Summary Of A People's History Of The United States Chapter 3

Fariha Fawziah | Chapter Three

In chapter three, the books A People’s History of the United States and A Young People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn provides a different historical viewpoint that is more descriptive and gives more insight than the textbook American History: A Survey by Alan Brinkley. The Zinn books additionally displayed the perspective from the indigenous peoples like Arawaks and the African blacks, the ones that faced prejudice and oppression in history, this can change one’s point of view on previous concepts on specific events or even a person.

For instance, Zinn went in depth for the initial cause of the Bacon’s Rebellion, which was because of a “chain of oppression in Virginia,” then he followed up with

For instance, according to A Young People’s History of the United States Zinn writes, “..the Virginians were angry that they couldn’t control the Indians. Maybe they envied the way the Indians could take care of themselves better than the whites did, even though the whites..were civilized and that the Indians were savages.” (page 25) A reader would wonder, why didn’t the colonists just want to live peacefully with them or at least try? The colonists may even have judged the Indians or African blacks from the outside. The textbook, however, focused on the kings and the companies controlling different plantations rather than what was really going through the colonists’

For example, based on A Young People’s History of the United States, Zinn wrote, “Of the ninety sailors who sailed on the three ships, nearly twenty boys!” (page 4) This gave an insight to the sailors taking more of a younger generation of males to give them an exposure to what the new world was like and as well as give them an early experience. This also ensures a stable future, since these young sailors would now know what to do with the Indians. The textbook mainly talked about other topics such as