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The Opressed Essay Research Paper The Oppressed

The Opressed Essay, Research Paper


The Oppressed


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 Ni?a, 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 Hispa?ola, 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 as the


Pilgrims. Because of uneasy and hostile relations with the nearby Pequot


Indians, the Pequot War soon started between the colonists and the


natives. Needless to say, the colonists won, but it was at the expense


of several dozen of their own and thousands of Pequots. But despite


Indian conflict, exposure, starvation, famine, disease, and other


hardships, the English kept coming to America. In 1619 they were settled


enough that they started bringing African slaves into the middle


colonies. Before resorting to Africans, the colonists had tried to


subdue the Indians, but that idea failed before it was created. Zinn


writes:


?They couldn?t force the Indians to work for them, as Columbus had


done. They were outnumbered, and while, with superior firearms, they


could massacre the Indians, they would face massacre in return. They


could not capture them and keep them enslaved; the Indians were tough,


resourceful, defiant, and at home in these woods, as the transplanted


Englishmen were not.


?White servants had not yet been brought over in sufficient


quantity…. As for free white settlers, many of them were skilled


craftsmen, or even men of leisure back in England, who were so little


inclined to work the land that John Smith… had to declare a kind of


martial law, organize them into work gangs, and force them into the


fields for survival…..


?Black slaves were the answer. And it was natural to consider imported


blacks as slaves, even if the institution of slavers would not be


regularized and legalized for several decades? (25).


Black slavery became an American institution that the southern and


middle colonies began to depend on for their economic success. The first


stirrings of resentment began to come not from the slaves but from the


proletariat in the form of the frontier whites. Nathaniel Bacon led a


revolution against Virginia governor William Berkeley and his


conciliatory Indian policies. Bacon and others who lived on the western


frontier wanted more protection from the government against Indian


attacks. Berkeley and his cronies were so concerned with their own


financial and political gain that they ignored Bacon?s Rebellion and


continued their policies. In the end, Bacon died a natural death (he


caught a nasty virus) and his friends were hanged, but for the first


time ever, the government was forced to listen to the grievances of the


underclass that had been for the most part largely ignorable up to that


point. Meanwhile, class distinctions became sharper and the poor grew in


number. Citizens were put into work houses for debt and occasionally


rioted against the wealthy. More and more though, the anger turned from


being just a class war to being a war of nationalities. Impressment and


other British policies distracted the colonists from being mad at the


bourgeoisie to being mad at their mother country. At the end of chapter


three, tension is mounting, pitting the Americans against the English


and the workers against the rich. The atmosphere was ripe for


revolution.


The reason that this book might be better titled A Proletarian?s


History of the United States is that Zinn?s main focus on the book


besides the actual history is the effect of the history on the common


people and the workers, or proletarians as Marx and Engels referred to


them. While most history books focus on the dominating Europeans, Zinn


focuses on the dominated Native Americans, who Zinn holds to be at least


as advanced as their European masters. He writes that


?Columbus and his successors were not coming into an empty wilderness,


but into a world which in some places was as densely populated as Europe


itself, where the culture was complex, where human relations were more


egalitarian than in Europe, and where the relations among men, women,


children, and nature were more beautifully worked out than perhaps any


place in the world.


?They were a people without a written language, but with their own


laws, their poetry, their history kept in memory and passed on, in an


oral vocabulary more complex than Europe?s, accompanied by song, dance,


and ceremonial drama. They paid careful attention to the development of


personality, intensity of will, independence and flexibility, passion


and potency, to their partnership with one another and with nature?


(21-22).


In the middle of the first chapter, Zinn uses the historical treatment


of Columbus to explain his own view on teaching history.


?Thus began the history, five hundred years ago, of the European


invasion of Indian settlements in America. That beginning, when you read


[Bartolom? de] Las Casas… is conquest, slavery, death. When we read


history books given to the children in the United States, it all starts


with heroic adventure — there is no bloodshed — and Columbus Day is a


celebration? (7).


He goes on to vituperate historian Samuel Eliot Morison for his brief


and buried mention of Columbus?s genocide of the natives. This is one of


the most heinous crimes a historian can commit, Zinn says, because


?Outright lying or quiet omission takes the risk of discovery which,


when made, might arouse the reader to rebel against the writer. To state


the facts, however, and then bury them in a mass of other information is


to say to the reader: yes, mass murder took place, but it?s not that


important… it should effect very little what we do in the world? (8).


Zinn says that ?selection, simplification, [and] emphasis? (8) are


necessary to the historian, but he chooses to take a different stance in


his writings.


?…I prefer to tell the story of the discovery of America from the


viewpoint of the Arawaks, of the Constitution from the standpoint of the


slaves, of Andrew Jackson as seen by the Cherokees, of the Civil War as


seen by the New York Irish… of the First World War as seen by


socialists, the Second World War as seen by pacifists, the New Deal as


seen by the blacks in Harlem, the postwar American empire as seen by


peons in Latin America. And so on, to the limited extent that any one


person, however he or she strains, can ?see? history from the standpoint


of others? (10).


Zinn continues his identification with the oppressed as he discusses


black-white relations. He says that blacks and whites are not naturally


prejudiced against each other as some would have us believe; he points


to the fact that laws actually had to be passed to keep blacks and


whites from fraternizing. Servants and slaves of different races saw


each other as oppressed workers first and as members of a specific race


second. On the topic of slavery, Zinn berates the American system,


calling it ?lifelong, morally crippling, destructive of family ties,


without hope of any future? (27). Some argue that African tribes had


slavery of their own so it was a part of their culture to begin with,


but Zinn says that ?the ?slaves? of Africa were more like the serfs of


Europe — in other words, like most of the population of Europe? (27).


Zinn commiserates with the plight of the oppressed frontier whites,


making Nathaniel Bacon out to be a hero. Over the course of the next 80


years, Zinn cites routine injustices against the working and under


classes, saying that it ?seems quite clear that the class lines hardened


through the colonial period; the distinction between rich and poor


became sharper? (47).


It is refreshing and commendable to see a history text that takes a


stance on the side of the peoples that seldom get represented.


Columbus?s treatment of the Native Americans was atrocious, abominable,


and abhorrent, yet most history texts treat him as one the greatest men


to have ever lived. If your value as a human being is measured by the


number of lives you ruin, people you kill, and civilizations you


destroy, then Columbus is on par with Josef Stalin. This example may


seem extreme, but both men were directly responsible for the deaths of


millions on innocent civilians and caused sheer terror and panic among


millions of other people. The difference is that Columbus did it in the


name of exploration and human progress, which Zinn correctly calls a bit


of a misnomer, while Stalin did it to achieve his political ambitions,


which Columbus was certainly not without himself. Columbus committed


horrible atrocities, and Zinn accurately portrays them from a unique


standpoint, which gives long overdue respect and recognition to the


millions of Indians who died in the name of progress. Equally accurate


is Zinn?s portrayal of colonial relations. Both African slaves and


proletarian whites were pushed around, tormented, and used as pawns in


the political game of chess for the benefit of the bourgeoisie. Zinn


asserts that there were clear contentions between the races that


ultimately led to the revolution when the anger of the masses that was


originally directed primarily at the bourgeoisie was redirected against


England in the 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.



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