Howard Zinn History of the United States
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- Category: History: American
- Date Submitted: 08/13/2013 09:27 PM
- Pages: 6
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1. According to Zinn, what is his main purpose for writing A People’s History of the United States? Why does Zinn dispute Henry Kissinger’s statement: “History is the memory of states?”
• Zinn’s main purpose for writing A Peoples History of the United States is to tell the history of the United States in a way that we don’t accept the memory of the states as our own. The history of any country, presented as the history of a family, conceals fierce conflicts of interest between conquerors and conquered, masters and slaves, capitalist’s ad workers dominators and dominated in race and sex. Nations are not communities and never have been
• He disputes that history is not the memory of the states because Henry Kissinger tells the history of nineteenth-century Europe from the viewpoint of the leaders of Austria and England in A World Restored, meanwhile ignoring the millions who suffered from those statesmen’s policies. From his standpoint, the peace that Europe had before the French Revolution was restored by the diplomacy of a few national leaders. However, for farmers in France, factory workers in England, colored people in Asia and Africa, women and children everywhere except in the upper class, it was a world of conquest, violence hunger, exploitation. For the majority that who’s views he did not include, the world was not restored but disintegrated.
2. What is Zinn’s thesis in Chapter 1?
• Zinn’s thesis is “I prefer to try 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 Mexican war as seen by the deserting soldiers of Scott’s army, of the rise of industrialism as seen by the young women in the Lowell textile mills, of the Spanish American War as seen by the Cubans, the conquest of the Philippines as seen by black soldiers on Luzon, the Gilded Age as seen by southern...
• Zinn’s main purpose for writing A Peoples History of the United States is to tell the history of the United States in a way that we don’t accept the memory of the states as our own. The history of any country, presented as the history of a family, conceals fierce conflicts of interest between conquerors and conquered, masters and slaves, capitalist’s ad workers dominators and dominated in race and sex. Nations are not communities and never have been
• He disputes that history is not the memory of the states because Henry Kissinger tells the history of nineteenth-century Europe from the viewpoint of the leaders of Austria and England in A World Restored, meanwhile ignoring the millions who suffered from those statesmen’s policies. From his standpoint, the peace that Europe had before the French Revolution was restored by the diplomacy of a few national leaders. However, for farmers in France, factory workers in England, colored people in Asia and Africa, women and children everywhere except in the upper class, it was a world of conquest, violence hunger, exploitation. For the majority that who’s views he did not include, the world was not restored but disintegrated.
2. What is Zinn’s thesis in Chapter 1?
• Zinn’s thesis is “I prefer to try 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 Mexican war as seen by the deserting soldiers of Scott’s army, of the rise of industrialism as seen by the young women in the Lowell textile mills, of the Spanish American War as seen by the Cubans, the conquest of the Philippines as seen by black soldiers on Luzon, the Gilded Age as seen by southern...