Here in the US, many readers are introduced to radical history with Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States, which challenges the conventional understanding of history as, in the words of mass-murder Henry Kissinger, “the memory of states.”
British writer Chris Harman tackles 100,000 years of human history in a similarly defiant act of independent scholarship with his excellent A People’s History of the World (Verso, 2008), a book that will appeal to veteran Zinn fans and those investigating the world beyond the History Channel for the first time.
Harman generously took time to respond by email to some questions about his work.
G&R: In the US, the “people’s history” format is often associated with Howard Zinn’s pioneering work. Was Zinn an influence on A People’s History of the World?
CH: I wrote the book out of frustration at the fact that although there were many radical accounts of particular episodes and phases in history, mainly influenced by the insights of Marx and Engels, there was not over-reaching account. In the earlier part of the book the major influence was the Australian archaeologists of the first half of the 20th Century, Gordon Childe. But his account had to be updated to take into account new research by archaeologists and radical anthropologists like Richard Lee and Eleanor Leacock since his death in 1957. Read the rest of this entry »
