A People’s History of the United States ---- Howard Zinn

 

Historian Howard Zinn (1922-2010), a working-class lad of immigrant parents, was born in Brooklyn New York, was a shipyard worker for three years, served as a bombardier in the US Army Air Force during World War II, went to college on the GI Bill, earned his doctorate in history from Columbia University and was a university teacher and social activist thereafter.

The book under discussion here has a wide canvas - ranging from the arrival of Columbus in the Caribbean in 1492  to around the year 2000, and is more than 680 pages long. It is, therefore, neither a quick nor an easy read, though a very rewarding one.

 The stories -- fascinating and deeply disturbing -- that Zinn tells are many, but all have in common a ‘bottoms up’ approach. This requires us to see the happenings of the times from the viewpoint not of the powerful, rich and important, but of those who were poor, dispossessed, exploited and politically ‘invisible’.

Orthodox histories, the author argues, are written by the victors, the powerful and important. Such histories all too often pass quickly over -- or completely ignore - the dark side of the events they describe. For example, he quotes a prominent Harvard historian who acknowledges that Columbus committed genocide in the Caribbeans, but then buries that harsh assessment under a mound of fulsome praise about his other qualities -- ‘…his indomitable will, his superb faith in God and in his mission as the Christ-bearer to lands beyond the seas, his stubborn persistence…..his seamanship.”

Zinn contends that ‘to state the facts...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 weigh very little in our final judgements ;..’

What any historian chooses to emphasize in the vast mass of ‘facts’ available is an ideological choice. Historians can, and usually do, emphasize the glory but not the gore attendant on the achievement of that glory, especially if the gore was of the losers, the victims. The history of the Spanish ‘conquest’ of South America -- Columbus in the Bahamas, Cortes in Mexico, Pizarro in Peru -- is a brutal example of overwhelming greed as a driver of unconscionable violence against fellow humans by a ‘civilizing’ power bringing God and culture to ‘savages’ undeserving of anything other than the sword and slavery.

A similar though more long drawn out pattern of death and displacement was initiated by the British settlers on the east coast of North America.

The Pilgrims came to a land inhabited by indigenous peoples. The inaccurate term ‘Indian’ has stuck despite the fact that Columbus had wanted to but failed to reach the Indies, but nonetheless the inhabitants of the newly discovered continent were termed ‘Indians’.

‘The Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony …created the excuse to take Indian land by declaring the area legally a “vacuum”. The Indians, he said, had not subdued the land and therefore had only a “natural” right to it but not a “civil right”. A “natural right did not have legal standing”. The convenient application of the laws of another land and people to a different land and people without, of course, any consultation with the indigenous inhabitants  would be laughable were it not the harbinger of human tragedy on a vast scale.

The story of the white man’s interaction with the Indian tribes in North America is one of displacement and decimation, of superior weapons, deceit and broken treaties   overwhelming smaller and inadequately armed populations. The Indians fought back, but lost more battles than they won and were     gradually pushed westwards and ultimately into ‘reservations’ to accommodate the growing requirements of profitable agriculture and the rising tide of land hungry migrants from Europe flooding the New World.

 The story of slavery -- Black Africans imported into North America to work the vast landholdings of rich white men in both the North and the South colonies –(later states) is another distressing tale.

The Dutch and the English dominated the enormously profitable slave trade. The margins were so large that the high ‘losses’ in transit -- inhuman conditions aboard the slaver ships led to very high ‘losses’ -- did not discourage the traders. In 1619, a Dutch ship brought a cargo of 20 Black African slaves to Jamestown, Virginia and slavery came to North America. By 1763 there were approximately 170000 slaves in Virginia, about half the population! As the colonies grew so did the demand for cheap labour for the plantations. The Indians were too ‘unruly’ to be good labourers for the plantations, poor whites who came as indentured servants from Europe had time-bound contracts and were also ‘difficult’ for the purpose. The Black African, torn from his land, family and society, brutalized in capture and in transit, tightly controlled, physically and psychologically,by the masters and their supervisors, and a lifelong asset that was cheap to maintain was the ideal solution to the labour problem. Racism served to justify slavery and also, by driving a wedge between white and black, to ensure that poor whites did not collaborate with the blacks. It was an effective instrument of control.

“James Madison told a British visitor shortly after the American Revolution that he could make $257 on every Negro in a year, and spend only $12 or $13 on his keep.”

As the colonies expanded, they needed the British much less than the Empire needed them and their resources and wealth. The conditions for a conflict emerged and the American Revolution occurred (1775-83).

The famous first line of the famous second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence (1776) reads, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.”

Stirring words, written by Thomas Jefferson, who, incidentally, was a slave owner all his life! The equality talked about did not apply to Black African slaves, Indigenous Indians and women. The author contends that ‘The use of the phrase “all men are created equal” was probably not a deliberate attempt to make a statement about women. It was just that women were beyond consideration as worthy of inclusion. They were politically invisible.’

Wars are an effective means of uniting people and suppressing internal conflicts between rich and poor in the face of a common enemy. The Revolution, the author argues, was a good illustration of the fact that war makes the ruling elite ‘more secure against internal trouble’.

The issue of equality was carefully ignored when, for example, in Maryland ‘by the new constitution of 1776, to run for governor one had to own 5000 pounds of property, to run for senator 1000 pounds. Thus 90% of the population were excluded from holding high public office. Between 1776-1780 new constitutions were drawn up in all the states, but only Pennsylvania abolished the property qualifications for voting and holding office.

The story of slavery is a long one as is that of ‘removal’ of the Indian from lands that were needed for white immigrants, railroads, plantations and an expanding agriculture.

The drivers of slavery were economic. In 1790, 1000 tonnes of cotton were produced  in a year in the South and in 1860 the production was 1 million tonnes and the number of slaves grew from 500000 to 4 million.  The international trade in slaves was prohibited in 1808 (though the prohibition was honored in the breach all too often) but slavery continued until 1865 and of course, segregation, discrimination, racial violence and exploitation all buttressed by racism continued for much longer.

 When the Civil War ended, 19 out of 24 Northern states did not allow blacks to vote. By 1900 all Southern states had passed laws for the disenfranchisement and segregation of Blacks. The battle for desegregation was protracted and extremely painful -- lynchings, race riots and enormous courage in the face of adversity. The Ku Klux Klan had four and a half million members in 1924! When the US entered World War II, the US armed forces were segregated by race and military segregation was formally ended in 1948, but took till 1954 for the process  to be completed.

The Civil Rights movement and consequent legislation that effectively dismantled racial segregation and disenfranchisement happened only around the mid-20^th century..  

 The Conscription Act of 1863 provided that the rich could avoid military service by paying $300 or providing a substitute to fight in their place.

This provision was used by JP Morgan, John D Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, Jay Gould and James Mellon.

‘Mellon’s father had written to him that  “a man may be a patriot without risking his own life or sacrificing his health. There are plenty of lives less valuable”’.

A story well worth mentioning here is that of American expansionism. The newly minted republic looked longingly at rich and fertile lands adjoining it and began ‘acquiring’ them -- primarily at gunpoint, in the 19^th century. Texas was annexed in 1845, a war was very successfully waged against Mexico (1846-48) and only about half of that nation was taken over. Most of the present day states of California, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah and parts of Arizona, Colarado and Wyoming were thus added to the United States from the Mexico Cession. While Louisiana was ‘purchased’ from France, Florida was acquired through cession from Spain.

The author quotes a phrase that became very famous in this context. The editor of the Democratic Review said that it was “Our manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions.”

As the 19^th century was ending, in 1897, Teddy Roosevelt wrote to a friend, “In strict confidence I should welcome almost any war, for I think the country needs one.”

Prophetic words that can perhaps be said to have set the tone for the coming century.

The USA evolved into an economic and military superpower and power, inevitably, needs to be demonstrated. American power was on successful display during the two world wars and a colossal failure in Vietnam, despite the horrific carnage it wrought on a tiny country  about 13000 kms away. There were many other ‘interventions’, covert and overt, in South America and elsewhere to guard the ‘free’ world against the Commie menace and US oil interests in the Middle East.

Zinn does not merely list these military adventures but tells the stories that lay beneath the events, and they are distressing stories. More than 100000 Japanese origin residents of the US -- three quarters of whom were born in the US and therefore citizens -- were interned in concentration camps for three years during WWII. A useful lesson learned from British colonialism in South Africa and Fascism in Hitler’s Germany!

When at the start of WWII, Germany bombed civilian targets -- cities in Europe and Britain -- Roosevelt described these as “inhuman barbarism that has profoundly shocked the conscience of humanity”. Then, of course, the Allies undertook saturation bombing of German cities, including the fire bombing of Dresden in which about 100000 people died. Tokyo was not spared either and the end came with the nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The justifications given for using the nuclear option have been seriously questioned and Zin provides evidence that seems to validate the questioning.  

Post war, the Anti Commie hysteria built up, Senator Macarthy got into action as did the House UnAmerican Activities Committee. Loyalty, of citizens and organizations, began to be questioned rigorously.

President Dwight D Eisenhower, formerly a Five Star General and Supreme Allied Commander in Europe during WWII, had warned of the growth of an “immense military establishment and a large arms industry’ that had created a “military -industrial complex” which could acquire ‘unwarranted influence’ over government policy.

Eisenhower’s words were to also prove prophetic!

‘Defence’ began to dominate government expenditure and social services invariably took the hit when income tax cuts were introduced by various, primarily Republican, governments.

The mid 20^th century saw a ‘black revolt’ against segregation and in 1955 ‘Mrs Rosa Parks, a 43 year old seamstress… refused to obey the Montgomery (Alabama ) law  providing for segregation on city buses,… and decided to sit down  in the ‘white’ section of the bus.’ She was arrested, but this sparked off a huge protest movement that would ’sweep the south in the next ten years’.

Dr Martin Luther King emerged as a leader of the movement and a series of Civil Rights laws were passed in response, over time.

The anti-war movement burgeoned as the Vietnam war dragged on, women got the vote in the 20^th century and the Supreme Court in Roe Vs Wade (1973) ruled that the state could not prohibit abortions, except in the last three months of pregnancy. Discrimination by sex in federally connected employment was banned in 1967.

Zinn has written a history that documents the struggles of ordinary people -- the inequities that the powerful and the rich imposed on the rest ever since white Europeans found the Bahamas and a new continent between Europe and the Indies.

The book seeks to redress an imbalance in the popular version of American history that tends to ignore what may be termed the dark side of the process.

To conservative critics of Zinn, one can say that when a reality was rather unbalanced it can perhaps be a trifle disingenuous to look for a ‘more balanced point of view’.

Happy reading.