Howard zinn chapter 1. Howard Zinn Chapter blog.sigma-systems.com 2022-12-08
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Howard Zinn's Chapter 1 of his book "A People's History of the United States" is titled "Columbus, The Indians, and Human Progress." In this chapter, Zinn challenges the traditional narrative of Christopher Columbus as a heroic figure who discovered America and brought civilization to the "savage" natives. Instead, Zinn presents a counter-narrative that exposes the violence and oppression committed by Columbus and other European colonizers against the indigenous peoples of the Americas.
According to Zinn, Columbus and his men were driven by greed and a desire for gold, rather than a desire to spread Christianity as they claimed. They enslaved the native people, forcing them to mine for gold and other resources, and committed brutal acts of violence against them. The Europeans also brought diseases with them that decimated the indigenous populations, killing millions of people.
Zinn argues that the narrative of Columbus as a hero has been perpetuated throughout history in order to justify the conquest and colonization of the Americas by Europeans. This narrative has served to obscure the true history of the indigenous peoples and their suffering at the hands of the colonizers.
In contrast to the traditional narrative, Zinn presents the perspective of the indigenous peoples and their resistance to European colonization. He highlights the efforts of indigenous leaders such as Chief Massasoit and Chief Powhatan to form alliances with the Europeans in order to protect their land and their people. However, these efforts were ultimately unsuccessful, as the Europeans continued to exploit and oppress the native peoples.
Overall, Zinn's Chapter 1 presents a damning critique of Columbus and the European colonizers, and challenges the notion of "human progress" as it has been traditionally understood. Rather than a story of heroic exploration and civilization, Zinn's chapter reveals a history of violence, oppression, and exploitation.
What are Zinn's points of argument in Chapter 1 of A People's History of the United States?
When the English were going through their "starving time" in the winter of1610, some of them ran off to join the Indians, where they would at least be fed. Howard Zinn: A Life on the Left. In the book's lastparagraph, Morison sums up his view of Columbus: He had his faults and his defects, but they were largely the defects of the qualities that made himgreat-his indomitable will, his superb faith in God and in his own mission as the Christ-bearer tolands beyond the seas, his stubborn persistence despite neglect, poverty and discouragement. Now that theTurks had conquered Constantinople and the eastern Mediterranean, and controlled the land routesto Asia, a sea route was needed. Many more were killed in battles and… Native Americans relations with Europeans In " A People's History of the United States ", Howard Zinn approaches his view on history in a more opinion based way.
The textbook makes no mention of the less publicized portions of his life; it certainly was not carrying Christianity to the world. Who were these Indians? The information that Columbus wanted was this:Where is the gold? DP: So do you feel that, by and large, the Zarqawi-world and the Bush-world are moral equivalents? We are a nation that worships the frontier tradition, and our heroes are those who …show more content… Explanation: This quote to me seems like Villasenor is trying to imply that getting into the U. Raza, 2010 Cultural conflict is not just centralized in one location, it can be found all over the world. He said that cruel treatment by Columbus and the Europeans who came after him caused the "comÂplete genocide" of the Indians. .
It was a history of conquest, slavÂery, and death. They have no iron. Also, Columbus ordered for the Natives to carry him and his… A people's history of the United States - first 3 chapters Summary and reflections. Police brutality was nothing new. His seven years at Spelman College, Zinn said, "are probably the most interesting, exciting, most educational years for me. They had no iron. I don't want to romanticize them.
They were people without a written language, but with their own laws, their poetry, their historykept in memory and passed on, in an oral vocabulary more complex than Europe's, accompanied bysong, dance, and ceremonial drama. As a result, ordinary people may come to accept violence as basic parts of history, and, perhaps, of the present, too. If it were, then the states around Iraq would be calling for a war on it. The statement that has come down to us may not truly be Powhatan's words, but it sounds a lot like what other Indians said and wrote at later times. . The justice system has unfortunately followed this idea.
A People’s History of the United States Chapter 1: Columbus, the Indians, and Human Progress Summary & Analysis
Later in the chapter, Zinn shows that the English were also brutal to the Native Americans they encountered, continuing some of the savage policies of the Spanish. There was gold in Asia, it was thought, and certainly silks and spices, for Marco Polo and othershad brought back marvelous things from their overland expeditions centuries before. Retrieved August 23, 2017. Theyare agile, he says, and can swim long distances, especially the women. He later wrote of this in his log: They. The Indians he met were hospitable, but when oneof them stole a small silver cup, Grenville sacked and burned the whole Indian village.
They would make fine servants. There are many spices, and great mines of gold and other metals. Earlier societies-in America and elsewhere-in which property was held in common and families were extensive and complicated, with aunts and uncles and grandmothers and grandfathers all living together, seemed to treat women more as equals than did the white societies that later overran them, bringing "civilization" and private property. Retrieved January 28, 2010. Unable to fight against the Spanish solÂdiers' guns, swords, armor, and horses, the Arawaks began to commit mass suicide with poi son. In contrast, he paints Columbus as a brutal man driven by avarice.
To them, the pain was familiar—they had known it by many names: slavery, Jim Crow, mass incarceration. We can read Powhatan's stateÂment as the spirit of what he thought as he watched the white men enter his territory: I know the difference between peace and war better than any man in my country. Then, on October 12, a sailor called Rodrigo saw the early morning moonshining on white sands, and cried out. Retrieved August 23, 2017. Retrieved August 4, 2013. .
Some people argue that there is no point to the holiday because Columbus did not even land in North America; others say that he is a crucial part of American History, and of course some say he did more harm than good. He gives many examples within his book that shows how certain facts are covered up or briefly brought up and dismissed. By the time of Christ and Julius Caesar, there had developed in the Ohio River Valley a culture ofso-called Moundbuilders, Indians who constructed thousands of enormous sculptures out of earth,sometimes in the shapes of huge humans, birds, or serpents, sometimes as burial sites, sometimesas fortifications. Retrieved April 30, 2020. On his second voyage to the New World, Columbus again failed to find gold. Their orders were to find and store the gold. In fact, he asked me if I would review it in Ramparts just so that people would know about the book.
The Indians, Columbus reported, "are so naive and so free with their possessions that no one whohas not witnessed them would believe it. Thus, in that inevitable taking of sides which comes from selection and emphasis in history, I preferto try to tell the story of the discovery of America from the viewpoint of the Arawaks, of theConstitution from the standpoint of the slaves, of Andrew Jackson as seen by the Cherokees, of theCivil War as seen by the New York Irish, of the Mexican war as seen by the deserting soldiers ofScott's army, of the rise of industrialism as seen by the young women in the Lowell textile mills, ofthe Spanish-American war as seen by the Cubans, the conquest of the Philippines as seen by blacksoldiers on Luzon, the Gilded Age as seen by southern farmers, the First World War as seen bysocialists, the Second World War as seen by pacifists, the New Deal as seen by blacks in Harlem,the postwar American empire as seen by peons in Latin America. Doing History from the Bottom Up; On E. And so Columbus, desperate to pay back dividends tothose who had invested, had to make good his promise to fill the ships with gold. They paid careful attention to the development of personality,intensity of will, independence and flexibility, passion and potency, to their partnership with oneanother and with nature. Was "progress" enough of a reason to decimate their population and wipe out their societies? Racial Profiling Thesis 1195 Words 5 Pages When it comes to racial profiling by the police in the criminal justice system, African Americans are more often racially profiled than any other race in America today.
