking people, as Albert Camus suggested, not to be on the side of the executioners. " (page 10)

It's like the old adage, the winners write the history books.  In modern-day lingo, this is considered to be a "woke" version of United States history. 

Chapter 1: Columbus, The Indians, and Human Progress

Unsurprisingly, we start with Christopher Columbus and his famous voyage in 1492. Instead of painting a heroic explorer, Howard Zinn is far more critical of Columbus and those who followed him. Many histories of this moment skip forward soon after Columbus stepped off his boat, thinking he was in Asia, which is another story. We learn that Christopher Columbus wasn't the noble, altruistic hero that he is often made out to be. We soon see that his primary goal is gold and, is quite ruthless to the indigenous  Arawak in search for this treasure. He has no qualms about murder and enslavement in reaching his goals. The Arawak, who at first were generous and curious about their visitors, soon learned that their visitors were brutal and quite ruthless. 

Howard Zinn flips the traditional Eurocentric viewpoint that focuses on the oppressor and makes the oppressed invisible from a historical perspective. He sets the tone for the book to tell history from a "people's history" perspective of the indigenous people, slaves, the working class, and others who are not the usual focus of historical accounts.