a patriot's history of the united states chapter 1 answers
Zinn celebrates Native American science and technology, and suggests that women weren’t discriminated against in Native American tribes. By using our site, you acknowledge that you have read and understand our Indeed, Zinn posits that the desire for more property motivated the early colonists in New England to resort to violence to conquer more territory. General George Washington (1732-1799) was the first President of the United States of America under the US Constitution. A People’s History of the United States: Chapter 1 Summary & Analysis Next. Our
By this way of thinking, the only acceptable kind of “necessary sacrifice for human progress” would be one made by the victims themselves. are licensed under a Zinn acknowledges upfront that his history of the United States isn’t free from his own personal biases. Every American schoolchild knows the story of how “Christopher Columbus” discovered America. Many prominent historians—including those who share Zinn’s sense of moral responsibility—have questioned whether Zinn is too quick to idealize the persecuted and demonize the powerful. It was known that the Earth was round, so Columbusâs plan seemed plausible.
Chapter 5 Study Guide Answers. The words of Zinn argues, instead, that Americans have always been divided—specifically, that they’re always been divided between the rich and the poor, the powerful and the powerless. However, Zinn brings up de las Casas, suggesting that, even in the 1490s, some Europeans regarded Columbus as a murderer and a thief. His goal isn’t simply to mourn for “victims” or denounce “executioners.” Zinn freely admits that often victims turn on one another and behave cruelly themselves. Again and again, it’s been argued that the murder of the Indians was necessary for the greater good of civilization. A further irony of European nations’ conquest of the New World is that, in almost all cases, the people of these nations didn’t become any wealthier: rulers became more powerful while the poorest people continued to starve. -Graham S. (However, one major criticism of Zinn’s ideas is that Zinn himself is too general in his definition of “the powerless.”) Struggling with distance learning? Zinn sees it as the duty of the historian not simply to relay what happened, but to remedy the marginalization that persecuted people have experienced, both in history and in history books. By the next century, the total Indian population in North America had fallen from around ten million to less than a million. Thus, we must question the assumption that the Europeans were morally justified in conquering the Indians. My students love how organized the handouts are and enjoy tracking the themes as a class.” Schweikart said that he wrote it with Allen because he could not find an American history textbook without "leftist bias". Such a view may be a little “romantic,” Zinn admits—however, all the evidence points to the fact that the Indians really were peaceful, kind, and egalitarian. European colonists—and the historians who’ve deified them in textbooks—have offered the same explanation for colonial brutality: the ends justified the means. In short, history textbooks are too quick to assume that European explorers conquered the Native Americans because they were inherently better (more technologically advanced, more “civilized,” etc.). The book that is good is from about 1776 to about 1870.
Some historians have argued that Columbus should be interpreted as a “product of his time” (in other words, that his genocidal acts were normal behavior at the time).
( For nearly a century, the United States government supported slavery for one reason: it was exceedingly practical. The Great Depression, 1929-1932Assessing the Hoover Years on the Eve of the New DealThe Origins of War: Europe, Asia, and the United States In 1676, the New Englanders won, having slaughtered some three thousand Indians.