History has always been written by the victors and those with power. Like it or not, Howard Zinn wrote history from the 'losers' point of view and provides varying amounts of evidence to support those alternate takes on history. As a historian, you will find he is very well-regarded in his field by professionals who make history their life.
Read the dominant discourse and Howard Zinn and you'll find the truth somewhere in between. But calling him an outright liar because he challenges the status quo and instead swallowing wholesale from a single point of view is a waste of the great minds we as humans have been endowed with.
History has always been written by those who write. The canon abounds with examples of peoples and perspectives who lost the battle, but by writing down their views, won the war. The Jews were driven repeatedly into exile, but those who defeated them are remembered largely from Biblical accounts, as the villains of the tale. Athens lost the Peloponnesian war, but Thucydides' account came to define the struggle. And so on, down through time. Now, this certainly privileges the perspectives of the literate classes, and of literary societies, over those of others. And there is a premium on the survival of written records - more likely in societies that flourish and among the affluent. But that's not to say that such perspectives - the views of the oppressed and the downtrodden - were absent from the historical record prior to the 1960s.
Zinn was a polemicist, not a scholar. His self-annointed mission was to rewrite American history from a radical perspective - not because, having weighed and balanced the available evidence, this seemed to him the most accurate perspective, but because it pointed toward where he felt the nation ought to be. In this postmodern moment, we acknowledge that all scholars engage the past from their personal perspective, created in part by the circumstances of the present. But most scholars try to correct for that; Zinn embraced it. He was deliberately contrarian.
Which is not to say he was always wrong. Some views he attacked and overturned were flawed, artifacts of poor scholarship or limited sources. But neither was he always right. And simply splitting the difference between Zinn and mainstream scholarship is a deeply flawed approach. If one meteorologist tells you it snowed two inches last night, and another declares it snowed twelve inches, it's unlikely to be the case that seven inches actually fell. Perhaps the one who measured twelve inches was looking at a deep drift, or the one who measured just two, at a patch blown bare by the wind. That's a problem with sourcing and the breadth of research. Or perhaps the second one used a ruler with roman numerals, and misread 'II' as '11' - a problem with source interpretation. Maybe one measured the height of a very wet snowfall, while the other received a flask of water from the snowmelt of a broad and defined area, measured its mass, then multiplied that by the average density of all snowfalls in a season to determine the height. Historians do this sort of thing, too - direct (anecdotal) observation has its advantages, but so do statistical measurements, and knowing when to apply each is a skill.
There's a temptation to look at a disagreement, and assume that both sides are exaggerating or in error, and that the truth lies in between. Sadly, more often than not, Zinn's contrarian inclinations led him to exaggerate or overemphasize his evidence, and to support conclusions that were not borne out by other scholarship. Audiences love a debunker - we all want to know the real story, the one they didn't want you to know - and Zinn played that role perfectly. He spoke with stunningly absolute confidence and evangelical zeal. And he made some real contributions. But his legacy is irremediably tainted by his poor scholarly practices.
If Zinn had died in 1990, his apologies for bloody Communist dictatorships would not have looked so good and would not have been forgotten.
But he had the luck to live long enough to see the USA actually become an imperialist power which tortured prisoners, so he acquired the virtue of (what we hope is) a stopped clock: being right twice a day.
I thank him for his military service in WW II, but he did write pro-Communist history. He thought Mao-China was “the closest thing, in the long history of that ancient country, to a people’s government, independent of outside control.” He was pro-Nicaraguan Sandinistas and Pro-Cuba.
Zinn also believed Mumia Abu-Jamal’s “race and radicalism,” and his “persistent criticism of the Philadelphia police” that landed him on death row. It couldn't possibly be about his gun being found at the scene; or the testimony of numerous witnesses pointing to him as the shooter; or the witnesses reporting a confession by Abu-Jamal that caused a jury of twelve to sentence him to death.
Zinn also wrote that "It seemed that the United States was reacting to the horrors perpetrated by the terrorists against innocent people in New York by killing other innocent people in Afghanistan.” - pretty much saying the USA was no better than the terrorists.
This evidence leads me to think Zinn is not a credible Historian. Zinn was pro-Communist and wrote history in terms of Class Struggle...aka Karl Marx. Communism is a failure and Zinn was a revisionist historian who tried to spin history in a way to make Communism look not so bad.
Comments
Like Zinn, the newspapers
Like Zinn, the newspapers believe in writing non-factual history.
History has always been
History has always been written by the victors and those with power. Like it or not, Howard Zinn wrote history from the 'losers' point of view and provides varying amounts of evidence to support those alternate takes on history. As a historian, you will find he is very well-regarded in his field by professionals who make history their life.
Read the dominant discourse and Howard Zinn and you'll find the truth somewhere in between. But calling him an outright liar because he challenges the status quo and instead swallowing wholesale from a single point of view is a waste of the great minds we as humans have been endowed with.
History has always been
History has always been written by those who write. The canon abounds with examples of peoples and perspectives who lost the battle, but by writing down their views, won the war. The Jews were driven repeatedly into exile, but those who defeated them are remembered largely from Biblical accounts, as the villains of the tale. Athens lost the Peloponnesian war, but Thucydides' account came to define the struggle. And so on, down through time. Now, this certainly privileges the perspectives of the literate classes, and of literary societies, over those of others. And there is a premium on the survival of written records - more likely in societies that flourish and among the affluent. But that's not to say that such perspectives - the views of the oppressed and the downtrodden - were absent from the historical record prior to the 1960s.
Zinn was a polemicist, not a scholar. His self-annointed mission was to rewrite American history from a radical perspective - not because, having weighed and balanced the available evidence, this seemed to him the most accurate perspective, but because it pointed toward where he felt the nation ought to be. In this postmodern moment, we acknowledge that all scholars engage the past from their personal perspective, created in part by the circumstances of the present. But most scholars try to correct for that; Zinn embraced it. He was deliberately contrarian.
Which is not to say he was always wrong. Some views he attacked and overturned were flawed, artifacts of poor scholarship or limited sources. But neither was he always right. And simply splitting the difference between Zinn and mainstream scholarship is a deeply flawed approach. If one meteorologist tells you it snowed two inches last night, and another declares it snowed twelve inches, it's unlikely to be the case that seven inches actually fell. Perhaps the one who measured twelve inches was looking at a deep drift, or the one who measured just two, at a patch blown bare by the wind. That's a problem with sourcing and the breadth of research. Or perhaps the second one used a ruler with roman numerals, and misread 'II' as '11' - a problem with source interpretation. Maybe one measured the height of a very wet snowfall, while the other received a flask of water from the snowmelt of a broad and defined area, measured its mass, then multiplied that by the average density of all snowfalls in a season to determine the height. Historians do this sort of thing, too - direct (anecdotal) observation has its advantages, but so do statistical measurements, and knowing when to apply each is a skill.
There's a temptation to look at a disagreement, and assume that both sides are exaggerating or in error, and that the truth lies in between. Sadly, more often than not, Zinn's contrarian inclinations led him to exaggerate or overemphasize his evidence, and to support conclusions that were not borne out by other scholarship. Audiences love a debunker - we all want to know the real story, the one they didn't want you to know - and Zinn played that role perfectly. He spoke with stunningly absolute confidence and evangelical zeal. And he made some real contributions. But his legacy is irremediably tainted by his poor scholarly practices.
History
very nice analysis.
He lived long enough to be right
If Zinn had died in 1990, his apologies for bloody Communist dictatorships would not have looked so good and would not have been forgotten.
But he had the luck to live long enough to see the USA actually become an imperialist power which tortured prisoners, so he acquired the virtue of (what we hope is) a stopped clock: being right twice a day.
I thank him for his military
I thank him for his military service in WW II, but he did write pro-Communist history. He thought Mao-China was “the closest thing, in the long history of that ancient country, to a people’s government, independent of outside control.” He was pro-Nicaraguan Sandinistas and Pro-Cuba.
Zinn also believed Mumia Abu-Jamal’s “race and radicalism,” and his “persistent criticism of the Philadelphia police” that landed him on death row. It couldn't possibly be about his gun being found at the scene; or the testimony of numerous witnesses pointing to him as the shooter; or the witnesses reporting a confession by Abu-Jamal that caused a jury of twelve to sentence him to death.
Zinn also wrote that "It seemed that the United States was reacting to the horrors perpetrated by the terrorists against innocent people in New York by killing other innocent people in Afghanistan.” - pretty much saying the USA was no better than the terrorists.
This evidence leads me to think Zinn is not a credible Historian. Zinn was pro-Communist and wrote history in terms of Class Struggle...aka Karl Marx. Communism is a failure and Zinn was a revisionist historian who tried to spin history in a way to make Communism look not so bad.