Zinn vs Schweikart

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Root Causes of the American Revolution There are many different reasons as to why the American Revolution took place. One might argue that the British oppression upon the colonists triggered the Revolution itself through unjust tax laws, land restrictions, trade regulations and political and economic differences. However, one might also argue that the differences between the upper and lower aroused conflict and social unrest, which called for revolution in order for a strong unification between the rich and the poor. Schweikart and Allen’s A Patriot’s History of the United States and Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States discusses these two viewpoints as the root causes of the American Revolution. Although Zinn argues that the conflicts caused by the differentiating social classes in order to dissolve the class divisions was the main cause of the American Revolution, the “other side of the story” is told by Schweikart and Allen, as they reason that it was actually the British who unknowingly burdened the colonies with oppression, which brought about the revolution itself. In Zinn’s fourth chapter of A People’s History of the United States, Tyranny is Tranny; he focuses more on the class differences in society that triggers the opposition against England, rather than the effects of British oppression. He states that the “American leadership was less in need of English rule, and the English more in need of the colonists’ wealth” (Zinn 60). With this said, the colonists then focused more on the pursuit of exploitation and profit, which would definitely spark rebellions of the poor against the rich especially because the poor had been overwhelmed by British taxes and the fact that only a small percentage of the wealthy controlled a huge majority of the city’s taxable assets. For this reason, the poor developed a hatred for the upper class that would
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