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Untold Truths About the American Revolution
There are things that happen in the world that are bad, and you want to do something about them. You have a just cause. But our culture is so war prone that we immediately jump from, "This is a good cause" to "This deserves a war."
You need to be very, very comfortable in making that jump.
The American Revolution-independence from England-was a just cause. Why should the colonists here be occupied by and oppressed by England? But therefore, did we have to go to the Revolutionary War?
How many people died in the Revolutionary War?
Nobody ever knows exactly how many people die in wars, but it's likely that 25,000 to 50,000 people died in this one. So let's take the lower figure-25,000 people died out of a population of three million. That would be equivalent today to two and a half million people dying to get England off our backs.
You might consider that worth it, or you might not.
Canada is independent of England, isn't it? I think so. Not a bad society. Canadians have good health care. They have a lot of things we don't have. They didn't fight a bloody revolutionary war. Why do we assume that we had to fight a bloody revolutionary war to get rid of England?
In the year before those famous shots were fired, farmers in Western Massachusetts had driven the British government out without firing a single shot. They had assembled by the thousands and thousands around courthouses and colonial offices and they had just taken over and they said goodbye to the British officials. It was a nonviolent revolution that took place. But then came Lexington and Concord, and the revolution became violent, and it was run not by the farmers but by the Founding Fathers. The farmers were rather poor; the Founding Fathers were rather rich.
Who actually gained from that victory over England? It's very important to ask about any policy, and especially about war: Who gained what? And it's very important to notice differences among the various parts of the population. That's one thing were not accustomed to in this country because we don't think in class terms. We think, "Oh, we all have the same interests." For instance, we think that we all had the same interests in independence from England. We did not have all the same interests.
Do you think the Indians cared about independence from England? No, in fact, the Indians were unhappy that we won independence from England, because England had set a line-in the Proclamation of 1763-that said you couldn't go westward into Indian territory. They didn't do it because they loved the Indians. They didn't want trouble. When Britain was defeated in the Revolutionary War, that line was eliminated, and now the way was open for the colonists to move westward across the continent, which they did for the next 100 years, committing massacres and making sure that they destroyed Indian civilization.
So when you look at the American Revolution, there's a fact that you have to take into consideration. Indians-no, they didn't benefit.
Did blacks benefit from the American Revolution?
Slavery was there before. Slavery was there after. Not only that, we wrote slavery into the Constitution. We legitimized it.
What about class divisions?
Did ordinary white farmers have the same interest in the revolution as a John Hancock or Morris or Madison or Jefferson or the slaveholders or the bondholders? Not really.
It was not all the common people getting together to fight against England. They had a very hard time assembling an army. They took poor guys and promised them land. They browbeat people and, oh yes, they inspired people with the Declaration of Independence. It's always good, if you want people to go to war, to give them a good document and have good words: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Of course, when they wrote the Constitution, they were more concerned with property than life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. You should take notice of these little things.
There were class divisions. When you assess and evaluate a war, when you assess and evaluate any policy, you have to ask: Who gets what?
We were a class society from the beginning. America started off as a society of rich and poor, people with enormous grants of land and people with no land. And there were riots, there were bread riots in Boston, and riots and rebellions all over the colonies, of poor against rich, of tenants breaking into jails to release people who were in prison for nonpayment of debt. There was class conflict. We try to pretend in this country that we're all one happy family. We're not.
And so when you look at the American Revolution, you have to look at it in terms of class.
Do you know that there were mutinies in the American Revolutionary Army by the privates against the officers? The officers were getting fine clothes and good food and high pay and the privates had no shoes and bad clothes and they weren't getting paid. They mutinied. Thousands of them. So many in the Pennsylvania line that George Washington got worried, so he made compromises with them. But later when there was a smaller mutiny in the New Jersey line, not with thousands but with hundreds, Washington said execute the leaders, and they were executed by fellow mutineers on the order of their officers.
The American Revolution was not a simple affair of all of us against all of them. And not everyone thought they would benefit from the Revolution.
We've got to rethink this question of war and come to the conclusion that war cannot be accepted, no matter what the reasons given, or the excuse: liberty, democracy; this, that. War is by definition the indiscriminate killing of huge numbers of people for ends that are uncertain. Think about means and ends, and apply it to war. The means are horrible, certainly. The ends, uncertain. That alone should make you hesitate.
Once a historical event has taken place, it becomes very hard to imagine that you could have achieved a result some other way. When something is happening in history it takes on a certain air of inevitability: This is the only way it could have happened. No.
We are smart in so many ways. Surely, we should be able to understand that in between war and passivity, there are a thousand possibilities.
82 Comments so far
Show AllWe all die. Why do we live?
You live so that you may marvel at what consciousness wrought.
Sophie Scholl-The Final Days
my favorite answer is: to compassionately relieve the suffering of others
my personal answer is: to passionately relieve the sexual suffering of others
regarding the american revolution, and truth...when the truth can be born broken, then quickly change so dramatically, even between yesterday and today, what tattered bits of truth, however thin to begin with, survive two hundreds, or two thousands of years? None, really...nothing firm enough to hang your hat on, anyway...
keep up the good work, nedlud...
I live to chant HELL NO, DON'T GO!! Once in the morning, twice after noon and three times in the evening.
"Why should the colonists here be occupied by and oppressed by England?" Hmmm. That's a very interesting question about the legitimacy of imperial colonial governence raised on behalf of a colony whose occupancy and oppression might itself be questioned. Who was really the foreign presence? Who was really the "occupier" and who the "occupied"?
It's not my usual habit to repost my own prior comments, but I hope I may be forgiven for reposting this one regarding July 4th celebrations as it seems to belong here.
__
Happy Fourth of July and all that. But perhaps someone could clarify for me exactly what U.S. revolutionary precepts have been preserved and are currently being celebrated by its populace.
Let's see. There was, if I remember my history correctly, the "no taxation without representation" issue. So today you've got yourselves a so-called "representative" legislature. The only fly in that ointment is that it's actually a wholly owned subsidiary of USA Incorporated and no longer represents you and your interests at all, if it ever really did. And PLEASE don't tell me that its next red/blue facade switch will fix that.
Then there was that nasty old constitutional monarchy bound by "quaint" notions like Magna Carta and habeas corpus. Well, you've certainly "improved" on that with an unconstitutional presidency combining C-in-C/Head-of-State/Head-of-Government functions in a singular "unitary executive" office without any day-to-day parliamentary accountability and with assumed never-ending war powers (indefinite detention without trial, "death-by-drone" on command, etc., etc.) that George III could only dream of.
And speaking of poor ol' porphyric George, he really should have granted Washington his much sought after king's commission in the regular British army. Instead, the silly fool got Washington really PO'd by frustrating his westward land speculation with that 1763 proclamation honoring treaties and prohibiting colonial settlement west of the Appalachian mountains in an effort to ease tensions with the native population. Some monarchs just don't seem to understand that treaties and other constitutional "supreme laws" are mere pieces of paper to be dealt with via "signing statements" and "executive findings." Damnable imperial tyrants!
But I guess the straw that really broke the camel's back, so to speak, was the British demand for colonial financial support for their imperial protection -- not an unusual "protection" demand from imperial powers of any age it would appear. It must be granted that nominal ownership of the imperium and its protection rackets does appear to have shifted somewhat since then, but it's far from clear that ordinary U.S. citizens have derived much benefit from that titular change either.
So I ask again. Could someone please elucidate for me on the precise bases for the current celebrations apart from the ever-present "rocket's red glare" on every horizon and an imperial flag that now incites much more hatred than love and admiration around the world. If it's the old Roman "oderint dum metuant" thing (let them hate so long as they fear) it didn't seem to work out too well in the end for the originators of the concept. For that matter, how does it differ from the more recent imperial forces whose defeat you celebrate as a victory for "freedom and democracy" and all that other good stuff?
CV: as you know Nationalism: "la religion civile" is one of the most powerful tools for political indoctrination and mobilization. I am glad you refer to the "imperial flag" I call it that as well. The national myths and symbols on the 4th are so distorted and hypocritical, yet very powerful in indoctrinating the public with an imperial ideology.
Similar to Zinn, I am proud of ordinary Americans' struggles against injustices and crimes; I do not revere the 'founding fathers' as we are taught to; I do not revere the ruling wealthy elite, they are my enemy, not my friend. I honor ordinary Americans who have worked, suffered and died, and continue to suffer under hypocrisy, lies and injustice.
"What? the land of the Free? Whoever told you that is your enemy!"
As usual, great words from a thoughtful and wise human being.
Concupiscent propagation of ignorance frames, ignites, and fuels war. The cognitive distortions of these purveyors of ignorance have definitions. Google "Thinking Errors" to learn more. In our world, ignorance is not bliss, it's malignant. Malignancy of any kind eventually affects the health of the host. Fight it by sharing the truth.
We have come a long way from the time that logic and democracy were born in the same part of the world and were tied at the hip. We need more rational argument these days.
well, if Canada was free of England, why could the queen shut down their parliament?
Oh, for pete's sake! I doubt that it'll do much good, but here's the briefest possible explanation.
Unlike the U.S. with it's "unitary executive", Canada is a parliamentary democracy and constitutional monarchy with The Queen as Sovereign, a largely ceremonial and symbolic role. As a constitutional monarch who may be called upon from time to time to act on the advice of Parliament, the Queen acts as Queen of Canada, quite distinctive from her role in the United Kingdom or any of her other realms.
People who advocate killing of people for whatever reasons are guilty of murder--people who believe in peace are indeed the children of God and shall enter into the Kingdom of God. Today or in the past, even beyound tomorrow it will be the same.
And what of the War Between the States? Was it necessary to, in effect, "stab slavery to death with bayonets" in order to destroy it? Was it necessary to lay waste to the South in order to bring it back into the Union? And how about the North effectively leaving the freedmen to Southern vengeance in the form of the Jim Crow laws after 1877?
As Mr. Zinn finishes his essay, "Once a historical event has taken place, it becomes very hard to imagine that you could have achieved a result some other way. When something is happening in history it takes on a certain air of inevitability: This is the only way it could have happened. No.
"We are smart in so many ways. Surely, we should be able to understand that in between war and passivity, there are a thousand possibilities."
Zinn also addressed the Civil War and World War II as unquestioned "holy wars" or "just wars". See Howard Zinn's "Three Holy Wars" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUBYI97cUgU which is a 37 minute video of his speech.
While Canada was still considered a colony, they passed laws that outlawed slavery. This some 20 years before it happened in the rest of the empire.
There was no war fought. They just got together and decided it the right thing to do.
The one place in the Empire where slavery was never legal was England itself. In 1772 a slaveowner brought a slave to England, the slave escaped, the owner sued to have his "property" returned. Lord Mansfield ruled for the erstwhile slave, supposedly saying that "the very air of England is too pure for any slave to breathe."
A different point: I wonder how much of the peaceable character of Canadians was influenced by the large number of American Loyalists who moved to Canada after the success of the War of Independence.
Rainborowe
>>A different point: I wonder how much of the peaceable character of Canadians was influenced by the large number of American Loyalists who moved to Canada after the success of the War of Independence
In John Ralston Sauls "A Fair Country" the case is made that the reason for this is because of Canadas ABORIGINAL Heritage.
Now for some reason I posted on this a few minutes back but the post seems to have vansihed so rather then go through it all again...
>>In this startlingly original vision of Canada, thinker John Ralston Saul unveils 3 founding myths. Saul argues that the famous "peace, order, and good government" that supposedly defines Canada is a distortion of the country's true nature. Every single document before the BNA Act, he points out, used the phrase "peace, welfare, and good government," demonstrating that the well-being of its citizenry was paramount. He also argues that Canada is a Métis nation, heavily influenced and shaped by aboriginal ideas: egalitarianism, a proper balance between individual and group, and a penchant for negotiation over violence are all aboriginal values that Canada absorbed. Another obstacle to progress, Saul argues, is that Canada has an increasingly ineffective elite, a colonial non-intellectual business elite that doesn't believe in Canada. It is critical that we recognize these aspects of the country in order to rethink its future.
If one reads "Champlains Dream" which was written by an American Historian many of the same topics are touched on.
The fact is in very many ways our Aboriginal tribes were FAR more democratic then were the Governments of the powers that called themseleves such.
As example when the tribes called a meeting to decide to go to war with another tribe, there was no OBLIGATION to do so. They would meet for many days discussing whether or not to go. Each Individual of the tribe was allowed to speak. If a War Chief was listened to by enough members of the tribe they would join him in the raid. Others who did NOT agree simply did not go. Thewy were not "punished" for refusing. If they refused it was because the Person calling for war did not make his case.
That makes sense. I remember reading about Meskepetoon as a teenager (I'm sure I've mis-spelled his name). Also many of the British settlers in Canada were lone Scotsmen from the Highlands, hunters and trappers, and there was quite a lot of inter-action and inter-marriage between them and Aboriginal people.
Rainborowe
The Mansfield ruling is something that the people who want to trumpet the greatness of the American Revolution want to ignore.
Not only did the Mansfield ruling render slavery illegal in England, there were concerns among the slaveowning American colonialists that it would render slavery illegal in the American colonies. One reason why the revolution happened.
rfloh--
The Mansfield ruling did not "render slavery illegal in England." Mansfield found that slavery did not exist in England, had not existed and never could. I think in his original ruling he said something like, "There's nothing for it but to let the fellow go"--the flowery stuff about the air of England is probably apocryphal. Slavery continued to exist in the West Indies, however, until 1833 or so, although the slave trade ended in 1805 and the Royal Navy was charged with stopping all slavers of any nationality on the high seas and returning the slaves to Africa. This was one of the major grievances of Americans in the run-up to the War of 1812 although it's one rarely mentioned by history teachers in the US.
Rainborowe
All good points to remember... and also the violence of the American Revolutionary War could have been a motive for Canada's peaceful transition plus lots of Tories moved to Canada to escape the violence.
We might remember too that all the Rebels caught by the British and especially the signers of the Declaration of Independence would have been hung and their bodies cut to pieces as a warning to any Canadian ideas of independence.
The fact that we won the war gave notice to the old empire that a new empire with some new rules is growin... and now both empires are joined at the hip anyway.
The Revolutionary War was a great event in history in any case and to say with certainty that we would have been better off without it or that the British for sure would have kept the Indian lands for the Indians forever and abolished slavery is possible but I am not sure about that. The Brits favored the South in the Civil War so the slavery argument is weak to me.
I am sure that we create our own history and War is not the answer.
Now is everywhere
I don't think many historians would claim the Civil War was primarily fought to end slavery. Certainly not Zinn.
If you look at the history, the issue of Slavery in the new territories was splitting the Union.
Lincoln's reason at first was to keep the Slave States from leaving the Union but slavery was the big issue tangled up with States Rights in the beginning and grew as the main issue with the Emancipation Proclamation.
States Rights was also about the right of states to own slaves... Lincoln at first wanted to avoid the inevitable bloody confrontation.
Sure there were other issues but not as big and unavoidable as Slavery.
The things we were never taught in History (along with the truth about how the Shah came to power in Iran and so many other events I didn't learn until adulthood, and only then because I chose to read books I was never exposed to in high school or college). Thanks, Howard Zinn.
Let me add a big SO WHAT about Canadian interdependence with England. Canadians seem to be good people. I have never met a canadian politician. But, I believe they are very similar to the ones we have in the US - not interested in the personal freedom of the citizenry. Our independence means sovereignty. We should be able to practice sovereignty over our own lives as citizens. Yet, national independence is not the same as personal freedom.
I celebrate the 4th of July as a symbol of hoped-for greater personal freedom. I agree with Zinn on one important point the sense of freedom we need is where we seek to promote a nonviolent approach to strife and chaos.
Undeclaration
It was a good idea once
inalienable rights and the abolition
of tyranny but
we've mucked it up, this great
American Experiment
our own inbred aristocracy madder
that noon-baked Englishmen with
crimes and usurpations running amok,
torn bodies and new hatreds in every
casbah tentacles
in every pocket and a
knife at every throat
and we wage slave
descendants of the free, the
not so free
sinking in the refuse of yesterday's bargains
punch clocked and jackbooting our way
to the fossil record at the speed of credit
with no payments 'till January --
a toxic spoor of ruined
places, broken lives and gulags.
We had a bad run but it's time
to come clean,
to admit our failure to
examine the bloody Manifest
of our imagined Destiny.
Time to Repent
for mass graves and wars of false premise,
for all those dictators, our murky turkeys lurking
in every hot satrapy with trained goons keeping
bloody order and a quota of disappeared.
Time to admit
it was all a mistake
made in the bravado of our youth and
rejoin the Commonwealth
Stop seeing stars and turn in our
bloody stripes
be British again
take tea and healthcare claim
our place lordless
in the house of commons where
Empire is only a memory
best forgotten.
-- Al Markowitz
Time to revolt.
Time to remove them.
They won't go quietly.
Wow JP! Where did you find this guy (Al Markowitz)? He's (horrifically)brilliant. Ringing more true with each new outrage. Obama forcing "missile defense" on the world and NATO expansion on Russia, Obama using Biden to signal "go!" on an Israeli Iran attack, Obama flipping on Guantanamo, torture, "openness", indefinite detention, rendition, domestic, warrantless wiretaps, the health care "public option", mountain top removal, NAFTA, cap and trade (they were supposed to auction the credits not give them away to polluters). Even the energy stimulus dollars are stuck in the pipeline, while millions take home pink slips.
That big, sad bell just keeps tolling and we keep tuning it out, even when it's so loud it makes our teeth hurt (there's always beer and vicodin for that...).
buena suerte JP
When I compare the difference between the US's fight for independence vs India's fight for independence, both from the UK, the fundamental difference I notice is the former was violent while the latter was nonviolent. What has violent revolutions taught us you say? Look closely. Sure, America started out with the Articles of Confederation and violence and rebellion continued. There was no unity but confederacy and individualism. In the meantime, loyalists to England such as Alexander Hamilton who had attached himself to being part of the Founding Fathers along with the rest of them quietly teamed up to peacefully write a Constitution that was somewhat balanced similar to our Indian Constitution. While violence, rebellion, and chaos were still ensuing, more states began to get tired of it and eventually enough of them caught on to the peaceful, even if flawed, idea of the Constitution. There were some things to like and some things not to like but there was always room for compromises. Yesterday, I discussed about using non-violence to counter our corrupt government and I was glad that some people understood Gandhi and one person even understood the Bhagavad Gita. I did meet some cranky people who still believe that violence is the answer to solving our problems. I don't mind peaceful protests but most of them turn violent either because someone gets too loose cannoned about it or security abuses its powers. I have not seen one success out of a bloody protest and even where there appeared to be a success from a protest, the real success came from the peaceful and diplomatic actions rarely discussed about in most history textbooks and classes. I cannot tell you how much insult and torment I had to put up with in high school and college when students would crack violent jokes about Gandhi. If this is the kind of behavior western education rewards, it is no wonder the West tolerates violence as the answer to society's ills. Cee Miracles brought up an excellent analysis of how violence was ingrained into the western culture and the toxic effects it has had ever since this country was founded on violence. No revolution that has been violent has ever been successful without the peaceful resolutions behind the scenes.
Are you familiar with the successful "violence" (really just corporate and government property damage, which I don't consider "violence") in obtaining the arrest of the killer of Oscar Grant in Oakland, California this last January?
Didn't India also have armed factions in it's fight for independence?
And you even seem to be opposing even nonviolent protest. What are you proposing in it's place? And the idea of "loose cannons" sound's like typical police propaganda. Have you ever actually been to a mass protest? Do you know what the word "solidarity" means?
There you go again misquoting, cherrypicking, and twisting words with revisionist propaganda. No wonder the country is poorly educated. Why have a protest at all when none have shown to work?
"Didn't India also have armed factions in it's fight for independence?"
Say what you want but if it weren't for Gandhi, no one would have been energized to speak out. You remind me of the NRA cultist gangs who always believe that guns and violence are the answer. The armed factions were the religious cultists anyway.
"And the idea of "loose cannons" sound's like typical police propaganda. "
Since when did the term loose cannon sound like police propaganda? You sound more like a gun toting average Joe blow who believes in violence.
"And you even seem to be opposing even nonviolent protest. What are you proposing in it's place? ... Have you ever actually been to a mass protest? Do you know what the word "solidarity" means?"
Protests rarely change outcomes. I've seen friends of mine go to protests and even in peaceful ones, they almost always turn violent. Solidarity has nothing to do with protests and violence. Solidarity is about unity, something that's lacking here. Protesters can vent their anger or even try to resort to violence but those people have no regards for the safety of not only their own lives but in fact those of their group members joining in the protests. I resort to silent and peaceful methods of countering tyranny and this has been discussed in yesterday's post on Obama going against liberal advocacy groups. I don't resort to protesting loudly when I know that they will rarely listen. Instead, I pass around flyers when I find interesting people to challenge those in power. Since I am not a rich criminal and since there's no public unity, I'd be surprised if my efforts actually won but I still try and don't mind asking others to do the same so that we all can feel proud. Perhaps there's a silent and peaceful protest that I like. It's called knowledge and voting. Even I don't admit to be all-knowing.
"I've seen friends of mine go to protests and even in peaceful ones, they almost always turn violent."
Are you referring to ones in the Unites States or in India?
I have been to many demonstrations in the US over the past 10 years - organized by ANSWER, United for Peace and Justice, and our local peace and justice center, and even our local anarchist organization. Additionally my wife attended protests in India in conjunction with the 2004 World Social Forum in Mumbai. With the exception of a few cases of police attacking protesters in a completely unprovoked manner (in the US), all protests were quite nonviolent - that is, assuming that you don't consider impeding traffic or blocking entrances to military recruiting stations or military robotics research centers to be violent.
On Gandhi:
http://www.isj.org.uk/index.php4?id=558&issue=123
Perhaps there exists idealist conception and the debate of violence and non-violence.
Thanks for the link.
So Gandhi, first and foremost, found a view of the world in terms of class to be repugnant. No doubt he was also an "anti-materialist", ready to denounce the materialist dialectic of socialism in a minute, but blind to the materialist basis of capitalist and British imperialist power.
So, by not recognizing that only common working class material interests could unite Hindu and Muslim, he condemned his county to schism and horrible bloodshed.
This explains a lot concerning the decline of my local "peace and justice center" which reached the peak of effectiveness and visibility in the peroid from 2001 to 2005 when largely run by leftists which united many disparate groups under one banner - respect for diversity of tactics. But it has since withered under attack from the bourgeois Catholic and Quaker spiritual-pacifists, who view their form of pacifism - which opposes any form of property actions or occupations and views pacifism as not a tactic, but as a religion and thereby a means in and of itself. And like most religions it isn't very tolerant.
Yes, because if only Gandhi had recognised that "that only common working class material interests could unite Hindu and Muslim," he could have prevented partition, schism and horrible bloodshed.
Hopefully, the progressives would work towards creating alliances of Marxist/Anarchist left as well as religious left (Liberation Theology, Mohammad Taha, Ali Sharitai and many others). If I'm not wrong, the whole working class, the peasants and the indigenous people throughout the world are facing the worst times from the late 70s, and a movement against the onslaught of capitalism should be emancipatory for all (the oppressed that is also the majority) where a number of them are religious.
in solidarity,
"MANY HAVE shaken their heads as they have said, "But you can't teach nonviolence to the masses. It is only possible for individuals and that too in rare cases." That is, in my opinion, a gross self-deception. If mankind was not habitually nonviolent, it would have been self-destroyed ages ago. But in the duel between forces of violence and nonviolence, the latter have always come out victorious in the end.
The truth is that we have not had patience enough to wait and apply ourselves whole-heartedly to the spread of nonviolence among the people as a means for political ends.
I am not a visionary. I claim to be a practical idealist. The religion of nonviolence is not meant merely for the rishis and saints. It is meant for the common people as well. Nonviolence is the law of our species as violence is the law of the brute. The spirit lies dormant in the brute and he knows no law but that of physical might. The dignity of man requires obedience to a higher law-to the strength of the spirit....
The rishis who discovered the law of nonviolence in the midst of violence were greater geniuses than Newton. They were themselves known the use of arms, they realized their uselessness, and taught a weary world that its salvation lay not through violence but through nonviolence."
-M.K. Gandhi
Thanks for this quote!
"When I compare the difference between the US's fight for independence vs. India's fight for independence, both from the UK, the fundamental difference I notice is the former was violent while the latter was nonviolent"
My understanding of the stream of events that created an independent India diverges from this understanding. I'm not sure one can compare the two "revolutions" successfully without running into some rather gaping and irreconcilable paradigm source and outcome differences. It's the old apples and oranges thing.
Can we talk about Indian independence without including the events that led up to and included the partition of the subcontinent into Pakistan and India? How nonviolent was that? How nonviolent does it continue to be? This is not to imply the failure of Gandhi’s efforts... much to the contrary, but I think such strong and eventually successful nonviolent action can, perhaps, at most hope for a reduction of violence and a renunciation of it as the best way to proceed, as opposed to denying it's historical inevitability and the nature of the changes that it has wrought. The difficulty with most violent change (and really, in the vast majority of human endeavor, has there been another kind?) is that the aftermath of such violence is the seedbed of the next violent upheaval. So we create our children's wars by waging our own.
This is the human habit that must be confronted and broken. Perhaps we are on that path, or at least those of us who understand the absolute need for the end of war as an acceptable human endeavor are. Even if we understand that inter-human violence is something of an inevitability, we believe there is much we can do to mute it and its devastating and suicidal effects if we make war taboo.
I am not sure Canada is a good example either, for as much as the Canadians never broke loose from the UK by waging war, Canada was never prevented from participating willingly as a partner with the UK in that country's wars, and most certainly Canadians were not prevented from waging and participating in the wars against the First Nations there... which in some ways continue unabated, if muted and more reasonably challenged from a culturally wider standpoint in Canadian society.
And to use the Native American genocidal wars, and intermittent Native alliance with the Brits, as a good example of an alternative approach to attaining cultural and national autonomy certainly does not take into consideration the widely inconsistent and contradictory manner in which the Natives of both the United States and Canada were used and employed by the British for their own geopolitical gain and resource advantage. The story of Shawnee Chief Tecumseh contains in itself a rather complete inventory of how the English mistreated, squandered and betrayed Native Americans at every step during their occupation and gradual withdrawal from Native American homelands. Actually the French have a better, but still pretty miserable, record as far as that is concerned.
To dream of a time when wars are taboo, and inter "tribal" massacre and bloodletting more and more a rarity, and less and less a routine and normalized method used by the powerful (and responded to in kind by the powerless or less powerful) to establish and maintain autonomy and adequate per capita resource allocation and/or great and inequitable advantage is good, but to allege or even imply that it has been done significantly in any other way in human history, I think, is a bit dishonest and relegates the huge task of managing and healing the great and long long lasting inter tribal rifts to a less essential part of the task of going forward without war than it actually must be.
"Can we talk about Indian independence without including the events that led up to and included the partition of the subcontinent into Pakistan and India? How nonviolent was that? How nonviolent does it continue to be?"
Sure. But, if you are going to talk about partition, you need to talk about the British role in stoking the fires of partition, in helping to provide the fuel for it.
of course!
Excellent stuff from Zinn once again. Remember again
"WAR is a racket. It always has been.
It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.
A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small "inside" group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.
In the World War [I] a mere handful garnered the profits of the conflict. At least 21,000 new millionaires and billionaires were made in the United States during the World War. That many admitted their huge blood gains in their income tax returns. How many other war millionaires falsified their tax returns no one knows.
How many of these war millionaires shouldered a rifle? How many of them dug a trench? How many of them knew what it meant to go hungry in a rat-infested dug-out? How many of them spent sleepless, frightened nights, ducking shells and shrapnel and machine gun bullets? How many of them parried a bayonet thrust of an enemy? How many of them were wounded or killed in battle?
Out of war nations acquire additional territory, if they are victorious. They just take it. This newly acquired territory promptly is exploited by the few – the selfsame few who wrung dollars out of blood in the war. The general public shoulders the bill.
And what is this bill?
This bill renders a horrible accounting. Newly placed gravestones. Mangled bodies. Shattered minds. Broken hearts and homes. Economic instability. Depression and all its attendant miseries. Back-breaking taxation for generations and generations.
For a great many years, as a soldier, I had a suspicion that war was a racket; not until I retired to civil life did I fully realize it. Now that I see the international war clouds gathering, as they are today, I must face it and speak out.
Again they are choosing sides. "
Major General Smedley D. Butler - USMC Retired
Two-Time Congressional Medal of Honor Recipient
Sophie Scholl-The Final Days
While it's necessary to look at the class components of the war and the subsequent creation of a national government, and always salutary to look more closely at the narrative fictions in history, Mr. Zinn's conclusion is wrong. What would England have become WITHOUT the loss of the North American colonies? What becomes of a French revolution absent the success of the American one? Even at that, it took more than 150 years to effectively end the idea of monarchical rule altogether.
Even at that, it took more than 150 years to effectively end the idea of monarchical rule altogether.
_________________________________________
Alas! like the unforgettable gruesome scene in "Alien", where the monstrous infant alien incubating inside a spaceship crewman suddenly bursts out through his chest, monstrous monarchical rule has burst through the Constitution and resumed its dominion as if it had never left.
· Yr Obd't Servant
Then there is the often forgotten policy of the British regarding American slaves. Slaves who escaped their slave-owners and fought for the British were promised freedom. I don't know how many made that choice, how many fought or how many actually recieved the promise of freedom once they were discharged from duty.
Just the idea however, ought to be enough to set off violent spasms in response to the glacier-sized irony. But America is an irony-free society. We don't "do" irony here in America. We're "free" not to trouble ourselves with our own history. Thanks Howard.
Yup, and if you read down the Declaration of independence a bit, after all that flowery language about "inalenable rights", doesn't it make a big deal (after all the fuss about having to pay taxes) about how the British parliament was keeping us from exterminating the savage red men?
Irony-free society indeed!
Charles Austin Beard [1874-1948] is widely regarded as one of the most influential American historians of the early 20th century. While Beard published hundreds of monographs, textbooks and interpretive studies in both history and political science, he is most widely known for his radical re-evaluation of the Founding Fathers of the United States, whom he believed were more motivated by economics than by philosophical principles.
“The concept of the Constitution as a piece of abstract legislation reflecting no group interests and recognizing no economic antagonisms is entirely false. It was an economic document drawn with superb skill by men whose property interests were immediately at stake.”
Howard Zinn: When economic interest is seen behind the political clauses of the Constitution, then the document becomes not simply the work of wise men trying to establish a decent and orderly society, but the work of certain groups trying to maintain their privileges, while giving just enough rights and liberties to enough of the people to ensure popular support. The American system is the most ingenious system of control in world history.
http://theformofmoney.blogharbor.com/blog/_archives/2008/3/24/3600602.html
Hence The Whiskey Rebellion.
♪... My daddy, he made whiskey
My granddaddy, he did too
We ain't paid no whiskey tax
Since 1792...♪
-- Copper Kettle (Albert Frank Beddoe)
· Yr Obd't Servant
How did a genuine discussion regarding the mythos of America's exceptionalism that pervades a hopelessly credulous populace devolve into inane existentialist query? (unless that is, the latter two comments were in jest, but I doubt it).
bligh4
Professor Zinn asks a couple of pertinant questions. First, would the British have left voluntarily? Canada is his example. The answer seems to be yes, sort of, eventually...
Canada sort of became a proper colony in 1867, then received some independence in 1931, finally got most of it in 1982 or there-abouts. Even now though, the head of State is still the Queen, the Commander in Chief of the Canadian armed forces is the Govenor-General representing the Queen, and the Queen still has the right to dismiss ministers. So, still not quite there in my opinion.
As far as bloodless, aside from the efforts to of some revolutionary's to kick the British out in the 1830's and 40's (and put down with force by the British army)- The fact that Canadians were not consulted before being drug into the First World War by a British declaration should factor into the equasion. Over a hundred thousand war dead was a result.
Second, did the wealthy class benefit economically, or believe they would benefit from the revolution? I would say the fact that a majority of this class in many of the colonies sided with the Crown in the conflict, and the fact that many of the signers of the Declaration LOST their fortunes due to the war at least leaves this open to question. Also the fact that the signers knew they were commiting High Treason from their act and that it was punishable by death if they lost. Can't take it with you...
Professor Zinn is an avowed Marxist with his own view of History-one that always devolves into a question of Class. Doesn't make it any more right or true than the other interpretations of history.
Thanks for bringing a bit of realism to this discussion. I don't know it for fact, but I would suggest that the US next door didn't hurt Canada's argument for leaving. Could easily be wrong, but it is worth considering.
As has been explained before, these royal powers in British Commonwealth countries are purely symbolic and ceremonial. The moment they were exercised without the consent of the parliament, they could simply declare themselves to be a republic and kick the governor general out.
I would be very carful criticising Canada or other Commonwealth country. Their parliamentary systems are far more democratic, responsive, and in spite of being symbolically led by a Queen, far, far, less stifled by opressive decorum and oligharchic influence than the US Congress. Every US member of congress needs to go to Ottwa or Canberra and watch the vigorous debate - even angry shouting, that goes on there. Not a gavel in sight. It is what a democracy should look like.
And we haven't even mentioned all the probelms with this powerful, "unitary executive" who cannot be dismissed except for "high crimes and misdemeanors".